Movers and Shakers: The 40 Most Exciting Soulful Artists of 2003

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Human Beans Bogus brandmasters
The Web site of this two-man London design team showcases products that (one hopes) we will never see on our store shelves: Mr. Germy, a teething ring saturated with bacteria (?Exposure to the right bacteria can naturally strengthen your child?s immune system?); Release, ?easy-swallow tablets? that clean skin and clothing from the inside, by bubbling up through the bloodstream and the pores; and a chocolate cell phone?too inexpensive to attract thieves, and a good snack, too!
The Human Beans?Mickael Charbonnel and Chris Vanstone, both 24-year-old graduates of London?s Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design?are among the wittiest and most astute of a worldwide corps of designers who spend part of their time satirizing their profession?and exploring society?s deepest obsessions, hopes, and phobias. Charbonnel and Vanstone?s fictional products?which they have so far only created digitally for exhibitions in art galleries?are particularly good at needling our fears of contagion, contamination, and disease. Their next series of ?products,? still in development, include wacked-out versions of what they call ?well-being? products. Look for, among other things, extremely strange vitamin supplements. www.humanbeans.co.uk ?JON SPAYDE

Christopher Alexander
Natural Designer
Architect and theorist Christopher Alexander is a populist who believes our built environment ought to serve and please regular folks. That?s why he?s full of practical ideas: Automobiles shouldn?t intimidate pedestrians, children need their own living space at home, porches ought to be big enough so we can sit back and relax. But Alexander, trained in mathematics, also takes wacky and interesting mental flights. He uses mathematics, for example to quantify the beauty of Oriental rugs. Software designers have adopted his ideas to help them identify and categorize types of code problems and find common fixes for them
Alexander?s magnum opus is The Nature of Order, a four-volume treatise, three decades in the making. In it, he argues that all human-made structures should meet standards of beauty set by the natural world?standards that boil down to a handful of simple properties concerning shape, scale, texture, and so on. Universal measures of beauty? Those are fighting words to postmodernists, with their penchant for seeing all aesthetic standards as time-and culture-bound. And sure enough, the controversy began even before the book was published this fall. William Saunders, writing in Harvard Design Magazine, called it ?self-deceptive? and ?full of pitiable delusions of grandeur.? (Meanwhile, code crunchers have already begun trying to apply Alexander?s new theories to software.) Only time will tell if Alexander?s ideas succeed in implanting the impersonal beauties of nature in the highly style-conscious?
and ego-driven?world of architecture. The Nature of Order (Oxford)
?JOSEPH HART

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