Dutch designer Marcia Nolte has created a somewhat horrifying series of photographs, called Corpus 2.0, in which the human body is artifically modified to accommodate various products, including headphones and high heels, as shown above. The underlying suggestion behind the exhibition has something to do with evolution, but the striking thing to my eyes was the clean, minimal photography, which reinforced the idea that all these “evolutions” would only be possible through surgery.

There are several crazy processes by which the human body is physically modified or stretched to fit a certain purpose. There’s the horrifying procedure known as Foot Binding, the collarbone-distorting ‘neck elongation‘, and the famous lip plate. All these various unpleasantries make me cringe like hell.

Above we see the “cellphone shoulder” and “texting hand” examples. The insane thing is that, out of all those extreme modifications linked to above, Nolte’s commercial-products exhibition actually hits closer to my own experience. How? Well, my little toes seem to be moving slightly inwards after two years of me pushing my wide feet into long, thin Converse All-Stars for the past few years. Maybe I just can’t remember what my toes looked like before, but now something seems, well, off. If only I had some before and after photos… 

So, I endure this apparent body transformation for the sake of a brand, a product, an image I’m trying to cultivate. It’s not severe and it’s not anywhere near as ugly as the extreme modifications in Nolte’s photos, but it’s a physical change nonetheless, and one done at the expense of a brand. Credit goes to this designer for making me think more about it; the above photo shows a modified “cigarette mouth” and a nose with a built-in ridge for glasses.

Hold up, though: this concept explores some of the same ground, and it’s by another young Dutch designer. Jewellry for your eyeball. Crazy, those guys, I tell you.

One wonderful new book gaining strong traction in the world of design and advertising is Rob Walker’s Buying In. The weekly columnist for the New York Times Sunday Magazine stands and delivers a book-length meditation on the 21st-century consumer, along with a perfect antidote to any under-researched column or study that tells you marketing “as we know it” is dead, or that the modern consumer is so over-informed and intelligent that all old strategies or ideas have jumped (or must be thrown) out the window.

Advertising is changing in fundamental ways–this, no one denies–but some rules of the game still remain, and Walker is here to chart the way all the various agents (producers and consumers alike) have adapted.

Besides the immediate appeal to anyone involved in advertising or design, the book has a transcendent draw that comes from its central examination of brand attachment. Walker coined the term “murketing”, to describe a 21st century mix of murky and marketing that he describes as being a two-part system, one which is made up of the “increasingly sophisticated tactics of marketers who blur the line between branding channels and everyday life” and the consciously “widespread consumer embrace of branded, commercial culture.”

Read the introduction to the book here and tell me you’re not hooked by his anecdotal reference to Chuck Taylor’s All-Stars: he says the book “was inspired by the disconnect between what the experts say [about consumer behaviour] and how we really behave,” and the first example comes from his very own experiences. Perfect for me, as I only started wearing All-Stars a year and a half ago, and since then I’ve already bought 3 pairs. Why? Lots of reasons, surely, almost all of them connecting to self/group identification, and (almost) all to be found in this book.

One of the most fascinating parts of Walker’s theory, the pieces of which you can put together through all the entries on his murketing blog or his “Consumed” columns (all available online), is the “Desire Code”, his examination of how we come to desire what we eventually buy, or how logo/brand/product desire is created.

His idea rides on a “fundamental tension of modern life,” one that extends far past marketing and consumerism but is essential to his understanding of it: the tension between the individual and the group. Hardly a new concept, but that’s the point–the game hasn’t changed so much to be unrecognizable, rather all its participants are (apparently) a little more self-aware. A fine sampling:

When I was in grade school, we watched a lot of films. Perhaps they were a relatively easy way to quiet the children down for a while. But remembering this period as an adult, I’m struck by the realization that those films all had one of two themes.

One was: Deep down, each of us is different, unique, and special.

The other was: Deep down, we are all just the same.

For years I shared this observation, for laughs, before it finally occurred to me that this was no joke. In fact, it articulated what is more or less the fundamental tension of modern life.

We all want to feel like individuals.

We all want to feel like a part of something bigger than ourselves.

And resolving that tension is what the Desire Code is all about.

Summer is here, and from anecdotal evidence in various popular magazines, I’ve heard it’s the “reading” season, although reading on the beach does nothing but hurt my eyes. If you, however, can keep yours relatively unsquinted, Walker’s book is an essential purchase.