Hello from Stockholm!

Hello from Stockholm where it's cold and crisp and clean and little red wooden farmhouses look like model homesteads on a Minnesota prairie, but stand in fields as neat, with the sun catching the tops of their snow-tipped plough lines, as Kyoto gravel gardens.

I'm here to play a show but also to think about my next journalistic job: an article for Voice, the AIGA Journal of Design. It's going to be about gender and product design, with reference mostly to Swedish and Japanese products. Sweden has a range of attitudes on this, from Ikea's emphasis on stubborn self-sufficiency -- you take the flatpacks home and build the furniture yourself -- to the new Volvo concept car designed 'by women for women'. Don't even think about lifting the hood. Take it to qualified service personnel. Oh, and it parks itself. There's no reason to be ashamed of your dependency.



The ultimate in gendered product design must be Nana the lovedoll (maybe this is who Kahimi Karie's new single is about). I discovered a LoveDoll blog in which Nana's owner describes his adventures making love to her and dressing her up in various outfits: office lady, school girl, Chinese dress... The comments, from fellow doll-lovers, are mostly requests for fresh clothes and poses.