Word: prefab
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...sketch comedy. The Ben Stiller Show was an attempt to reclaim Saturday Night Live's creaky format for the kids. But it reflected a Gen X ambivalence about youth culture as a marketing concept, as in "The Grungies," a sketch about a Seattle grunge band modeled on the prefab '60s act the Monkees. ("We're not trying to be friendly/We just want money and fame/We're the X Generation/We just like to complain.") Collecting all 13 episodes, including one never aired, the two-disc set reunites the original cast and writers to reminisce about the doomed effort. Says Garofalo...
...show that originated this principle, the grandfather of reality TV, was “The Real World.” Since its debut in 1992, “The Real World” has become progressively more plastic and prefab. These days, it’s impossible to watch it without experiencing deja vu. To be sure, individuals once roamed free around the outrageously outfitted “Real World” pads—Puck in San Francisco, for example. But now, even the Individual is an established role (see: Teck from Hawaii and Irene from Seattle...
Lorenzaccio’s expansive set design, courtesy of Andrew D. Boch ’03, is fantastic. His set is concretely evocative of real-world urban decay (the party cups littering the chunks of prefab house that dominate the stage give the setting a sort of frat-house feel) and yet still very surreal; the building crew have put considerable effort into this set, and it shows. It also combines with high-end costuming by Gisli Palsson ’04 to create an ambience that is all the more plausible for its anachronism...
...most Japanese: taking someone else's concept (the art factory) and pushing it to new levels of discipline, efficiency and production innovation. Spend time at Murakami's KaiKai Kiki commune and you'll quickly discover that the hippie vibe the place radiates is a front. Looking past the shabby prefab trailers and scrubby farmland they skirt, you see that Murakami is as much a factory floor manager as an artist. Under his direction, computer researchers catalog recurring motifs for easy cut-and-paste reproduction, drafters transform sketches into outlines on canvas with robot-like precision, and technicians keep precisely documented...
...problem is that in the past, this process was associated with, well, ugliness. But designers are now putting the fab in prefab. Two books out last year, Pre Fab and the Spanish publication Arquitectura Alternativa, celebrate entirely or partially prefabricated houses around the world. Many architects are adapting some of the systems builders use. Others are more fanciful. Computerized drawing and cutting methods enable designers to create the most uncommon houses they can dream up. And one Austrian designer claims his dwelling, right, can be put together on site in as little as two hours. --By Belinda Luscombe...