Steve Martin on dead rooms

Huge, unfunny barns

An oversized room is a killer for every event, as I have written before.

In an excellent and fascinating article in February's Smithsonian Magazine, über-comic Steve Martin makes the same observation:

"I got a welcome job in 1971 with Ann-Margret, five weeks opening the show for her at the International Hilton in Vegas, a huge, unfunny barn with sculptured pink cherubs hanging from the corners of the proscenium.

Laughter in these poorly designed places rose a few feet into the air and dissipated like steam, always giving me the feeling I was bombing*."

Remember if you are planning an event - always choose your room one size too small...

Photo from stevemartin.com

*If you are unfamiliar with the term, "bombing" is comic-speke
for completely failing to amuse an audience. It's no fun.
And don't ask me about my last gig in Budapest...

Architecture as experience

"Architecture is great cinema!"

Quote of the week this - erm - month, is from Friend-of-Brad Thomas Willemeit of hip Berlin-LA-Beijing architects Graft.

“I have always enjoyed asking myself how we can describe a home not just as a organisational floor-plan, but by describing how we experience it. When I enter a dwelling, I have certain atmospheres one after the other - sequences of light and shade, of narrowness and space. There is a scenography, a dramatic structure for the space. Architecture is great cinema.

We design buildings like films, whose power lies in leading us through worlds and catching hold of our emotions.”

“We felt the poetic, narrative aspect of architecture. Where does the architecture trick us? Where does it lead us astray, like a stage set?”

(From an article in GQ Germany, February 2008).

Architects are among the most experience-aware designers, probably because you cannot take in their work all at once, and they are forced to consider the timing aspect. Remember, once design has a time component, it becomes experience...

More for architects here...

Translation by me, image from the GQ online article.

Here's one...

First entry in work-life-experience ...

I asked readers to design my new apartment, so here we go...

Thanks for this go to Kat who - as well as being as smart as paint - is massively tech-savvy, knows a scary amount of kooky and non-kooky stuff, and has a sense of humour that can freeze-wither a sitcom writer in asbestos underwear at 500 yards.

Here's the video at YouTube.

Nice bit of Boom-wowowow-BOOM! in her work - and all kinds of hidden gags. If you were to see the original walk-through, you would see that the cardboard cut-out of me (wow!) has a white macBook like me (wow!) and on the screen of the laptop is ... this blog!

BOOM!

Kat wants to work in gaming, and if you guys don't snap her up in minutes you are quite possibly letting yourselves in for a due diligence suit.

You need to be joking

Clowns in big business

Medieval kings knew the value of a jester - someone who was allowed to say the truth, and was able to soften the blow by the skilled application of humour. They were a valuable pressure valve too - careful doses of humour can dissolve tension, and lead to honesty.

It turns out that comedians are fast-thinking types too, and can even have the occasional creative flash (at least, that's what folks tell me in the brainstorming sessions I do with executives).

Perhaps it's because we jokers are not afraid to think outside the box, because we have to be good at seeing others' points of view and are practiced at turning ideas over and over until we find an angle we can use.

Whatever the reason, the jokers in your midst can help keep everyone sane, as well as generate off-the-wall ideas. See jokester-meets-business-wiz Andy Nulman if you need any proof, or have a look at this Fast Company article on humour Professor John Morreal.

And ask yourself - who is the joker on your team?

Joker pic by kevin (iapetus) at flickr.