A Library of Human Imagination

Human imagination, cataloged and numbered, or what James Bond and King James have in common besides the James.

If VH1 did a Fabulous Lives Of episode about the geektelligencia — today’s literati — it would no doubt include a grand tour of über-geek and web entrepreneur Jay Walker‘s private library. Because Jay Walker’s library is no ordinary lavish and gratuitous showcase of knowledge porn. (Although, OK, it is that too.)

It is a Library of Human Imagination.

Fascinated by the breadth intellectual property, the infamous entrepreneur (of Walker Digital and Priceline.com fame) decided to build and curate a “library”of humanity’s intellectual and creative progress with all its artifacts — from an authentic Gutenberg Bible to an original Sputnik 1 satellite to the chandelier from Bond flick Die Another Day — hosting over 5,000 years of human imagination.

The library’s design, spearheaded by Walker’s wife, is a creative and intellectual feat of its own. The 3-story-high building, computer-controlled and brilliantly lit to change colors, is like the set of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, only concerned with something much sweeter and more addictive than chocolate — pure imagination in all its scientific, artistic, technological and undefinable forms. A glass bridge, suspended in space, stretches across the library — so you can literally take a leap of human imagination as you marvel at the world-changing artifacts surrounding you. Even the floor layout is designed like an Escher print. Before the grand window lies a custom-commissioned, internally lit, 2.5-ton Clyde Lynds book sculpture with the mind on the right page and the universe on the left — the embodiment of the library’s spirit.

And by “you,” of course, we mean Jay Walker himself an a small set of guests selected even more carefully than the objects in the library themselves — because the private library has remained just that. It was only unveiled to the world earlier this year through Jay Walker’s inspired TED talk, where the conference organizers somehow talked him into decorating the TED stage with objects from the library. A few months later, a Wired reporter became the first press member to enter the library while writing a must-read exposè on the cultural hallmark.

Ultimately, the library is Jay Walker’s attempt to answer the simple yet profoundly difficult question, “How do we create?” His stab at the answer:

We create by surrounding ourselves with stimuli, with history, with human achievement, with the things that drive us and make us human — the passionate discovery, the bones of dinosaurs long gone, the maps of space that we’ve experienced, and ultimately the hallways that stimulate our mind and our imagination.

While we love the idea of a centralized collection of human intelligence and imagination, we’re torn between loving what the library stands for and wondering whether or not it “stands” in all the right ways, being privately owned and pretty much the artifact antithesis of a Creative Commons license.

Doesn’t “human imagination” belong to everybody, the Ukrainian schoolchild as much as the TED elite? And isn’t the greatest gift of imagination the boundary-spanning, all-inclusive propagation of brilliant ideas?

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Famous Logos Revised: Fortune 500 Sans Fortune

Downward design, or what happens when the corporate glass is half-empty.

We’re going down. Just listen to the media, the politicians, the self-proclaimed experts — we’re bombarded with messages of economic apocalypse. And it seems like it’s not just little guy taking the hit. So what happens to the biggest logs that stoke the fire of capitalism, the world’s most powerful and recognized brands, at a time of indisputable recession?

According a yet-to-be-tracked down designer, by way of a good friend of ours, here’s what happens.

• Update: The original author of the work has finally stepped forward — the logo parodies below were designed by the team at Business Pundit. For the full collection in all its glory, please see their original article.

The images were emailed to us by a friend who found them on a random Istanbul-based student Yahoo group. But we’re bent on giving proper credit to this piece of genius, so stay tuned for updates.

Meanwhile, we thought we’d add one — perhaps THE sign-of-the-apocalypse one — of our own, and leave you with that:

• Related Post: 6 Signs the Apocalypse Cometh (And 6 Signs It Goeth Away)

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The Real Beauty Industry

Sight, sound, motion, and more beauty than your beholder eyes can handle.

The notion of beauty is among the most subjective, abstract concepts out there. (Despite what the cookie-cutter “beauty industry” may tell us.) But every once in a while, something comes by that is so fundamentally sublime in concept, execution and emotional charge that it’s hard to contest its beauty.

Case in point: Advanced Beauty, an ongoing exploration of digital art influenced by sound. A collaborative project between artists, programmers, musicians, architects and animators, Advanced Beauty offers a wonderland of sight and sound through a series of audio-reactive “video sound sculptures,” creating a moving sensory experience in what’s become known as sisomo — the powerful intersection of sight, sound and motion.

And while the work by all the artists collaborating on the project is truly phenomenal, we particularly dig Fernando Sarmiento from Argentinian animation and character design get-up Pepper Melon (whom you may recall from the critically acclaimed Mama Lucchetti TV spot that made the creative rounds last month) and their fascinating sound sculpture for Advanced Beauty.

Another brilliant, could-be-a-bit-over-our-head-but-fantastic-nonetheless effort: Enerugii, a responsive, generative sound sculpture by Karsten Schmidt of London-based design studio PostSpectacular — a hybrid idea merging volumetric modeling with marker shapes that only respond to certain user-defined dynamics to produce a truly hypnotic piece that sweeps you up with sound, tosses you into a sea of shape and color, and leaves you floating in the fluidity of the moment.

Go ahead, explore the artists for yourself. And check out the Advanced Beauty podcast on iTunes, spotlighting some of the most compelling works from the project.

Thanks, Michal