These notes will accumulate throughout the week.
Sarah Trahan’s presentation will (may?) be rescheduled.
“Design is not creation. Design is an intervention in an existing system.”
—
Erika Hall @mulegirl (September 12, 2022) : twitter.com/mulegirl/status/1569437808909254661
Just another — and interesting one — of the takes on “design,” in the context of Flusser’s essay on that word (and the OED senses and etymology, and Richard Hollis's introduction).
Thea (Notebooks) talked about the Obsidian “Markdown editor and a knowledge base app,” described at obsidian.md/about and in some more detail at https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/Obsidian.
I believe that what we were seeing was graph views of some of her notebook and other (e.g., dreams, school notes/papers).
How will this tool be used? What opportunities does it open up in this project?
Hope to see this in greater detail, on the large screen !
Stacey (Kindness) showed a cover sketch of a zine. (Thin) line art. JM went on (and on, and on the blackboard too) about making a drawing in 10 seconds (and enlarging not at scanner but at photocopier, 400% and then again 400% etc). The result: a more graphic mark, that type can work against.
Stacey had earlier (last week) pointed to an example of her zines, at her portfolio site : link
Thursday —
Stacy showed a couple of layouts, and thin line-art (vector) drawings of two hands creating a heart. Type was small and sans serif. We talked about working from small crude drawing, perhaps only of an open hand, not a symbolic “heart”, and enlarging not via scanner but on a photocopier, the largest versions only to be scanned and worked with. We talked about how sans serif, and larger type, might embody/enact/perform “kindness” in ways that small, cold, technical styles might not.
We considered photographs of and through her venetian blind-treated windows by Katie (color). How to work under constraints, imposed by oneself, so that there is some useful resistance. Maybe camera on tripod, one photo every 30 minutes... or... camera on tripod, and the venetian blinds opened (and closed), step by step? Do it without photoshop color manipulation (which could be endless). Bring language into the mix, not necessarily "in" the picture — could be beside, under, over... etc.
JM mentioned Derek Jarman's book Chroma (1995) and
his film Blue (1993) : link and described at the tate.org.uk : link
and (alternatively) suggested that Katie find language in her own text messages.
There are poems involving windows, e.g., Philip Larkin, his “High Windows” : link
We talked about how images and text need not appear together, but distributed across the composition (sequence) of pages in a book, like music with pauses, intensities, words sometimes perhaps, sound and drama at other.
Thursday —
Saw more windows, more carefully/mindfully photographed. Talked about language, sequencing (i.e., in a book). Text in photo; text next or under photo; text here and there in the book, as if a pause, before several more images.
Madison (graffiti, for the present) showed a third house, this one graffiti’ed by family with only minimal instructions from her. We are told they had a hoot doing so, in this further instance of participation art/design. We continued the conversation about definitions of graffiti (once it was restricted to graffiti that was illegal), and how it is now a genre (if not style). We talked about murals; their lifespan (should it be unlimited? or limited so as to free up the space to new murals?).
There was some discussion of real estate values, and white walls generally — and modernist turning away from ornament, decoration whether tacky or not; streamlining... Indeed, this orientation or even set of ideologies is inscribed in modern, minimalist (Bauhaus derived) design to begin with. (aside : although the ascendancy of modernist aesthetics co-existed with a world of decoration etc., linoleum designs, wallpaper, etc etc.
It was in this context that Adolf Loos his important essay “Ornament and Crime” (1908), with its indictment of ornament as a primitive leftover, somethink like tattoos, came up. Copies will be distributed on Thursday, as weekend reading; one (different but excellent) translation can be found here : link (pdf) and probably elsewhere too.
Another form of graffiti ? —
“Pavement Picasso: on the trail of London’s chewing gum artist”
— Tim Adams, The Guardian (November 7, 2021) :
link
Thursday —
We further considered the “participation art” dimension of this project : Questions about how to put work into the hands of others, and which others, in what contests. How much of a prompt? Might an address or brief story accompany each house? Who would cut the house from a flat version (if that route is taken), the participant? or Madison, once the flat is returned to her?
Meanwhile, Madison might proceed with both (for now) : making actual 3D houses, and experimenting with the flats.
Patrick (word-text-image) showed three variations of the trapper hat ($17.99), each involving a different treatment of the aura/spiritual cloud surround. These are shown below.
JM asked what aspect Patrick most enjoyed: the response was, the baroque framing. And so JM thought, focus on that, and maybe minimal or even zero “treatment” of the objects shown within that frame. And then : Make several, for different objects, perhaps all priced $19.99, or somehow involving the number “1999” (an idea floated last week).
Here’s wikipedia for 1799 : link
ditto for births in 1799 : link
deaths, too : link
Constraints can be good.
Josh (sound... gesamtkunstwerk ?) presented a segment (20 seconds or so?) of his sound with an image.
The only suggestion was to slip in some other images, even random ok —
“to see not this or that, but only to see if there’s something to see”
— JLG : link
Sarah (After Life) showed two pencil sketches. JM talked about how these might be involved — in emblem fashion — with language. One of the sketches involved a Latin phrase (something about night or darkness awaits all), which prompted a discussion of sundials and the language that frequently accompanies them (typically about mortality); one book in the room has a list of such phrases.
We considered sun (and moon) dials on the sides of buildings (a kind of graffiti !), and
briefly considered the emblem sequence by M. C. Escher : link
examples via google : link
Thursday —
at an impasse. Discussed ways one might work around or through an impasse. Put original (aesthetic) aside, reuse/reshuffle raw material (e.g., journal entries, saved images), e.g., in alphabetical order? so as to retain personal opacity/reserve.
A couple of hours later... impasse — the word, I come upon it again, here —
“...The way object/scenes come into form is always an outcome of scanning for repetitions: the form is at least an impasse, a semicolon, temporary housing, a transitional pattern on the move — a proposition for an infrastructure.”
— Lauren Berlant, On the Inconvenience of Other People (2022) : 150 : link
What is done with shoes? Who lives in them? etc., etc., and what about drinking from shoes? : link.
Thus went our discussion of John’s (shoes) project.
JM provided a printout of
Craig Raine his “And did those feet? / Pedestrian poetics and ugly glass slippers”
TLS (Times Literary Supplement; August 12, 2022) : link (probably paywalled)
in which this sentence —
The empty slipper is the perfect emblem of the body from which the life has slipped away.
A lightbulb in a shoe...
John mentioned an idea of involving a shoe with broken glass...
yet another pair of shoes : link
JM handed out copies of the Emigre type specimen book for Tally, which is the "supplement to a series of publications... featuring pictures of California" by Rudy VanderLans.
Description and pdf at www.emigre.com/TypeSpecimens/Tally
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