workworks22: notes and recollections, 9

procedures no. 3 (in syllabus), expanded to encompass these three options —

a bibliography (meaning: annotated list, that may also include websites and other sources/analogues), and a presentation to in seminar of your findings; should include a summary paragraph (or page), that makes explicit the relevance to your project. and/or
lead discussion of an assigned reading (10 pages maximum), and/or
a participatory/collaborative project that contributes to your own work (but has something in it for the participants, too. needs a framework, set of instructions, orientation)

as of Thursday 27 October, these are —

Thea
each person, a recording of their day; will provide instructions/context on 3 November; presentations on 10 November;
Stacey
distributing heart-shaped components of collages; hand on out 3 November, examine on 10 November;
Katie
(involving Munsell chips/colors, details to be determined); hand out on 8 November, bring in on 10th
Madison
mark making (graffiti houses again), now with time constraints; 3 November;
Patrick
presentation on Neville Brody, 17 November
Josh
presentation on Joseph Schillinger, The Mathematical Basis of the Arts (1943), available entire at archive.org : link (lands at pp 426-427, “Positional rotation applied to kinetic design”); 10 November
Sarah
lead discussion of passage from Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2004; preview); date TBD
John
background on Puma (the company — including historical DNA, relationship with Adidas, &c., the brand, its advertising); 17 November

Stacey showed new collages, no text, just petals (sectioned in straight horizontal/vertical cuts), hands and, in one, leaves. The sections opened the way to substitutions: (1) just petals (hands cut out/white), or petals and leaves, different hands (different colored skins, races, even prosthetic hands), and again (as last week), one petal, many petals. petals allowed to fall at random, on hands (and even leaves); and (2) other things entirely, from elsewhere (detail of photograph of the surface of Venus or Mars, something from a magazine (whatever is on the back of what is selected) etc etc.

Think in terms of modules, replacement of modules. Modularity.

JM mentioned collagist “photographer without a camera” Katrien De Blauwer, her juxtapositions, one thing above another (frequently) : @katriendeblauwer

Thursday, Stacy showed new collage variations (on google drive). (1) petals side of heart collage cut in six pieces; one piece substituted by section of photo of Stacey and a comicon star; (2) leaves in hand, petals outside; one of the leaf sections replaced by section of photo of sky and ocean; (3) hands now presented not by skin, but petals, cut (roughly by exacto knife) where joints are.

consider more careful cuts, and joints without space between them.
the work now consists of substitutions.

regarding (3), there was a sense of violence, the cuts were rough.
JM thought brought up again the heart (and now, hand) as landscape. Like a palm, to be read. also a sexual or erotic dimension to this. Sandro Botticelli, his Birth of Venus (mid 1480s?) came to mind, indirectly. link

Patrick showed new video art (link), now of the earbuds, floating in space. Discussion about changes of scale, rotations, etc. JM wonders if objects other than the earbuds might also be included (e.g., the wireless trackball mouse, winter cap). There was also discussion of timing (e.g., of entry of text).

Thursday, Patrick showed two animated pieces: earbuds in space, and expressionistic surround (his expressionistic name within) — link. The discussion tried to focus on the different styles of these pieces, not how they were made, or where they came from, etc. What associations do they have; what resonances. Do they work together. Lady Gaga her Chromatica was mentioned, Tool. Acid rock. Metallica. etc. One (two-part) idea: either (1) let the earbuds appear within empty space, within that frame, and then zoom in on them (as the frame expands and then disappears out of the rectangle); or, (2) let the beginning be large earbuds, then zoom out, with frame coming into view from the edges of the rectangle. The point here is: frame and object (here, earbuds) are different styles; this difference this should be acknowledged in their treatment.

Thea presented sketches of format and packaging : “books of different sizes that fit together in one enclosure” like a “puzzle.” How many books: 8 or 10, for poetry, the weather, ways of organizing information (people, food, places, etc.), photos (no context), short biography, family tree, something interactive, “magnetic” (words, as in refrigerator poetry), etc.

JM thinks the focus should be on working the “material” — the great-grandfather’s notebooks, dream journals, etc., for the time being. The experiments so far have been tentative, exploratory — not carried to an extreme or closure, to a point where they offer their own resistance/hints about next steps.

Sarah showed blank paper models (hexahexaflexagon, paper fortune teller, etc. Looking forward to seeing these models — however imperfect or perfect — with content relating to the thesis theme “after life.” The transformative potential of paper: flat, but two sided; two-dimensional, but three (and even four) dimensions, in which anything can become (reverse, revert, invert, etc into) are exciting.

Madison brought in some ideas relating to and surrounding her project. She was fresh from reading Oli Mould’s book Against Creativity (2018, reviewed here) and a related TED Talk, that argues that creativity is deeply implicated in a neoliberal, capitalist economy and the costs thereof (to societies, the planet). This fit in with our discussion earlier in the morning about ethics in design practice (working for brands that are problematic, etc.). The designer needs to look at everything through an ethical lens, or at least a self-aware one.

This led (somehow :)) to a consideration of ways to deal with “the canvas” — both as marker of high art/creativity, but also an intimidating blank slate (as if any slate were blank!). Madison pointed to David Zinn, “Street artist specializing in small-scale, improvised and (mostly) light-hearted chalk art” @davidzinn

Continuation of the ongoing discussion of speed/time allowed for a drawing, mark, gesture.

Thursday there was discussion of large buildings (corrugated cardboard)... expressionist street scenes, e.g., as in the silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) : link (and wikipedia : link)

JM showed images of scale models of cities, used by planners and architects. One can be seen in this Financial Times review of Justin Beal’s book Sandfuture (2021) : link

From Katie, new window (and related) views, shot through cardboard/paper (rectangular) aperture cards held at varying distances and angles from smartphone camera. There was a certain improvisational bokeh effect or vibe to these. They were another chapter in this day-in-the-life-of-a-design-student project. Suggestions were made (not by JM) about trying out color “cells” as used by photographers (to give all or part (through aperture?) of the photograph a color cast, or to achieve a certain sepia tone bespeaking the nineteenth century.

JM talked about language, perhaps taken from the metadata of each photograph, in whole or part. Other language from elsewhere might be involved, too. Shown below are the slate ruminations about how type/language (and even Munsell chip or eye-dropped color) might be used if in book.

above, treatments using different type sizes (very large, e.g., for some metadata, treated almost as nonsense), also Munsell chips, and smaller text units perhaps from Katie’s own writing.