Subject: Viridian Note 00011: Viridian Mascot Key concepts: Viridian mascot; design contest Attention Conservation Notice: A Viridian design contest is proposed. If you choose to take part, it may soak up considerable attention and even physical labor. Viridian Notes 1-10 have established our basic Viridian interests. We will remain preoccupied with general design principles, near-term trend-spotting, and specific critical assessment of artifacts in the arts/technology/sciences. We want to collate our findings in some coherent statement for January 3, 2000. But mere words in a row can't be the be-all and end- all of a design movement. We also need to design. Mailing lists are well-designed for zapping sermons. But the net's wiring lacks tensile strength. It's hard to tug the net so deftly that people will stand up in response, leave their monitors, and do something creative. Especially when they're not being paid. This is an interesting challenge in net-culture. It is no doubt fraught with all manner of unseen potholes and troubling downsides. But we must start somewhere. So, we will start small. Very small. Microscopic, even. The first Viridian design project is a graphic logo, the first official portrait of our own lovable Viridian mascot: "Big Mike, the Viridian Bug." Big Mike is a micro-organism, probably a decay and recycling agent of some kind, who has the word "viridian" written across his back. "Big Mike" is meant to feature on Viridian coffee- cups, mouse-pads, websites, aristo-digital jewelled cuff- links, teenage cyber-vandal adhesive stickers, and so on. While we don't plan to go directly into multinational manufacturing, we Viridians can manage some modest, nonprofit, hobbyist efforts along this line. It's not for nothing that the Viridian list emanates from fringeware.com, a retail outlet for cyber-slacker gizmos and tchatchkes. REASONS WHY "BIG MIKE" IS NOT VIRIDIAN A designed logo is a piece of intellectual property, meant for purposes of corporate identity. There is something inherently troublesome and contradictory in using a logo in a not-for-profit, non-incorporated, private context. Especially when you have no intention of making a profit through use of the logo, and *no intention whatosever of ever paying its creator any royalties for the use of the image,* no matter how many times it gets used or what weird places it ends up in. Ever since the human race first discovered micro-organisms through improved scientific sensors, we have been carefully trained to regard them as dangerous, unglamorous and icky. Though they are very responsive and do a lot of highly sophisticated "processing," microbes aren't real big on thought processes of any kind. Given the chance, certain species of microbes have repeatedly wreaked unparalleled genocidal havoc. Microbes sadly lack a dashing Pope-Emperor figure. REASONS WHY "BIG MIKE" IS VIRIDIAN Cloned sheep may grab all the headlines, but the real workhorses of the coming biorevolution will probably be genetically warped microbes. A microbe is an invisible entity made visible through sensor technology. Microbes do most of the heavy lifting in the ecosystem. Microbes are the world's most senior form of life, but they don't get old. They just keep refreshing themselves by splitting in half. Microbes seem to enjoy swapping packets of genetic information among themselves, rarely bothering to undergo any of the tiresome organizational formalities of actual sex. When times are right, microbes seethe forth suddenly in untold numbers and transform everything they touch. When that's over, they dry up and go to sleep, practicing "Viridian inactivism" for centuries on end. Microbes don't require budgets. Microbes travel freely on dust specks and patches of damp, and are notoriously indifferent to national borders, religion, ethnic background, language barriers and other annoyances. As for gender, microbes don't have any. Human beings are seething with large, variegated microbe populations inside and out, and they strongly effect our metabolism and our daily lives whether we realize it or not. Microbes "Eat What They Kill" and are largely responsible for the fact that "There Is No One So Green As the Dead." Microbes spin out a lot of variants, make repeated iterative mistakes, and evolve rapidly in response to environmental challenges. Genetically engineered microbes are transorganic, biomorphic and their industrial use requires one to datamine nature. Germs are the glamorous coming thing in the way-new, gooey, squishy, seething, wriggling, wetware