“fused review”
BUSINESS AS USUAL a review by Ronnie Chance

In the virtualised realm of the Internet, of email addresses, WHOIS queries, Skype profiles and Flickr Photostreams, at a time when atoms explode into bits and don't bother to make the return journey, haven't we all ditched the crude accoutrements of business life in the pre-digital age? Isn't mass just so, well, 20th century?

So here comes artist David Osbaldestin, with his high-falutin ideas about job titles and business cards, and we're meant to get all dewy-eyed again over the clay content of the stock, and the subtle serif on the typeface, and the oh-so-wacky job description that we once adopted and then dropped faster than the .com in our company names. I mean, purleease.

Ok hold on, let's revise. I called D. Osbaldestin an artist, and actually it says here he's a designer. Strike that, here's one that says writer (for this esteemed organ, no less). And is it David or Claire? On this one it says Joe. Confused yet?

Let's move swiftly on. The project is called BUSINESS AS USUAL (that much at least appears to be reliable), and it seems to involve those old-fashioned business card things, and plays with notions of identity, career specialisation and, of course, graphic design on a small scale. This strikes a few chords; who hasn't struggled with conflicting ideas of what we want to be and what the world seems to need? From a design perspective, the literally limited canvas of the business card is also a strangely liberating challenge, akin to haiku for the eyes. Davoz (as the artist's name-compressing work colleagues decided he should be called) invites us to rethink our own descriptions, emphasise hidden aspects of our personality, and render these in just 407,880 pixels of RGB for the BAU Hall Of Fame. Who do you want to be today?

AW suggested we would all have 15 minutes in the spotlight, Nick (Momus) Currie (design writer, musician, artist) thought (though later thought again) that we'd all be famous for 15 people, and (self-styled network futurist) Robert Sharl says it'll be measured in MB. David O (Academic, etc.) seems to be suggesting that in the future we might all be 15 famous people.

It seams that osbaldestinX is not alone in his retro-futurist CMYK revisitation of the 5mm bleed. In Business Cards - The Art of Saying Hello, his passion for all things laminated is recorded, indexed and bound for the digital age. Perhaps that's the point (or should I say pica or even ems), that collectors Michael Dorrian and Liz Farrelly are making. Their little printed (paper not PDF) book of cards, acts both as a detailed compendium of who's who in the design world, and as a inspirational tome of how and what you can display when introducing yourself through old media. An enchanting and beautiful designer book, that charts the dissent of the cosy corporate card through the ranks of contemporary counterculture cool. From recycled media to guerilla graphics, this is a inspirational record and creative tool for design students and professionals alike.

Back to those cards. There's a material aspect too, and one that seems to reflect D.O.'s curatorial instincts and the obsessive collector side of his personality (the clue is the Be@rbrick motif). So there are, apparently, real BAU business cards circulating out there; 2100 physical pieces, and no clue as to how we come by them. They're organised into sets (surely with ebay status in mind) and the first is out, with more on the way.

There's a semi-viral aspect to this, in the passing of cards from one individual to another, though in the atomic world we're limited (quantum entanglement aside) by the annoying requirement of atoms to occupy only one set of spacetime coordinates. So the card passes around, and only one person can have it at a time, but the idea of Oz (or Joe, or Claire) moves around semi-independently, leaving traces of itself in the people it touches. The same, of course, applies to you and me, and there's a different trace or shadow of ourselves in each node that we touch. The difference here, DJ Oz seems to be saying, is that we ourselves get to pull the strings, orchestrating our own life puppet show through the characters we present to others. Except when we don't: The PDF files of all the cards are available on the site, and participatory-minded visitors can download the cards, modify them, and distribute the results or work up new artwork from your own pixel playground. I might pick up your business card and alter your job description. You might find yourself receiving a mut(il)ated version of your own card from a stranger. Perhaps you'll call yourself, leave a message, and wonder why you never got back.

Excuse me, there's an email coming in that I think I should take.

Ronnie Chance, Issue 25, Fused Magazine © 2005

Ronnie Chance is the founder member and co-writer of the digital folk band R&oM (pronounced random).