Shadows & Darkness
The eaves deep and the walls dark
Empty Every Night
Hello darkness, my old friend
Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you againA time when time was not
Darkness cannot say: “I precede the coming light”, but there is a sense in which light can say, “Darkness preceded me”.
Doubtless there is an event, X, in the future, by reference to which we may say that we are at present in a category of Not-X, but until X occurs, the category of Not-X is without reality. Only X can give reality to Not-X; that is to say, Not-Being depends for its reality upon Being. In this way we may faintly see how the creation of Time may be said automatically to create a time when Time was not, and how the Being of God can be said to create a Not-Being that is not God.
Shortlist of interesting spaces
The tower
The tower is just a common grater. It is not used to look out toward a distant world from above, but only to slice, grind and grate its surroundings.
Anyone who stepped inside would see an irremediably cold, metallic, empty void, and a few scattered holes where the world literally seeps through in pieces. It is a sad project.
Darkness becomes you
Searle: In psych tests on deep space, I ran a number of sensory deprivation trials, tested in total darkness, on floatation tanks - and the point about darkness is, you float in it. You and the darkness are distinct from each other because darkness is an absence of something, it's a vacuum. But total light envelops you. It becomes you.
Lights and lamps
Deep shadows and darkness are essential
During overpowering emotional experiences, we tend to close off the distancing sense of vision; we close the eyes when dreaming, listening to music, or caressing our beloved ones. Deep shadows and darkness are essential, because they dim the sharpness of vision, make depth and distance ambiguous, and invite unconscious peripheral vision and tactile fantasy.
To carve a volume into the void of darkness
The nocturnal sound is a reminder of human solitude and mortality, and it makes one conscious of the entire slumbering city. Anyone who has become entranced by the sound of dripping water in the darkness of a ruin can attest to the extraordinary capacity of the ear to carve a volume into the void of darkness. The space traced by the ear in the darkness becomes a cavity sculpted directly in the interior of the mind.
Those glowing domes and minarets
I began to have my doubts about those glowing domes and minarets. Finally, I felt that this modern celebration of history subtracted something: I felt gypped out of the dark.
We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness
135. Tapestry of Light and Dark
Problem
In a building with uniform light level, there are few “places” which function as effective settings for human events. This happens because, to a large extent, the places which make effective settings are defined by light.
Solution
Create alternating areas of light and dark throughout the building, in such a way that people naturally walk toward the light, whenever they are going to important places: seats, entrances, stairs, passages, places of special beauty, and make other areas darker, to increase the contrast.
If you look for the light
If you look for the light,
you can often find it.
But if you look for the dark,
that is all you will ever see.— Uncle Iroh
I would want to be in that darkness
If there were a part of life dark enough to keep out of it a light from art, I would want to be in that darkness, fumbling around if necessary, but alive.
And I rather think that contemporary music would be there in the dark too, bumping into things, knocking others over and in general adding to the disorder that characterizes life (if it is opposed to art) rather than adding to the order and stabilized truth beauty and power that characterize a masterpiece (if it is opposed to life).
And is it? It is.
Vamburglars
Burglary was originally only possible in a household or dwelling; the very word contains an etymological variant on the Latin burgus, for “castle” or “fortified home” (from which other words, such as burgher and even borough, also derive). Common law definitions of burglary also originally required the person to break into a house or dwelling at night. Giving historical burglary an oddly vampiric dimension, you could not, legally speaking, be a burglar while the sun was still out.
She was the universe
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.Darkling in the eternal space
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day.An invisible landscape
Isaura, city of the thousand wells, is said to rise over a deep, subterranean lake. On all sides, wherever the inhabitants dig long vertical holes in the ground, they succeed in drawing up water, as far as the city extends, and no farther. Its green border repeats the dark outline of the buried lake; an invisible landscape conditions the visible one; everything that moves in the sunlight is driven by the lapping wave enclosed beneath the rock’s calcareous sky.
Extinguished
One by one the lamps were all extinguished.
