Something I read this evening in Design Noir:

The subversion of function relates to a breakdown of order; something else becomes visible, unnameable, unable to find a correspondence in the material world. This subversion of function is related to not being able to find the right word, leading to the coining of neologisms that bend language to accomodate something new.

…echoed something I read just a few hours earlier in City of Glass:

What happens when a thing no longer performs its function? Is it still the thing, or has it become something else? When you rip the cloth off the umbrella, is the umbrella still an umbrella? You open the spokes, put them over your head, walk out into the rain, and you get drenched. Is it possible to go on calling this object an umbrella?

…which reminded me of something I just read in Beyond Backpacking:

Most commercial umbrellas are constructed with various pieces that are not necessary to the umbrella’s function. When I modify one of these umbrellas, these superfluous pieces are what I am after.

I just finished reading Paul Auster’s City of Glass and was interested to see that he foresaw GPS Drawing:

True, he had created the letters by the movement of his steps, but they had not been written down. It was like drawing a picture in the air with your finger. The image vanishes as you are making it. There is no result, no trace to mark what you have done.

And yet, the pictures did exist…