visionofthefuture95

[visionofthefuture95]

The Designer's Republic & The Author's Own Work / Gasbook / Funkstörung & Patagonia's Salt Flats / 1999 & 2023 A few months ago, this project was graciously shared on Shellzine, and I was able to document in more detail some of the goals of this project. It's not meant to be pure documentation, but hopefully a means for original creative output as well. Most of my energy has been put towards to completing my education and more on that later, but in the meantime, here is a quick digital collage of some found footage from the salt flats in Patagonia and The Desginer Republic's graphic work for Funkstörung which was featured in Gasbook #9;Insect Music is Letting Go by Descent from the wonderful compilation The Bliss of a Soft Comedown by Club Paradiso

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Yoshi Sodeoka/ Noise Driven Ambient Audio and Visuals/ 404031 Sector 1 / Motion Graphics / 2001

Yoshi Sodeoka’s 404031 Sector 1 (2001). Some early work from the legendary artist and motion graphics designer originally featured on ‘Noise Driven Ambient Audio And Visuals DVD’. Sodeoka has been living in New York since 1989 when he left his native Japan to study at the Pratt Institute, since then he’s gone on to create visual work for musicians like Digitalism and Oneohtrix Point Never. Music is Can 2002 by Neba Solo, taken from Caribou’s wonderful 2020 BBC Radio One mix

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Phillips Wearables / Phillips Electronics / Vision Of The Future / Multimedia / 1996

The namesake of this blog and my social media handles is Phillips Electronics Vision Of The Future(VOTF) concept developed in the mid 90s. Created during a time where corporations were still optimistic that their products value could genuinely improve customers lives and that the dangers of globalism should be approached cautiously came a series of conceptual design products that resemble much of the "smart" technology seen today. Products that were supposed to turn your home into a smart house that could automatically adjust to the users needs(Alexa,Siri?), wearable electronics predating the smartphone by about a decade, electronic screens that contained photo and audio "memories" like some kind of digital postcard. VOTF was an ambitious project that was only made possible by the time it found itself in, a time before the world wide web and apps dumbed down so that three year olds can get addicted to screens now. Vision of The Future could only have been imagined by a people who experienced the world before the flattening of the imagination cause by the world wide web. A time where technology was approached with unbridled optimism and not taken for granted as an extension of our lives, in many ways it was the wild west for these ideas, and although the decades that followed led to some of the most obscene censorship, dismantlement of net neutrality, and unprecedented attacks on personal freedom and privacy seen in the western world, the spirit of VOTF remains as a reminder what was once possible and what what might be possible again. My blog is dedicated to design research from this period of time and attempts to recapture that flame so it can be reestablished in a new way. Design research for new design practices. Not in a hauntological sense where references are interpreted through the haze of notalgia but as a bulwark against the neverending tide of nihilism and hopelessness that plagues young people today. There is a sense that we are living at the end of history, everything is a remix and nothing original can possibly exist again, but it doesn't need to be this way. Music is Macquaire Ridge by Boards of Canada a bonus track from the Japanese version of The Campfire Headphase(2005). Boards of Canada are a Scottish-Canadian electronic duo whose music has had a profound effect on the creation of this blog and whose track One Very Important Thought has become a sort of underlying philosophical guide for Vision Of The Future.

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Andy Martin / Andy Martin / Out There / Animation / 2002

Andy Martin's 2002 look at the future of space travel "Out There". While primarily making a living as an illustrator and being published in the New York Times, The New Yorker,The Atlantic, The Guardian, Time, Newsweek and many more Andy Martin has also dabbled in animation since at least the late 1990s. In 1999 he was included in Gasbook 9;Insect for the music video Throwing Down a Shape by Fila Brazillia. Later in 2002 he followed it up with his ode to budget conscious space travel with "Out There" which combined simple 3d shape renders with live film footage of outer space. Music is Familiar Ground feat. Fontella Bass by The Cinematic Orchestra from their 2007 Album Ma Fleur. The second single To Build a Home has gone on to garner cult like status and has appeared into numerous TV shows,productions, and a notable feature during the 2018 Olympic figure skating competition.

