Questlove Hearts Emojis

A Piece of Work

MoMA, WNYC Studios

Education, Visual Arts, Self-improvement, Arts, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 August 2017

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Emojis, video games, even the humble “@” symbol -- all these staples of digital life have been as carefully designed as the most sleek furniture or fancy architecture. But do they belong in a museum? Hell yes, says Abbi’s friend Ahmir Thompson (a.k.a. Questlove, and emoji obsessive). If you find yourself wondering if it’s allowed, “then it's pretty much high art,” he says. Also featuring: Paola Antonelli View artwork from this episode at wnyc.org/design --- About the podcast: From WNYC Studios and MoMA, A Piece of Work is everything you want to know about modern and contemporary art but were afraid to ask. Hosted by "Broad City"’s Abbi Jacobson, this 10-episode series explores everything from Pop art to performance in lively conversations with curators, artists, and Abbi’s friends, including Hannibal Buress, Tavi Gevinson, RuPaul, and Questlove. Produced by WNYC Studios. www.wnycstudios.org

Transcript

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0:00.0	I know it's weird to start a show about art in the shower, but I'm going to start the show in the
0:14.9	shower with Paola and Tenelli.
0:16.9	I don't know how it happened, maybe under many showers, I don't know, but I just started
0:22.1	thinking of the ad sign.
0:23.6	The at sign it's the little A with a circle around
0:27.6	that you use in every email you've ever sent
0:31.2	and I just started thinking of how beautiful it is.
0:34.0	I started thinking of how useful it is.
0:36.5	I started thinking of how much is part of our lives.
0:39.5	And I started thinking, why can't we acquire it? I should mention
0:45.6	Paula's not just some random person I'm standing in the shower with. She happens to be a senior curator in the Department of Architecture
0:56.1	and Design at Moma. So in other words, she's one of the biggest and most forward
1:01.8	thinking people in the art world.
1:05.0	And she wanted an act.
1:08.6	I started digging into the history, and I found out that it first appeared in the Middle Ages.
1:14.0	So the monks that were copying manuscripts
1:17.0	were using the ad sign to conserve energy
1:20.0	because basically it was a fusion of the two words in the preposition
1:25.2	A D you know the Latin position which means the same that the ad means today
1:29.5	means towards in relationship with in connection, and it was even in the first typewriters in the 19th century,
1:38.0	and throughout the 20th century it was used again by account.
1:41.0	It feels like it's so new. I know right? It's so related to the
	...

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