It might have been a lull in the news cycle. It might have been the fact that every news outlet from TV to the daily newspaper wants to be a magazine. (Stories that make you feel good! Pretty pictures! Candid opinion!) But for one glorious week this summer, we were introduced to, fell in love with, and then lost all interest in the “flash mob” phenomenon. There was something really cool and urbane, in the same way that meringue is cool and urbane, about a random group of Twin Citizens, hundreds maybe, overtaking the Mall of America and doing the Robot in the Sears Court. That it was arranged in advance by email was a secret for them to know, and for us to find out.
This particular secret society was so easy to get into, though, that we’re wondering now how many journalists are dying to get off the Minneapolis Mob’s listserv. This was punishment enough for infiltrating the group: Our inbox was flooded with the social theories of every johnny-come-lately mobster who wanted to argue that Minneapolis is just as cool as San Francisco or New York.
Given all the interest flash mobbing attracted, we can’t escape the cynical conclusion that most of us are incredibly bored and well behaved. It takes a herd of pranksters to reveal that the rest of us are merely in the larger herd of individuals who mind our own business, shoulder to the wheel, and so on. But let’s be charitable. The flash mob was nifty because it appeared to be spontaneous, and we can all use a little more spontaneity and surprise in our lives.
In fact, spontaneity is the new black. As usual, the Design Institute at the University is modish. This month, the DI is conducting something they call “The Big Urban Game,” which involves teams of players moving thirty-foot-high inflatable pawns throughout the city, sort of like playing chess by global positioning. The way this well-planned event will be experienced—the way it is meant to be experienced by whatever audience self-generates—is by surprise. The result will be similar to the flash mob; the city becomes not so much a performance space, but a space for spontaneous spectacle. The usual authorities are casting a wary eye and palming their billy clubs.
They need not be too concerned. These things are designed to be ephemeral. That, in fact, is their main asset. Perhaps the neatest contribution to the new spontaneity is the Design Institute’s new typeface. The printed word is typically thought to be the opposite of spontaneous. (Some publications are worse than others, of course.) Fonts are like architecture: They are normally created with permanence in mind. But the Design Insititute commissioned a mutable font, called Twin, that will change (on a computer screen, naturally) over time. Twin is inspired by its namesake, the Twin Cities. It is designed to respond to—what else?—the weather. In cold conditions, it looks formal and distant like Courier. In warmer weather, it grows into a round and playful script.
The split personality of this new typeface raises the question: indecisive or self-conflicted? Either way, it’s a clever invention that pays us the backhanded compliment of an avant-garde prank. We don’t know whether anyone will actually use this new font, but we like its impetuousness. Life can be pretty predictable around here, and nothing changes so fast as the weather. Maybe that’s why we talk about it so much. And now we have an excuse to write about it more, too.
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