ashtary design

I don’t have an i-Pod (I know I must be one of the last people on Earth… but I have never felt really safe totally shutting out the world around me), but I still play most of my music on my computer. I love finding new ways to combine my music such as alphabetically or by play count. My new favorite is to choose a random word. In the case of this list, I chose “there” and look at this amazing set:

I’ll Take You There, Staple Singers, City In The Sky
Harry Connick Jr. – With Imagination (I’ll Get There), Harry Connick, Jr., Blue Light Red Light
Who’s There?, Guru, Streetsoul
Reach Out I´ll Be There, The Four Tops, Soul ! – The Very Best Of Motown CD3
There She Goes Again, The Velvet Underground & Nico
Monday, Wilco, Being There
There Is A God, Staple Singers, City In The Sky
Harry Connick Jr. – Blue Light Red Light (Someone’s There), Harry Connick, Jr., Blue Light Red Light
There’s More to Life Than This, Björk, Debut
Smithereens, Annie Lennox, Songs of Mass Destruction
Without Love (There’s Nothing), Tom Jones, TOM JONES
If There Is A Hell Bellow, We’re All Going To Go, Lou Donaldson, Say It Loud !
There Will Never Ever Be Another You, Chet Baker, The Best Of Chet Baker Sings
I Saw Her Standing There, Beatles, Please Please Me
Kodachrome, Paul Simon, There goes Rhymin´ Simon
There Will Never Be Another You, Count Basie And Joe Williams, The Greatest!! Count Basie Plays, Joe Williams Sings Standards
There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart), Eurythmics, Greatest Hits [Europe]

Tori is moderating a series of lectures for the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. The blog for the lectures is at this link, if you care to join our conversation. You can read about the lecture topics here. You might ask yourself why this information is not available on the Rietveld’s own site? Well, this is the topic of my first rant. I have discovered that Dutch art and design sites are about as hard to link to as specific scenes in movies or tv shows. They are more concerned with accurate pixel placement than conversation. It’s been frustrating for me to link to projects and information because they are hidden in flash sites that have, you guessed it, exactly one url.

So much of the Dutch art and culture internet presence is a long and controlled lecture that is at times lovely and fascinating but keeps its distance from us and what we might want to say about it. Isn’t it time for a change? I ask you…