coffee

today i had a highly stimulating conversation with rach over coffee. always over a cup of coffee. for her, it was an ice latte, and for myself, i always get the normal $2.50 coffee at provence bakery (UCC coffee - good stuff).
she was telling me about her driving instructor (as an example of one person she knows who knows how to keep it completely real/raw) and how the other day during driving lesson, she (the driving instructor) farted really loudly in the car and didn't even laugh.
if i were the driving instructor, i'd be so embarassed, i'd have to at least laugh it off or something. its funny how there are so many invisible rules when it comes to associating with people. so the less rules you know, the less you judge others, and the less you care about others judging you. its probably quite a nice place to be in.
anyway, that actually wasn't the stimulating part of our conversation.
but we realised that every cup of coffee can be a start of something big.
one of the questions that stood out to us was, what movement are we a part of now? and will we be part of a 'next movement.' there was the modern era that came and went before our time, and then the post-modern. which we are kinda in right now... but what's next. (in the context of design and art.) the industrial revolution brought about mass production which brought a huge change to art/design's identity, or purpose. mass production brought about a huge complacency upon mankind i believe, which has affected the existence of art quite significantly... here's a paragraph taken from a book we're reading right now (Design as Art by Bruno Munari)

"When we give a place of honor in the drawing-room to an ancient Etruscan vase which we consider beautiful, well proportioned and made with precision and economy, we must also remember that the vase once had an extremely common use. Most probably it was used for cooking-oil. It was made by a designer of those times, when art and life went hand-in-hand and there was no such thing as a work of art to look at and just any old thing to use."

but now we have plastic bottles (with no sense of aesthetics) to store oil. it has its function, and it probably did require some creativity to come up with the use of plastic in this way and shape. but its quite evident that we see less and less 'beauty' and 'aesthetics' in non-exclusive, public places now.
the thing is, although art and design, and even the definition of beauty, seems to be ever-changing, there is definitely a constant, a standard that exists for all 3.
what is it?
what is art?
what is beauty?

the sky is always changing, never the same -
but will always remain a sky.