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Megafront / Metalheart Is Love / Millenium / Multimedia / 2001

In 2001 Andreas Lindholm and Anders Ronnblom compiled their collective digital artwork of the previous 3 years into a publication entitled Metalheart is Love. Metalheart was a graphic design and art style from the late 1990s and early 2000s that incorporated experimental typography learned from pioneers like David Carson with early 3D renders of abstract organic shapes. Metalheart often made extensive use of complicated modular grid patterns and prominently featured custom display fonts. While short-lived Metalheart went onto become one of the most memorable aesthetics of the Y2K era and spawned dozens of derivative styles that pushed it's dedication to the future to extremes never thought possible before. Accompanying the book was a multimedia CD-ROM of design assets and inspirational content including this film; Millenium by Megafront. The film features numerous metalheart compositions and one can clearly trace a continuity from the visual language of grunge and techno of the 1990s. Metalheart combined both into a cohesive visual aesthetic unlike anything else that existed up until that point. Music is Jupiter Approach by Digitalism off their critically acclaimed LP Idealism(2007)

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theredislove / Populous / My Winter Vacation / Multimedia / 2005

From IdN V12N4 is the music video for lo-fi and alternative hiphop producer's Populous song My Winter Vacation from his 2005 hidden gen illbient album Queue For Love. The video production was handled by theredislove and featured contemporary design trends such as stenciled graffiti popularized by artists like Banksy and a mix of multimedia techniques including video, 2D and 3D design work. The song itself featured Doseone of cLOUDDEAD who was a force to be reckoned with in the alternative hiphop scene of the late 1990s and early 2000s, releasing 2 seminal albums on Anticon; their 2001 eponymous album and Ten before breaking up. cLOUDDEAD notably were the recipients of one of the only Boards of Canada remixes in existence; a 2004 remix of their track Deads Dog Two. Later former member Yoni Wolf would later go on to found WHY? an alternative hip-hop project that integrated elements of indie rock and became Pitchfork Media darlings.

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Heebok Lee / Personal Project / Tread Softly / Film / 2005

Heebok Lee is a creative director who specializes in film and TV title sequences, this short film entitled "Tread Softly" was featured in IdN V12N4 in 2005 in a special feature on "Alternative Desire". The issue explored commercials, interactive gallery content along a recurring "pick of the month section" where Lee's personal project " Tread Softly" was included. IdN by this point had long abandoned the vectorheart style and blobby shapes that made up the visual design zeitgeist of a few years earlier opting for a edgier , illustrative, one may even call it gothic design language featuring assets like paint splatters and vector insects. A similar aesthetic change was also seen in Japanese fashion magazines at the time including the somewhat new periodical HUGE that maintained a focus on contemporary menswear fashion. The film itself is an adaption of a W.B. Keats passage and featured motion graphic typography alongside CGI superimposed with a real world model. Music is Idioteque(Adam Freeland Remix) by Radiohead(2003) originally appearing on Kid A(2000)

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Danny Yount / IdN / Sixteentwenty / Multimedia / 2005

An excerpt from Danny Yount's Sixteentwenty taken from IdN v12n6 "It's Playtime! -Making fun out of art". IdN used to included these amazing DVDs in their print issues full of extra content covering the very latest in the world of visual design. In this issue they decided to highlight some of Designer and Director Danny Yount's motion graphic and film work. Yount is an Emmy award winning designer who primarily creates Main Titles for film and television know for his work on Blade Runner 2049(2017), Iron Man(2008) and Six Feet Under(2001-2005). You can find a download of the entire DVD here. Music is Miss Kitten's flip of Drugs Work by System 01 from Electroclash: Massive 19 Track Mix from Miss Kitten(2002).

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Shynola / UNKLE / Guns Blazing (Drums of Death,Part 1) Music Video / Multimedia / 1998

UNKLE was Jame Lavelle's musical project founded in 1992 in conjunction with his legendary British record label Mo' Wax. While the label was only active for about a decade it left a lasting impact on British music especially Hip Hop, Trip Hop, and turntablism. While the the label was still active it collaborated with and helped bring graffiti artist Futura 2000 to prominence. Futura alongside Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack, collaborations with Nigo of Bape,Mark Gonzales,Mike Mills and Money Mark under the creative direction of Ben Drury helped grow the reputation of the label as being at the forefront of alternative hip hop culture in the UK. A massive part of this because of the hype of Lavelle's UNKLE whose debut full length album in 1998 Psyence Fiction was widely anticipated and hyped by music journalists, as it was viewed as a follow up the 1996's Endtroducing... by DJ Shadow, who had since joined Lavelle as a full time member of UNKLE. While the album was ultimately released to mixed reviews(Pitchfork gave it a 9.8/10 while Robert Christgau gave it a one-star honourable mention). it has gone on to be retroactively appreciated as a cult classic. Part of the promotion surrounding the album was the music video seen in this post by British directing team Shynola. It mixes various mediums although mostly sticks to animation and can be seen as a distilled pull of Mo'Wax's visual output up until that point. It has characters designed by Futura 2000 featured prominently throughout the video alongside heavily edited live footage of a model in what appears to very various BAPE camo jackets(Mo' Wax had previously released a double album complication in 1997 including a side compiled by BAPE founder Nigo). Another notable aspect of the video is a section seen around the 2 minute mark that features an animated sequence of the UNKLE wordmark reminiscent of The Designer's Republic mixed with Wildstyle graffiti. A twitter thread by artist ANTIREAL from 2020 points out a contemporary analog of this visual style in his own work and his primary influence DMAS3.

