Past Imperfect

I have been trying to understand my obsession with my LENSBABY, (a lens that distorts images leaving only a narrow window of focus.) After seeing the Blow Away vase introduced by Front Design at the Milan Furniture Fair, I am finally beginning to figure it out. Perfection without artistry is now easy to achieve with even the simplest Point and Shoot camera. The LENSBABY takes us back to pinhole camera days with almost no automatic controls. (Yes, you can control the exposure time, and you do get instant feedback with a digital camera- after all we are not Luddites.)

Front gave a traditional Royal Delft design a simulated gust of wind to create the Blow Away vase for Moooi. It looks like a vase that slumped in the kiln and the effect is similar to the out-of-focus range in LensBaby photographs. Perfection is now easy, creativity is the new capital. (According to Daniel Pink's "Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future.") As artists and designers, we are all trying to play the Wizard, make a connection to the past and put heart into today's soulless and "perfect" technology.

This trend is taking hold quickly, HOW - the graphic arts magazine focused on "Hands-on guide to creativity" this month - literally taking its readers back to such imperfect and almost forgotten tools as screen printing, stencils and block printing to "jump-start" their creativity when their return to the computer.