R
rdaner
Guest
This caught my attention:"We need another building for grad students. That means a lot more money. We'll start in the next couple of years." I think that the lot on the northeast corner of Queen and McCaul would make an excellent location for another OCAD building. The way it terminates Simcoe? is ideal.
(In a similar vein, will Institute Without Borders ever get a facility?)
`Imagination Revolution' has a home in Toronto
Jul. 4, 2006. 01:00 AM
CHRISTOPHER HUME
The world has come to Toronto, now it's time to take Toronto to the world.
So says the new Ontario College of Art and Design president, Sara Diamond. A conceptual artist and veteran teacher, she took over the helm of OCAD last summer but delayed her coming-out party for almost a year.
In her installation speech, Diamond talked about "this new Age of Imagination." According to her, "Art and design engage our values, each in different ways, in the ways we imagine our lives, in the balance of pleasure and functionality."
Artists and designers, she insisted, "are sniffers of the Zeitgeist." It sounds faintly disgusting, but perhaps it's best understood as a 21st-century variation of Percy Bysshe Shelley's assertion that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Except now, of course, they, or at least artists and designers, are acknowledged.
That's what Diamond and OCAD are all about. "I come from a research background," Diamond says. "The question now is what can art do with these other fields? It gets interesting when artists and designers start to look at what people need, what people would like."
Diamond, a big believer in collaboration, foresees teams of scientists and engineers working with artists and designers. God knows, it couldn't do any harm; when one looks around at the world created by the practical, it's obviously anything but.
But what does Diamond mean by artist and designer? Clearly the traditional image of the beret-wearing bohemian standing before an easel pondering the beautiful figure of a female nude no longer applies.
Though she admits that "painting just won't go away," she also likes to speak of artists as "researchers" and "problem-solvers." She sees OCAD as "home to the next generation of creative design entrepreneurs (who) will set trends well before these hit the market."
"We are beginning the Imagination Revolution," she declares. "This revolution will be televised and seen on mobile phones, digital screens, iPods and biomimetic dresses around the world."
In that case, it will be hard to miss, even if you're wearing cotton and forgot to recharge the cell the night before.
Diamond thinks artists could contribute to companies such as Apple, creator of both the iPod, "which has moved from accessory to body part," and iTunes, "an easy, friendly way to download music legally."
"This is revolution by design," she says. "Apple has gone from computer manufacturer to giant in the music industry — in a matter of months, not years."
All very well, though some would say the music remains the same.
Of course, Marshall McLuhan argued famously that the medium is the message, but he had only print and TV, those most antediluvian forms, to contend with. And now change is happening faster than ever. iPod may be this month's revolution, but what about next week?
So far, however, OCAD's most revolutionary act was building Will Alsop's celebrated "flying tabletop." Though much reviled when drawings were first unveiled, it has since become a Toronto landmark and, in its own way, genuinely popular.
But then, Alsop is that rarest of creatures, an avant-garde populist who appeals to the snobs and the proles at the same time. No mean feat that.
This has not gone unnoticed by Diamond. She makes it clear that his building on stilts has done wonders for OCAD, not to mention the city.
"It's become a working model for the institution," she says. "It represents so many of OCAD's values; it's beautiful, practical, intelligent, visionary, communal.... It has been internationally recognized and has helped us attract faculty. It's the image of OCAD. It's what I call `working capital.'"
Diamond goes so far as to say she probably wouldn't be here if it weren't for the Alsop. But, she adds, "We need another building for grad students. That means a lot more money. We'll start in the next couple of years."
That should be good.
(In a similar vein, will Institute Without Borders ever get a facility?)
`Imagination Revolution' has a home in Toronto
Jul. 4, 2006. 01:00 AM
CHRISTOPHER HUME
The world has come to Toronto, now it's time to take Toronto to the world.
So says the new Ontario College of Art and Design president, Sara Diamond. A conceptual artist and veteran teacher, she took over the helm of OCAD last summer but delayed her coming-out party for almost a year.
In her installation speech, Diamond talked about "this new Age of Imagination." According to her, "Art and design engage our values, each in different ways, in the ways we imagine our lives, in the balance of pleasure and functionality."
Artists and designers, she insisted, "are sniffers of the Zeitgeist." It sounds faintly disgusting, but perhaps it's best understood as a 21st-century variation of Percy Bysshe Shelley's assertion that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Except now, of course, they, or at least artists and designers, are acknowledged.
That's what Diamond and OCAD are all about. "I come from a research background," Diamond says. "The question now is what can art do with these other fields? It gets interesting when artists and designers start to look at what people need, what people would like."
Diamond, a big believer in collaboration, foresees teams of scientists and engineers working with artists and designers. God knows, it couldn't do any harm; when one looks around at the world created by the practical, it's obviously anything but.
But what does Diamond mean by artist and designer? Clearly the traditional image of the beret-wearing bohemian standing before an easel pondering the beautiful figure of a female nude no longer applies.
Though she admits that "painting just won't go away," she also likes to speak of artists as "researchers" and "problem-solvers." She sees OCAD as "home to the next generation of creative design entrepreneurs (who) will set trends well before these hit the market."
"We are beginning the Imagination Revolution," she declares. "This revolution will be televised and seen on mobile phones, digital screens, iPods and biomimetic dresses around the world."
In that case, it will be hard to miss, even if you're wearing cotton and forgot to recharge the cell the night before.
Diamond thinks artists could contribute to companies such as Apple, creator of both the iPod, "which has moved from accessory to body part," and iTunes, "an easy, friendly way to download music legally."
"This is revolution by design," she says. "Apple has gone from computer manufacturer to giant in the music industry — in a matter of months, not years."
All very well, though some would say the music remains the same.
Of course, Marshall McLuhan argued famously that the medium is the message, but he had only print and TV, those most antediluvian forms, to contend with. And now change is happening faster than ever. iPod may be this month's revolution, but what about next week?
So far, however, OCAD's most revolutionary act was building Will Alsop's celebrated "flying tabletop." Though much reviled when drawings were first unveiled, it has since become a Toronto landmark and, in its own way, genuinely popular.
But then, Alsop is that rarest of creatures, an avant-garde populist who appeals to the snobs and the proles at the same time. No mean feat that.
This has not gone unnoticed by Diamond. She makes it clear that his building on stilts has done wonders for OCAD, not to mention the city.
"It's become a working model for the institution," she says. "It represents so many of OCAD's values; it's beautiful, practical, intelligent, visionary, communal.... It has been internationally recognized and has helped us attract faculty. It's the image of OCAD. It's what I call `working capital.'"
Diamond goes so far as to say she probably wouldn't be here if it weren't for the Alsop. But, she adds, "We need another building for grad students. That means a lot more money. We'll start in the next couple of years."
That should be good.