Design and the Elastic Mind

Note: Many of the external links in this post go to a Flash-authored site. Completely annoying, yes, but the content is worth checking out. I promise.

Wow. I desperately, desperately want to check out this exhibition at MoMA.

Design and the Elastic Mind

It runs until May 12th. I've never been to New York City, much less the Museum of Modern Art. But I am going to try to make this happen. Especially after reading this review of the exhibit over at Core 77.

Where my New York people at?!

Despite my enthusiasm, some of the works featured in this exhibition freak me out. There are some prototypes of concepts that just don't sit well with me, but that I'd love to see nonetheless. Granted, the imaginings that make me nervous are merely that-- imaginings. If there is one thing I appreciate in life, it's imagination. However, were something like RFID tagging on human beings ever to become a mandated reality, I'd be one of the first people heading off to the hills to live in a cave. Nonetheless, I love that someone has the type gray matter in his or her head to envision and translate into something tangible such an idea.

That said, I fear visualizing an (even more) Orwellian future. Although not a tinfoil hat kind of girl, I am very private. Despite this public-facing blog, despite my varied online activity, I am reluctant to reveal too much of myself to anyone other than people whom I feel close to and have a strong sense of. Which is such a contradiction, given that I can be found on Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, here, my personal website (if I ever get around to re-designing and re-launching it) but these accounts aren't so much a social thing for me as they are my attempt to keep ahead of the curve as it applies to my career. Yes, there is an interpersonal aspect of social networking and folksonomy-driven sites that I enjoy... I have friends and family all over the country that I love to keep in touch with. I like to know what people I care about are up to. But what I really get from these various accounts and interactions is simple: Knowledge. Ideas. Collaboration. The banter I engage in and follow with co-workers and other webby-type people on Twitter goes much further than a welcome diversion on a stressful work day. My profile on Colour Lovers isn't to make color buddies, but to stay abreast of color trends and to store and create palettes for future use in my designs. The Internet is an amazing resource, and as I gradually overcome my reluctance to make myself present "out there" the more I benefit professionally.

Because of these things, the Harvesting the Internet segment of the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition is what interests me most. The exhibition's website shows several Google Earth mashups, which thrills me to no end. About two years ago I was working on the fourth redesign of alabama.gov. During this time, I teamed up with our very talented and motivated lead developer, Robert. The goal was to create an interactive mapping segment of the portal with limited resources available to us. We didn't have a dedicated GIS or mapping agency to work with, so we had to be creative. Robert found a way to work with Google's API (before they openly made such an API publicly available) to sort of reverse-engineer Google's mapping features to fit our needs. I then skinned it and incorporated it into the overall site design. If I am not mistaken, alabama.gov was the first state government web portal to integrate Google maps into the site. Technically not a mashup in that whole Web 2.0 sense of the word, it's something we needed to innovate for ourselves and I am very proud of that. alabama.gov's mapping feature allows visitors to the site to locate everything from libraries to blood donation centers to locations of Alabama's 'moon trees' in one spot. To see similar and more sophisticated web applications being showcased in an exhibition at MoMA thrills me to no end.

But, I'm a design geek like that.

A design geek who shudders at the thought of paper as we know it being phased out for digital versions, but who (in her dreams) would absolutely love a 3-D printer so that she can design and print out her own custom fruit bowl, for the real!

Wanna go, wanna go, wanna go...