revolution. ******************************* "Big Mike's" Design Parameters ******************************* Big Mike has a flat black and white 2-D version, suitable for ink and paper, and a color 3-D version suitable for websites and video. You can design either or both. Big Mike's transorganic body is shaped like a 2-D Piet Hein "superellipse," or, alternately, a 3-D Piet Hein "superegg." Piet Hein (1905-1996) was a Danish poet, mathematician, urban planner and furniture designer. One of these days I will get around to explaining why this dead Danish guy is such an inspiring 21st-century figure, but in the meantime, just take it on faith. If you've never seen a "superellipse," look at these web addresses. They have some lovely photos of Piet Hein's Danish-Viridian "superellipse" designs. www.unique-gaver.dk/side42.html www.moebler.dk/moebelhuset/images/Fritz_set_m.jpg www.moebler.dk/moebelhuset/images/brdra_1.jpg www.svenssons.se/klasssiker/27.htm Here for good measure is some of Hein's aphoristic guru- style poetry, a source of light in the dark times of the Nazi occupation: home4.inet.tele.dk/tuborg/grooks.htm Big Mike's mathematically egg-shaped body is surrounded by cilia. Cilia are those little waving oars and tendrils that stick out of certain protozoa. There may be a certain graphic influence here from the Belle Epoque Art Nouveau whiplash-line. Big Mike's body is spotted all over with little bumps or vacuoles. These bumps are the same size and shape as the three dots on the dotted i's in the lower-case word "viridian," which Big Mike bears lengthwise on his/her/its back. The word "viridian" starts near Big Mike's nonexistent "head," and since he is a "movement" logo, Big Mike is depicted in motion, apparently to the viewer's left. Big Mike has a cheerful, cartoonish, bouncy, animated quality. In his nonexistent heart, Big Mike probably has some of the European joie de vivre of the similarly monstrous, yet somehow cute and appealing, Michelin Man. ************************* The Graphic Requirements ************************* You can create an image of Big Mike the Viridian Bug by any means, digital or analog, that you consider necessary. To enter the contest, you must place your image of Big Mike on some web server that the rest of us can access. Then tell me where you have put it, and I will announce its location to the list. Do not email me a graphic enclosure. I don't want them. The list moderator is not going to be archiving graphic images. The Pope Emperor has got his papal hands full with the Notes, the texts, the correspondence, the interviews, the semi-functional Viridian ranking system, and the sign-ups and bounces. To enter, you have to put Big Mike up onto the Web yourself, and you must see to it that the image remains accessible to everyone on the list, at least until the contest ends. If you want to place Big Mike with your other graphic work on your website, commercial or otherwise, that's fine with us. We don't mind a bit if you explain something to us about your other work. If you create an image of Big Mike and display it for the attention of other Viridians, you will receive a star >*<. If you create the most innately Viridian version of Big Mike, you will receive the contest's award. Your award will be one copy of the highly Viridian-relevant book DESIGNING MODERNITY: THE ARTS OF REFORM AND PERSUASION 1885-1945, selections from the Wolfsonian design museum, edited by Wendy Kaplan, Thames and Hudson Press, 1995. This 352-page, lavishly illustrated, glossy coffee-table book will look swell on your Danish Piet Hein superelliptical coffee-table. (Being an impulsive volunteer-type, you will probably buy a Piet Hein table once you have seen what they look like). This book will be mailed to you, at the moderator's expense, to any site on the planet reachable by a snailmail postal service. In the case of a tie, I will send two books. We are particularly eager to see graphic work by Viridians whose first language is not English. Here is your chance to shatter the language barrier, and make your true talents known to your many fellow Viridians (shocking numbers of whom are influential journalists). Yes, I am talking to you, Russians. Don't worry; if a Russian artist somehow wins this bug-designing contest, I will get you this DESIGNING MODERNITY book, even if I have to fetch it over there in a string bag. The final deadline for Big Mike submissions is one month from today. I look forward to hearing from you and seeing your efforts. Good luck! Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com)