Rock & Roll

I'd like to show you the GMC Granite concept. This is sort of a landmark, in a way, because being a truck manufacturer, this will actually be GMC's first "car." Clearly, it's more of a "crossover" than a "car," but still something very new for them:

Click for larger view.
In charge of this project was Frank Saucedo, head of Advanced Design at GMC. That his name is easy to find is interesting in itself, considering that automobile design would seem to be a branch of the field particularly elusive to fame or glory, especially compared to something like Fashion, which is lousy with house-hold names.

They're calling this "Industrial Chic":

I suppose that's accurate enough, although it's actually an extremely vague description in the universe of vehicle design. I'm tempted to wonder if that doesn't pretty well describe every inspired design of a truck or sports car. Still, that's the way I would describe this: inspired. I'm especially into the Z-shaped line carved in and out of the profile. It gives the Granite a great stance and seems to allude to movement and speed, but with a sharpness and power. The front end is terribly bold but has such distinct character.

I really love the lines of the back end, too:

There's something about the junctions of truncated curving volumes that's decidedly pleasing and hip.

While the trickling down of design elements from concept vehicles to regular production is fairly easy to track, interiors seem strangely disconnected from the process. They always seem to look like this at the beginning:

Bold color combinations, usually including white or some shockingly obscure pale color, overly sculptural spaceship seats. The instrument panels seem to vacillate between big, chunky knobs and wheels and smoothed-over, almost imperceptible swaths of pads and screens.

In the end, our car interiors never really look like this. Certainly if someone in 1948 were shown a typical car interior from today, they'd be dumbfounded. But from about the mid-'70s onward, there hasn't really been any significant difference, stylistically speaking, at least not the way concept cars would have us expect. What we get, instead, are bland, monotone, most often neutral (if not ugly) colors. Having not looked too closely, I couldn't tell you one seat from another, if taken from their respective vehicles. Dashboards tend to be cluttered, sloppy, and lacking in any kind of stylistic cohesion. I understand that controls must be intuitive and easy to find while the driver concentrates on the road, but is it really that difficult to reconcile ergonomics, usability, beauty, and style?

What exactly are the designers of car interiors doing? Their ideas aren't making it into any usable product, for the most part. What happens to all these design elements? Do they specifically result from the predominantly temporary, showcase contingencies of creating a one-off concept model? Does the production machine send them into limbo like a random sock lost to the dryer? Or do they become modified out of recognizable existence by safety concerns or cost-effectiveness? Would such an interior scare off all but the urban 20-something-year-old demographic?

If that's the case, then why has the design of vehicle exteriors seen a progressive evolution? One might be tempted to wonder if the design of the outside and inside of our vehicles are two completely different animals. The exterior, the public face one projects to the world at large, while the interior we require to be more personal, comfortable, intimate. In other words, I might shave, get dressed up in a suit and tie, and go to a party, but at home I just want to put on my sweatpants and sit on the couch watching a DVD. It's possible, I suppose, that car consumers want a futuristic party on the outside, the impression they want to give others on the road. But on the inside, they don't really want to be in a space ship. They just want their living room.

©2010, Ryan Witte

Lost Architecture

In reading up a little on the fateful trip of Amelia Earhart, I starting looking around the minuscule little island where she'd hoped to make a refueling stop, Howland Island:


Quite a bit south and slightly east, in the middle of the Phoenix Islands, I discovered these:

Click that.
I'm sorry, but I find it extremely unlikely that two "structures," one seemingly a perfect square, the other a perfect rectangle, oriented in exactly the same direction, could be formed by natural causes. I Googled and Googled and Googled, and I could find absolutely nothing about these things at all, not even half-baked Lost-City-of-Atlantis-style mythological theories. Finally I just got so frustrated that I gave up. What are those things? If you ask me, they look very much like temples.

The Rockets' Red Glare

I'd like to talk about something a little unusual, but something with which I've been fascinated and curious for a while now. It's the language used by commercial catalogues to describe large grade fireworks. Aside from the Fourth of July displays sponsored by huge companies, it seems to be a singularly redneck pastime, and driving through states like Oklahoma, it was pretty remarkable how very many fireworks outlets there are as compared to anywhere else in the country. They're enormous warehouses with every imaginable combustible that if lit on fire could probably blow out a crater a mile wide.

Fireworks, the big ones anyway, are also fairly expensive. A somewhat impressive "cake," as they're called, can be as much as $200, for an event that lasts no more than about a minute and a half at the most.

Personally, the idea of setting off a dangerous explosive scares me to death, but I suppose that's part of the appeal: the adrenaline rush. What's interesting about the terminology used is that it's the exact language that might be used by someone who was enraptured by the art of warfare (such as it is). The Italian Futurists thought warfare was the ultimate art form, presumably because it was doing exactly what so many artists (like the Dadaists) were at the time, destroying the idea of a visual, art historical culture. Modernist architecture was doing the same thing.

Here's what F. T. Marinetti wrote in their manifesto in 1909:

We want to glorify war--the only cure for the world--militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman...We want to demolish museums and libraries...It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism.

Now, of course I find the misogyny utterly disgusting, and the implications this has of foretelling fascist states is a bit disturbing at best. But they were in their twenties, the most insufferably arrogant age group in any generation, and obviously inexperienced and naive, if not uneducated. Plus, Italy has long been a bastion of anti-feminism. It also makes some sense with the redneck connection.

It's also interesting to note our national anthem:

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

Every time it's heard, the beauty of warfare is being celebrated. It was a noble fight, to be sure, against an oppressive monarchy. But truly, it's no wonder so many young people think signing up to go off and murder innocent people in foreign lands is the best way to prove their patriotism.

