Robert Kelly - The Hidden Meaning Behind Wallpaper

05/07/23 • 45 min

Welcome to the first episode of this new series Thesis, in which every other week I am going to be interviewing academics, hailing from all fields of study, about the themes and ideas that underpin their respective research. You might be wondering who I am and why I wanted to do this, so I decided to pick this episode as it might give you some insight into my brain. One tool I have found useful over the years in my quest for new and interesting ideas, is to look for any glaring chasms between how much time I have spent thinking about an issue and how much time someone else has spent writing about that topic. The greater that gap, the more likely an idea is going to surprise or shock me. For the sake of discussion, we will call this idea a curiosity gap. Today’s episode is about one of these such chasms, that I stumbled on while searching on the website SSRN, the Social Science Research Network, which is a great research paper aggregator. Today's curiosity gap concern's wallpaper, which this episode centers around. This very first installment of Thesis is an examination of why interior decoration is such a fundamental human drive and what it's evolutions says about various societies throughout the ages. My guest is Robert M. Kelly who has been working with wallpaper as a paperhanger, researcher, consultant, and writer since 1976. In this conversation Robert walks me through the fundamentals of wallpaper scholarship, what it means for wallpaper to be meaningful and how to read wallpaper as a material representation of our values and beliefs.

Previous Episode

The Evolution of Fintech: A New Post-Crisis Paradigm?

In 1942 the famous Austrian political economist Joseph Schumpeter coined a pivotal notion in economics known as 'creative destruction'. The MIT department of economics refers to 'creative destruction' as " the incessant product and process innovation mechanism by which new production units replace outdated ones". Essentially, it is the idea that products or services will either become naturally ineffective or must be purposefully terminated, to make room for new ones to replace them. This process ensures that there is always something better, or at least newer, for the consumer to spend his or her money on. It is the cornerstone of any type of economic growth. So what happens when parts of the capitalistic structure itself prove to be faulty or outdated and a recession occurs. How do our financial systems re-invent themself and what phoenix rises from those economic ashes. That is what we are going to figure out in today's episode. My guests this episode are professors Ross Buckley and Douglas Arner, who teach at the university of New South Wales and Hong Kong University respectively. Both are experts in financial law. They are joining me to discuss their paper “The Evolution of Fintech : a New Post Crisis Paradigm”. In this paper they explore how every major recession of the last 20 years has forced the financial industry to revisit, and often revolutionize, its relationship with digital technology. As a result of this process an entirely new industry was spawned, known as Fintech, which today is still largely guided by the destruction and losses incurred in economic recessions.

Next Episode

‘Fame as an Illusion of Creativity' - Banerjee Mitali

In this episode the paper we will be discussing is entitled ‘Fame as an Illusion of Creativity : Evidence from the Pioneers of Abstract Art’, in which today’s guest, Banerjee Mitali, strives to answer the following question : what are the main factors that determine an artist's likeness to become famous. Mitali, who is currently an assistant professor of strategy and business policy at HEC in Paris, was unsatisfied with the current research, quoting from her intro: “Little work has explored the factors that shape a producer’s fame in creative markets. Much of what exists, notably Simonton’s (1980) research, has focused on creativity as the sole driver of an innovator’s fame. However, the extant evidence is mixed regarding the link between creativity and fame”. In this discussion Mitali describes how her innovative empirical approach, where she partnered with the MoMA to analyze the social connections between 90 leading artists of the early 20th century, shows that one’s social context is among the strongest indicator of potential fame. As she explains it : “ past work overlooks a key insight that creativity in cultural and entrepreneurial contexts is itself a function of the social structure in which an individual is embedded”. So without further ado here is Mitali Banerjee to discuss ‘Fame as an Illusion of Creativity’.