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about menlo park

Menlo Park is an online journal about the collision-zone of art, design and human-made space. Some current practice attempts to define a relevant criticality interleaving the fields of contemporary art, design and landscape/building architecture. Has the criticality of the avant-garde been eclipsed by a notion of design that is a pure reflection of the dynamic of techno-culture? Has design been relegated to the role of aesthetic adjunct to a culture of engineering and technology (its interface designer)? Perhaps this problematic can lead us to explore the possibility of a new criticality that asserts a reformulated mode of inquiry that makes its place not in the hermetic world of art but rather inhabits, however strangely, the world of everyday or ‘applied’ making?  This is a provocative debate that traverses academic and practice-based discourses. Menlo Park is a venue for this conversation.

Menlo Park takes its name from Thomas Edison’s research and manufacturing facility in New Jersey (1876-87). The original Menlo Park served as the prototype for the high-tech campus/R&D facility of today (the Lab). Likewise, Edison was the archetype inventor/ designer/entrepreneur. Needless to say, naming this online journal after Menlo Park is a playful provocation. Menlo Park is a venue for discussing the things that techno-culture has forgotten by engaging in a rigorous conversation about the future of the ‘complex’ that is the relationship between art, design and technology. Contemporary art and design share historical roots in the avant-garde but have become estranged cousins whose differences have calcified around an antiquated discourse of ‘pure & applied’ arts. Menlo Park asks artists and designers alike to put some pressure on this institutional division and to conjecture what criticality could mean in relation to contemporary making, building and planning. (af)

 

Menlo Park
ISSN 2291-3165
(first issue, vol. 1 no. 1: March 2013)


Andrew Forster, editor
Anja Bock, managing editor

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COPYRIGHT
Content and presentation copyright Menlo Park online journal and the authors.  Authors retain copyright for articles and have granted Menlo Park right of first publication (unless indicated otherwise in the article notes) with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND) allowing distribution and citation of the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.

All image copyright is retained by the rights-holder. Whenever possible this information or Creative Commons permissions are contained in an image file’s meta-data (following IPTC standards). Use of copyright images and images with no apparent copyright on this site is governed by the terms of ‘fair use’ for purposes such as criticism, comment or scholarship, not intended for commercial purposes.

CITATION
Articles, PDF’s, and documentation, unless otherwise noted, are copyright of the authors with Menlo Park online journal as first site of publication. Citation of articles from the site or downloaded as PDF should contain a reference to the author, Menlo Park online journal and date of publication (found at the head of each article).

PUBLICATION & CONTACT
ISSN 2291-3165
(first issue, vol. 1 no. 1: March 2013)

address: 4624 de l’Esplanade, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H2T2Y5
general email: edison@menlopark.ca
for submissions contact see ‘submissions’ link under ‘about’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Design and production of the first issue of Menlo Park was funded in part by a CUPFA PD grant (Concordia University, Montreal).

Web site implementation by Phil Jones.

submission policy

Since we seek a conversation that crosses boundaries of various practices and fields, Menlo Park is not a journal following a strict academic model. Articles and reviews are shorter and discussion is encouraged. There is an editorial selection committee and a peer review process to ensure that contributions are focused and rigorous. Submissions of abstracts and articles are encouraged.  Please submit a 300 word abstract and draft article HERE. Submissions are reviewed twice a year (deadlines: June 1, November 1).

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Menlo Park is an independent no-profit journal. Making a contribution will help Menlo Park to continue thinking.

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