On spirals
In terms of spirals, we wrote a poem with the line, “But, what’s a circle without hands or time? Is that you?” Which later was adapted into the title of a video as, “A spiral is a circle without hands or time.” Something that I’ve realized recently is that in each project that we do, I feel like there’s always either a visual or a geometric or a spatial form that serves as a skeleton for the practice at that time. Sometimes it’ll be a spiral or sometimes it’ll be a barrier. Recently we did this project in Oslo where it was a mobius strip. We often rely on these simple geometric forms to serve as skeletons for what are later character dynamics or narrative structures.
Laurel Schwulst was the inaugural Creative Director of this very website, The Creative Independent. Currently, she teaches interactive design at Yale University and maintains Beautiful Company, a design practice. Previously, she worked at the New York-based design studio Linked by Air. Her book Perfume Area (Ambient Works, 2015), coauthored with Sydney Shen, contemplates thirty-six designer fragrances.