Modernism + Landscape = Radical Simplicity

This post is very simple. And sometimes seemingly simple things can be made very complex. That is why the concept of Desert Signal is simple. Bringing Bauhaus design principles to West Texas landscapes. We will certainly explore other things than landscapes in the very near future. For now, it is a place to get started and not make things over complicated. Including the art.

So for the unaware of what Bauhaus is and was, there is a great video that breaks it all down in 1 hour. It’s called Bauhaus 100: A BBC Documentary. It’s a BBC doc which is all you need to know for quality information and perspectives on any documentary. If you are curious about Desert Signal, this is one to watch. In fact, Series 2 happened in 1/2 a day after watching it. As of this moment, there is more to do for Series two, but the lions share of the work is visible now.

Let’s leave it at that.

the power of scale

Funny thing about space. All spaces make us feel things. Small spaces can feel cramped or even claustrophobic. Almost like we don’t fit in that space because we don’t have enough space to be. Where as large spaces can make us feel so small. There is more than enough room for us to be and then some. In fact, there is so much space that it creates a new problem: the unknown.

Out in the great expanse of the open plains, the desert or mountains, it can be hard to find a spot that fits right, or feels right. The work we do tries to play on that scale that provides time to wander. The bigger the better the emphasis of the piece to the relationship of the viewer. It makes me think about kids. For me, when I was a kid the world was massive. Endless days exploring the woods, creeks and valleys in my area. For kids growing up in communities of West Texas, I wonder how they feel and what they think about their space around them. For those who have not been to West Texas, the landscape is massive. It’s an open, undulating terrain that seems to run on and on forever. And the wind will tell you so as there is so much space that there is room for even the wind to run wild.

Marfa, Texas is a unique community that has largely become an area whose main industry is art, and the industry that is creative expression. Known the world over for this fact and it also influences the next generation of ideas for what they can do with their own time. Learning a craft and how to express themselves in different ways than what we have traditionally understood as work. Which brings me to my point about this entry.

In Marfa, there is an elementary school school named, The Marfa Independent School District. I encourage you to check it out as in this town of 1,649 residents, a part of the curriculum is teaching art to young minds and the power of self-expression. Something that is being strip-mined from children in bigger communities all over America. This is not news. And we are seeing the results of a generation of people who are raised by social media. The consumption of what other people do and not feeling empowered. This is not a call for the end of social media. There are attributes to it obviously. I will stop this idea here, because it takes me away from my point.

At that point, I have a thought about providing an opportunity for students at Marfa ISD to install a mural at their school. A piece that they work on, from conception to execution. Placed on an exterior wall these students can return to their school and see what the next class is up to. No appointment is necessary. As of this moment, I don’t know how to even start this process. The core idea is that this exterior wall is a legacy piece and an outcoming piece that gives these young people a place where they put a mark on the land that sometimes can feel too big to know how to navigate.

And this goes for any school. Let’s keep this idea moving and how we can bring it to life. You can contact me, Tony Frusciante, at Desert Signal if you are interested in helping this idea become realized. info@desertsignal.art

A closer look into things.

Have you seen the movie Giant? It was filmed in 1956, so unless you are a generation older or a fan of Cinema, you may not have. As a part of researching and developing Desert Signal, I decided to rent this movie. It’s an epic feature that was filmed in Marfa and featured Rock Hudson, Liz Taylor, and it was also the last film James Dean made. Certainly a masterpiece of filmaking and a story that takes on very nuanced stories about life. The kind of film of depth that we don’t see to frequently these days.

This movie had such an impact on West Texas and Marfa, that I decided to re-examine the brand for Desert Signal. What I arrived at was an identity that is more rooted in the history of the region, but also pays homage to two things. 1. the titles for the movie, and 2. the lore and mystery to the “Marfa Lights” to which the region is known for. That’s this thing with design projects is that they are an expedition of sorts. A survey of the past, present, and an interpretation of the future. We live in a age of generic branding for everything due to reasons that are not artful or have anything to do with a brand’s concept. It’s all paved in reasons now for website constraints, and other soul-less over-thinking.

A pivitoal moment in the movie Giant, James Dean’s character, Jett Rink, is proposed a critical choice to make. He decides to forego the easy buy out and cultivate a small piece of land that changes the course of his life. It’s that cultivation. That work. That time put into something that helps us all drill for as long as it takes until the payoff surfaces. Like anything in life, mind how you handle it, or it will handle you.

No Sound But Light

What was the last road trip you were on?

It could have been two weeks ago on a drive from Austin to Dallas. Or two hours ago to make a run to the HEB. Road-tripping is the great American adventure. Written famously by Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson, to name just a few. And it’s a learned behavior that goes all the way down to the core of our behavior. Lewis & Clark and thousands of other American settlers traveled West. Their trips did not include highway exists for bathroom breaks, or counting license plates from other states. From what I have heard, the early American pioneers faced a different set of challenges than estimating if the gas in the car will last 40 miles when the “get gas” light has already been on for 15 minutes.

However, the shared experience that modern road trippers and historical ones share in common is the silence of the open landscape. It takes work to get to it sometimes, and you certainly need to stop and be in it. The state of Texas has plenty of room for these kinds of moments. Great movies like Blood Simple, Urban Cowboy, Paris Texas or The Wild Bunch capture these moments of great expanse with the air to let the vision breathe.

Maybe on that next grocery run, take the long way around. Take the back road. Roll down the window and see if you can find that spot of landscape that captures that open land feeling. And if not of open land, maybe just silence. Those still and quiet places can happen anywhere.

Signal Horizon

Aaaannnnnd, Action!

That’s what a director says to set into motion the plan for each element of a scene. It’s also how this project, Desert Signal, got started. A choice to take action.

The idea of this blog is to pull back the curtain of a process. How do ideas start, and where do they go? We will get into all of that here over time to help frame what this work is, what it’s about, and why it’s fun to put it together. So let’s get into it.

Two weeks ago I watched a movie called The Brutalist. It was a pretty good movie. The story of an immigrant man who brought with him to America, an education from the Bauhaus School of Design in Germany. There are a lot of moments in this film, which I will not get into here. But, there was a concept that was so fundamental it became the lead character's superpower. The concept was applying a new perspective. In this movie’s case, it was a new sense of design and clarity to architecture that had not been seen before.

After watching this movie, I appreciated it, but did not think of it after that… consciously.

Jump ahead in time. Summer is now officially started. Memorial weekend has just past and for me, that is the best time to explore America. As a younger man, I drove my cars all over the Western part of the United States. And eventually around the Eastern. Now, living in Texas, this is a great state to get out and find time. Small towns exist in a different time and run at a different speed. West Texas has several of these types of towns. Marfa, Alpine, Terlingua, and Marathon to name a few.

Sparse landscapes that frame the Big Bend National Park. What if we create images of West Texas and apply Geometric simplification to them? Focus on colors. Focus on Form. Focus on the simple shapes that frame the landscape.

Cut ahead to this past weekend and I was recalling the time I stayed I Marfa, Texas as I was on a drive across the country. Then through a google search in looking into the town, it came up that the Joel and Eathn Cohen brother’s film, No Country for Old Men, was filmed in Marfa. A great movie and interestingly, one of the only movies filmed in Marfa. If you don’t know about the art community that exists in Marfa, you may be interested to learn more about it here.

This is how creativity starts. Find influences and create something new from those influences. Pro tip: Seek out the best people to gain influence from.