As far as I'm concerned, Nature puts on the best shows, and she has in great abundance in recent years: thunderstorms. Spectacular, unpredictable, beautiful, exciting, scary (the thought always occurs to me when I'm sitting watching a storm blow in on my fire escape, which is metal of course, is this ladder up there to the roof the highest thing in the sky around here trying to attract a lightning bolt and fry me alive?). Thunder so loud it sets off car alarms. One of the things I love about Queens is the great expanse of the skyline. I can see storms in their totality here. I can watch storm systems approach over Manhattan and engulf my neighborhood with their fury. It's completely majestic.

I've decided to look at the language used to describe fireworks in terms of the metaphoric categories employed, I think it's somewhat telling. Most of these are pooled from the site for Phantom, a major distributor to be sure, and a few others.

Culture, Symbolic

Cross, Latin Cross

Crossette (technically an architectural term, but used predominantly to refer to fireworks)

Diamond

Heart

Culture, Technology

Helicopter

Plane

Rocket

Strobe, Strobelight

UFO

Culture, Textiles/ Adornments

Bowtie

Brocade

Cincture

Crown

Diadem

Fan

Fluff

Glitter

Kamuro (a boy's style of haircut)

Ring

Culture, Warfare, Artillery

Battery

Bomb

Machine Gun

Mine

Missile

Mortar

Pistol

Revolver

Shell

Culture, Warfare, Tactical

Barrage

Battle

Bombardment

Parachute

Report

Salute

Shot

Volley

Nature, Astronomical

Comet, Comet Tail

Star

Nature, Biology, Fauna

Head

Tail

Mythological

Dragon, Dragon Egg

Real

Bee, Swarm

Fish, Flying Fish, Liquid Fish

Frog, Tadpole

Horse, Horse Tail

Oyster, Pearl

Peacock

Serpent

Spider

Swallow

Tiger, Tiger Tail

Nature, Biology, Flora

Branch

Leaf, Falling Leaf

Flowers, Bouquet

Chrysanthemum

Dahlia

Lotus

Peony
Popcorn
Trees

Palm Tree, Palm, Ti, Coconut

Pine, Snow Pine

Willow

Nature, Meteorology

Rain, Time(d) Rain

Rainbow

Snowflake

Storm, Thunderstorm

Thunder

Nature, Optics, Colors

White, Silver, Platinum (Titanium, Aluminum)

Red (Strontium, Lithium), Pink

Orange, Neon Orange (Calcium)

Yellow, Primrose, Lemon (Sodium), Gold, Golden (Charcoal, Iron)

Green (Barium)

Blue, Sea-Blue (Copper)

Purple (Potassium), Violet (Rubidium)

Nature, Optics, Qualities

Flare

Kaleidoscope

Sparkle

Twinkle

Nature, Physics/ Dynamics

Flitter

Shuttle

Spark

Spin

Spray

Waterfall

Wave

Whirl

Here are a few of the luscious descriptions of the "repeaters" and "fountains." The names of these products are also interesting in their own right.

"Da Bomb"
The nine mega-bursts, including: gold willow to red; gold willow to green; silver twinkling willow to green; brocade to crackle; green to crackle; gold willow--green glitter; primrose-silver glitter; red dahlia--silver chrysanthemums; and silver peony to red.

"Komodo 3000 Repeater"

(Click links for video) Plenty of gold comets, mixed in with some silver and blue peonies with beautiful bursts of red, green, and silver heads, as well as blue stars and flying fish.

"Orbiters Launch Sequence"
The first twenty shots alternate between high-breaking red and green palm trees, crackle breaks, and multi-color chrysanthemums. The final two shots are spinning shots that fly screaming with a high pitch whistle out of the center of the cake, with big breaks of red and green.

"Supercell Storm"
...the Supercell Storm has a spectacular whirling-firing pattern that has falling leaves, color comets, and an awesome willow finale. Several shots of crackle to multi-color breaks with fast-paced crackling willow finale that fills the sky.

And last but not least:
"Pyro Pulverizer"
...professionally designed effects featuring brocade, crackles, fish, and red chrysanthemums. The first five shots are fired in sequence, ending in large gold willow breaks sparkling along their branches as they spread out. The next five shots end in green breaks with crackle. The next five are all-crackle breaks. The next group of five ends in a mixture of green stars, silver flying fish, and crackle. Finally, three large shots are fired all at once with bright silver comets that end in a nice large dahlia breaks of red stars with silver trails.

One thing I find quite interesting is that these fireworks displays can be subject to copyright. But it's almost baffling to consider the chemistry that goes into one of these. The designer has to pack all the right explosives and in the right measure into one box. He or she controls how high into the air it will go, in what direction, whether it will rise with a streak or invisibly, whether or not it will make noise and if so, how loud. Then when it gets to the right point in the sky, what it will do, how it will explode and how big the explosion will be, what color(s) it will be, whether it will crackle at the end or be "fishy." And that's just one shot, these "repeaters" can have forty of them in one box which, ideally, are timed out in just such a way that they combine in pleasing patterns in the night sky.

When you put all this together, especially if we want to talk about a big city Fourth of July display, I don't think an analogy to composing symphonic music is that difficult to pick out. Without question there is choreography to this. I'd like to suggest that for Independence Day coming up this weekend, we each pause for a moment, in between our "oohhs," "aahhs," and "wooows" to consider the fireworks displays for their aesthetic qualities. At the very least, the no doubt huge teams of people risking their lives lighting fires on a barge full of, essentially, bombs deserve that much.

©2010, Ryan Witte