Opening for One from Topher McCulloch on Vimeo.

A walkthrough of the solo exhibition OPENING FOR ONE on the night of July 29th, 2010. Part of the Make Something Awful Every Day project.

Olivetti poster designed by Giovanni Pintori, 1949. 28 in. x 20 in. Collection SFMOMA.

Before Steve Jobs was a glint in his father’s eye, Olivetti was elevating the design aesthetics of the business machine world through product design and advertising rooted in the Bauhaus and vetted in Italy.

Olivetti placed great importance on its design.

[A] preoccupation with design developed into a comprehensive corporate philosophy, which embraced everything from the shape of a space bar to the color scheme for an advertising poster.

—Jonathan Martin, International Directory of Company Histories

Olivetti’s design aesthetic went beyond its products and advertising, as the company also hired notable architects like Le Corbusier to design its offices and factories. Notable artists, designers and architects contributed in-house to Olivetti’s design brain trust, including Giovanni Pintori and Ettore Sottsass. Sottsass oversaw industrial design for Olivetti’s Elea 9003, Italy’s first mainframe computer, which incidentally predated IBM’s first transistorized computer. Sottsass also designed the Olivetti Valentine. The Valentine was a bright red plastic portable typewriter, which became more of a fashion accessory than a business tool, entering Olivetti in the popular culture.

Olivetti Valentine (1969) designed by Marcello Nizzoli and Ettore Sottsass. Image from Wikipedia.

Olivetti’s cutting edge design remains timeless, while the competition look ridiculously quaint. Good design that navigates around current trends and instead bases itself on solid, aesthetic principles will endure.  A 2008 Italian advertisement for Apple’s iPhone 3G name dropped company founder Camillo Olivetti in the phone’s contact list. Don’t be surprised if he doesn’t answer though, since he’s been dead since 1943. His company’s design legacy, however, lives on.

Inspired by the internet, I’ve started making a point of looking for closely sequential photos at thrift and antique stores. The above is from my first find.

I think gifs are really able to bring life to old photographs.

This is my legacy, as told by the Duluth News Tribune.

“young Duluth painter Topher McCulloch’s funny gender-interrogating images”

Awesome.

* No captions. It must be like we’re speaking with images and we have to interpret your visual language just like we have to interpret your words.

* They must ALREADY be on your hard drive – no googling or flickr! They have to have been saved to your folders sometime in the past. They must be something you’ve saved there because it resonated with you for some reason.

* You do NOT have to answer any questions about any of your pictures if you don’t want to. You can make them as mysterious as you like. Or you can explain them away as much as you like.