Recently, going through some old notes about invited talks years ago, I found something of possible interest to parents of young children who love to play with LEGO -- and maybe others as well.
Invited speaker. The Netherlands Design Institute in Amsterdam: “Doors of Perception,” October 30-31, 1993, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, organized by The Netherlands Design Institute and Mediamatic magazine.
Program description: “DoP is a ground breaking conference for which leading thinkers from the fields of graphic and industrial design, architects, information technology, philosophy, computer science, business and media will assemble . . . to consider the cultural and economic challenges of interactivity plus the role of design in turning information into knowledge, for example, through the visualization of complex scientific data. . . .”
Other speakers included Louis Rossetto, the founding editor and publisher of the first Wired magazine (published in Europe well before moving to the US and later sold to a major US publisher).
West was recruited to speak at this first conference of the newly formed Netherlands Design Institute based on a talk he had given only two months earlier at the ACM SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference in Los Angeles -- where he had been video-taped by a Netherlands Design Institute scout from Amsterdam. (For this talk West observed an unusual Dutch practice: He was paid his speaker’s fee in cash, using crisp US bills of $100.)
Please see a letter . . . from a designer met at this Amsterdam conference. An excerpt: “It was a pleasure to have met you at the ‘Doors of Perception’ seminar in the Netherlands. I enjoyed listening to your talk on visual thinking. It was inspiring and was very appropriate in that particular forum. I found your talk of particular relevance to my work with LEGO. . . . I work for LEGO in a capacity as a designer visualizer. I’m sure you understand how your talk and book was a great inspiration. In the Mind’s Eye is a real eye opener. Your book has given me a detailed insight into the way my mind works and why it behaves the way it does.”
“The book is well researched and it is edited in such a way that it becomes a useful reference book. In the Mind’s Eye should be read by teachers and parents alike who have children in their care that show traits of dyslexia. It will enlighten them all about the gift of dyslexia and its many advantages that it can provide the individual and possibly society. As we discussed during our meeting in the Netherlands, the Vice President of my research department at LEGO . . . is a cofounder of a school for dyslexics in Brande, Jutland. It is the first school of its type in Denmark and has a campus of 50 students.” K.B., Lyngby, Denmark, 21st April, 1994.”