[visionofthefuture95]

Various Artists / IdN Pro / Iconography 2: Life / Multimedia / 2004

A selection of the motion graphic works included on IdN Pro's Iconography 2: Life(2004). The second volume in their series on icons explores the work of over 90 designers and how Icons are formed, created and manifest stating "At its most fundamental, the icon is a summation - either of a simple message, such as "No Smoking", or of a whole movement, era, and attitude."

In addition to 300+ pages of visual inspiration from some of the most Iconic graphic designers of the 2000s such as Meomi, Neubau, Andy Walker for Nike, and Stapelberg&Fritz the 2 book set included a CD-ROM full of design assets so users could immediately start creating their own work. As usual a copy of the CD-ROM content can be found here.

Music is the appropriately named Music(Evilnine (Punk Rocks) Mix) by Ils(2002) from the single of the same name on Adam Freeland's Marine Parade label. Speaking of, there is an interesting parallel between this track and the content of Iconography 2.: Life. At the time creative fields all over the Western world were producing a massive amount of anti-American imperialism themed work, of which a considerable amount appears within this book. While this track has no overt political themes Adam Freeland memorably mixed it with Saul Williams' Non In Our Name (There's also a Cold Cut remix of this track) to open his May 2003 BBC One Essential Mix. A set that also included remixes of Rage Against the Machine and Radiohead and was broadcast mere weeks before Radiohead's polemic against the war on terror, 2003's Hail to the Thief.

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designings / Gasbook / Patterns for Modernities /Adobe Director / 1998

In addition to being a showcase for the most cutting edge in motion graphics, macromedia flash, film, and design Gasbook often included royalty free design assets in their issues. Seen here are a series of 200 patterns in .eps and .jpg format displayed through the Adobe Director .exe included on the CD-ROM that came with Gasbook 5;Paradise. Often these issues would also include fonts,photos, and music to serve as starting point for would be designers who wanted to apply the inspiration Gasbook provided to their own work. Gasbook 5;Paradise can be found here for download. Music is Groovetube by Flipper's Guitar from Doctor Head's World Tower(1991).

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Shynola / Radiohead / Kid A Blips / Multimedia / 2000

In the 1990s and early 2000s Britain enjoyed a cultural resurgence, British music was amongst the best in world and was accompanied by groundbreaking visual works in part due to the relative strength of local infrastructure. Like Central Saint Martins today, in the 1990s other UAL schools were top of their fields as institutions like London College of Printing were producing students to enter into the burgeoning visual fields of art and design. Firms like The Designer's Republic(Warp Records), Farrow Design(Spiritualized, Pet Shop Boys), and Tomato(Underworld) were all intrinsically linked to the music industry and a massive part of their catalogue has gone on to define a generation of British electronic music. An equally notable although slighter lesser known design firm of the era is directing team Shynola. Their film for UNKLE's track Guns Blazing(Drums of Death, Pt.1)(1998) was a partial collaboration with graffiti artist Futura 2000 and Ben Drury(more on that film later) and propelled their career. About two years later Shynola directed a series of shorts,referred to as Blips for Radiohead's seminal, critically acclaimed album Kid A(2000). The blips served as promotional material and made the rounds through various art,television, digital and physical publication circuits. Each Blip featured short bits of music from the album accompanying a mix of film, motion graphics and animation. The compilation excerpt shown here was featured in Gasbook 10;Movement. An .ISO copy can be found here and the entire collection has been backed up on Youtube. You can read more about Shynola's body of work here.