Lacquerware
There are good reasons why lacquer soup bowls are still used, qualities which ceramic bowls simply do not possess. Remove the lid from a ceramic bowl, and there lies the soup, every nuance of its substance and color revealed. With lacquerware there is a beauty in that moment between removing the lid and lifting the bowl to the mouth when one gazes at the still, silent liquid in the dark depths of the bowl, its color hardly different from that of the bowl itself.
The world of shadows
The 'mysterious Orient' of which Westerners speak probably refers to the uncanny silence of these dark places. And even we as children would feel an inexpressible chill as we peered into the depth of an alcove to which the sunlight never penetrated.
This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament.
The great soundless whirl of darkness
I could not know that even then the little light was being drawn irresistibly into the great soundless whirl of darkness and that I was watching a light that was destined soon to blink out and disappear.
A handful of dust
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.In Praise of Shadows
A Book by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki & Thomas J. Harper- Things that shine and glitter
- A naked bulb
- The Japanese toilet
- Empty dreams
- Most important of all are the pauses
Darkness
A Poem by Lord ByronLight & Shadow
An Artwork by Kumi YamashitaCHAIR, 2014
FRAGMENTS, 2009I sculpt using both light and shadow. I construct single or multiple objects and place them in relation to a single light source. The complete artwork is therefore comprised of both the material (the solid objects) and the immaterial (the light or shadow).
The Best Interface is No Interface
"There's an app for that."
Slap an interface on it!
How do you make a better car?
How do you make a better fridge?
How do you make a better trash can?
How do you make a better restaurant?
How do you make a better vending machine?Aim higher
“There’s one more thing you need to do: Aim higher the merely trying to recreate Silicon Valley. You should try to kick our butt instead.” — Guy Kawasaki
This is UX
When you hire someone to generate UI, you won’t get new, innovative solutions. You’ll get more UI, not better UX.
This is UI:
Navigation, sub navigation, menus, drop-downs, buttons, links, windows, rounded corners, shadowing, error messages, alerts, updates, checkboxes, password fields, text inputs, radio selections, text areas, hover states, selection states, pressed states, tooltips, banner ads, embedded videos, swipe animations, scrolling, clicking, iconography, colors, lists, slideshows, alt text, badges, notifications, gradients, pop-ups, carousels, OK.cancel, etc. etc. etc.
This is UX:
People, happiness, solving problems, understanding needs, love, efficiency, entertainment, pleasure, delight, smiles, soul, warmth, personality, joy, satisfaction, gratification, elation, exhilaration, bliss, euphoria, convenience, enchantment, magic, productivity, effectiveness, etc. etc. etc.
The most seamless and wonderful way
I believe our job as designers is to give you what you need as quickly and elegantly as we can. Our job as designers is to take you away from technology. Our job as designers is to make you smile. To make a profit by providing you something that enhances your life in the most seamless and wonderful way possible.
The best interface
Let’s end the confusion between UI and UX. Let’s stop slapping sirens on children’s toys. Let’s prioritize personal goals over addiction. Let’s get our lives and our health back in balance by interacting with the real world instead of staring into a light, checking new notifications. Let’s think beyond screens.
The best result for any technology is to solve meaningful problems in impactful ways.
The best design reduces work.
The best computer is unseen.
The best interaction is natural.
The best interface is no interface.Adapt
Digital products can do so much more than have a fancy front end.
Even if your company’s core product is an interface, not everything that comes after has to be an interface. If things were that rigid, Apple Computer, the personal computer company, would never become Apple Inc., the world’s largest consumer electronics company. If companies didn’t go after opportunities beyond what they do today, Netflix would still be mailing DVDs in red envelopes.
Great thinkers adapt. Great companies offer their customers the best possible solutions, whether they have a graphical user interface or not.
Let them serve us
Instead of us serving computers,
let computers serve us.Forgetting
Inactivity could be another automatic trigger to erase any stored information. If they haven’t utilized the system in a long time, their food data could automatically clear. With so many services out there trying to grab out attention, knowing that a system collecting more general information will just forget everything it knows about you if you don’t use it for a long time might ease the resistance to trying out the new software in the first place.