LETTER no. 56Week no.8: Zoom Out. WednesdayDesign 101 MOOC, Abadir for iversity

Greetings Greetings from Jerusalem, Isreal,

Here we are at the point of departure for todays walk. A stroll upon the landscapes of a mappa mundi...

This mappa mundi, is a special map composed of 30 goatskins.

To go around our special map, we asked Francesco Careri (aka Piccio, one of the founders of Stalker group in Rome), to be our guide.

So, we took his Walkscapes: Walking as an aesthetic practice and we got ourselves going:

Walkscapes deals with strolling as an architecture of landscape. Walking as an autonomous form of art, a primary act in the symbolic transformation of the territory, an aesthetic instrument of knowledge and a physical transformation of the negotiated space, which is converted into an urban intervention.

From primitive nomadism to Dada and Surrealism, from the Lettrist to the Situationist International, and from Minimalism to Land Art, this book narrates the perception of landscape through a history of the traversed city.

Question of the day: Life is a journey, not a destination. Did you get it? John Brinck Jacksons quote says it pretty nicely, Roads no longer merely lead to places, they are places.

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Week 08

Sunday

Homework no. 56Our zooming-out week has reached its peak.

You spent the week going around, today, youll catch up, and prepare yourself for a week of festivities (assuming you are Christian or Consumerist or both).

What will I learn today? Well, the things weve learned during the week!

Today, we linkind to Careris Walkscapes to provide you a conceptual frame to your walks and strolls.

Contemporary design is to do a lot of odd activities for the pleasure of it. Odd, but with some threads to guide you, some kind of general horizon to move along. We trigger, give you the references, but the meaning has to come from your side...

Why do we do this? To share some of the things we love the most. Sometimes we link you to books or pirated pdfs. Some other times we refer to smart people we know and respect.

We are adding complexity to Design 101s network of meaning. Its a step by step process. Adding complexity and meaning. Not too much, not too little.

Something to remember: Whenever in doubt, go for a walk.It looks like a very simple answer for fixing things...

but it actually works very well... (it works well, because it is extremely simple...).

Further inspirationOn our stamp, we have Ulysses, one of those chaps who understood quite early-on the values of going around without a specific reason.

What to say, we like Mr. Ulysses very much!

As our printed object, we have a Luopan chinese compass.

A nice reference for you: Will Self - Obsessed with Walking.

The great perambulator muses on his walking obsession and the fascinating concept of psychogeography.

And now...We were writing todays letter when we received our weekly Brain Picking shipment. If you dont know about it, take a look at it. Its good stuff.

On the same wavelength as Design 101...

And finally, some maps from our collection: NYC subway mapsA nice historical map collection Some magnificent maps Radical Cartographys website (nice stuff here) A nice idea (to have a hand drawn map association...)A classic: Visual ComplexitiesGOOD Transparencies Archive (maps and infographics sometimes go together...)

And finally, some bits of typography...

Design 101. A How-To.We know we have some late-comers, here are a few instructions on how the whole thing functions...

A typical Design 101 day:

We send you an email around 9 in the morning (Berlin time) with the link to our daily unit + some news, updates, cool Design 101 things we found etc.etc.

Note: you can find all of our previous emails in the Announcements section of Design 101 on iversity.

Once you land on the units page, you find our shipment (which consists of a video-postcard + a letter). You watch the video, read our letter, get to work and complete the assignment (or relax if its a weekend day). For even more fun, you can always refer to the Design 101 encyclopedia, which is updated every week.

Dont forget to take part in the conversations of the Discussions forum!

Now, going beyond the iversity platform, we have setup other places for us to meet and spread things we do.

On Facebook:the Design 101 page: to follow whats going on (in general terms)the Design 101 Exercises page: to check out picks (things that fascinate us the most)the Design 101 Arena group: to post your pictures, share your thoughts, emotions, references, lalala (as a complement to the discussions happening on the platform).

On Twitter,@design1o1: to follow whats going on + discuss with each other.#design1o1: to connect us all under a same hashtag.

On YouTube:the Design 101 channel: to view + share our video postcards (which is not possible to do from the iversity platform)

On Instagram:#design1o1: to connect us all under a same hashtag.

Regarding the hashtag, make sure to use #design1o1 with an o and not a 0...

:-)

PS Uploading your homework to the iversity platform is very important in terms of archiving. It is the only way we can collect all the things we do in one same place. Once the course ends, it might turn out to be reorganized into a wonderful book and/or exhibition

Ulysses

Luopan compass

Todays postcard

The Ebstorf Map