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D-Fuse / Heller Enterprises / Secured by Design / Video / 2013

D-Fuse is an artistic collective from London,England founded in in the mid 1990s whose work encompasses multiple visual mediums. Their 2013 film Secured by Design is a typically English interpretation on the contemporary phenomena of being under constant surveillance. The name sarcastically draws on the English police imitative that claims to "improve the security of buildings and immediate surroundings" While perma-surveillance is hardly unique to the UK and England, London has a particularly strange relationship with cameras as they are one of the most recorded cities on earth with the average Londoner appearing on camera around 300 times per day. CCTV is so pervasive that Indie-Rock band Hard-Fi immortalized this cultural mainstay with their debut album Stars of CCTV(2005) that went on to win that years Mercury Music Prize and featured a vector image of a CCTV camera.

CCTV cameras also find themselves at the centre of multiple contemporary art pieces such as the ones outlined in this 2013 Joanne McNeil essay. That essay along with D-Fuse's film represent a kind of Millennial thinking from before the internet was "moderated". When there was some belief that large scale government interference could be prevented and electronic privacy could be secured and protected. With hindsight its easy to see that these were lofty and naive goals, perhaps then it is not surprising that 2013 was also the year Aaron Swartz was driven to suicide by the same bureaucratic state apparatus that constantly surveills everything today.



[visionofthefuture95]

Imaitoons / Gasbook / SPIDEAD / Animation / 1998

An excerpt of Imaitoons'(aka Imaitoonz) original animation series SPIDEAD(short for spiritually dead). Although the series is credited as a 1999 release on the artist's website this is a version found on Gasbook 5;Paradise released in 1998. This was around the same time Imaitoons was creating visual content for Nike,Sega, and Ken Ishii as well as a solo exhibition for BEAMS Tokyo where the SPIDEAD series grew from. SPIDEAD combined Imaitoons' illustrations alongside clothes,animation, sound-toy,typography, and manga to create a multi faceted media experience. You can read an interview with Imaitoons from 2000 that touches on his creative process behind the series here and watch the full video(although in lower quality) here. Gasbook 5;Paradise was the 5th installment in the original Gasbook series and much like it's predecessors it combined cutting edge multimedia content stored on CD-ROMS with unique and unusual packaging design. in this case Paradise came in a transparent shopping bag with 2 CDs, and various printed material including a sound-toy version of SPIDEAD. As usual there is a complete copy of Gasbook found here. Music is Loose Caboose(1995) by Electroliners a mid 90s cult breakbeat hit that was famously championed by Carl Cox.

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Walter Gorgosilits / Dextro.org / Video 80_b The Green Man 2/2 / Java / 2019

Walter Gorgosilits is an Austrian multimedia artist and designer who has dabbled in various mediums and visual research since at least 1994 where he started sharing it on his site Dextro.org. Dextro alongside Turux.org(Gorgosilits's explorations into interactive media from 1997-2001) were favourites of graphic designers and publications alike appearing in interviews and features with The Designer's Republic(2000), Designplex(2001),Designer's Workshop, +81(1998), and Idea Magazine(2001) amongst others.

While Turux is mostly a virtual museum now dextro is continually updated and hosts algorithmically generated video content on its Vimeo account which is where this clip was found. Music is Last Stand by Yashuhisa Watanabe from Senko no Ronde - Carpe Diem(2007)

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The Designer's Republic / Gasbook / Showreel / Macromedia Flash / 2000

Showreel of The Designer's Republic graphic design presented as a series of short motion graphic clips stitched together in one video for Gasbook 8;Futurevision. TDR also provided visual content for the accompanying book and T-shirt that came bundled with the issue which was based around various designer's viewpoints facing towards the future. You can find a digital copy of Futurevision here. Music is Loop 2 by Kenny Larkin off of Metaphor(1995) whose album artwork and design was handled by The Designer's Republic.

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onedotzero / Gasbook / ONEDOTZERO4.EXE / Macromedia Flash / 2001

Another flash program taken from Gasbook 10;Movement. This one was created as a mini showreel for design firm onedotzero however in somewhat unusual manner they embedded external work into the program such as a clip of a film by Koji Morimoto. This program makes use of 3-D models in an interactive digital gallery environment where users can interact with various films or follow an external link to onedotzero's own website which is similar to how Gasbook's earlier issues were created. It appears Gasbook decided to double up on content for this issue as they integrated these flash programs with the DVD video content that made up much of the later issues. Also intriguing about issue 10 was the launch. The issue was accompanied by a physical gallery hosted at the then recently opened Sendai Mediatheque in Sendai,Japan. The Mediatheque is a library designed by Toyo Ito and completed in 2001 although it first opened in August of 2000. However, more on that and Ito's work later. Music is Forever Ravers (ANNA's Raving in Space Mix) by Miss Kittin and ANNA off of Speicher 112(2019).