BODYSCAN

Today we each went to have our body scanned in the Righton Building at MMU. Here they analyse data taken from individuals body measurements and use it to compare high street sizes against what “should” be but will never be the average body size. they also have various equipment to make garments that are seamless for intense sports wear and other such activities.

The body scan give you a vast amount of data about the shape and size of your body, it’s quite a fun experience, a little depressing though! You end up with a beautiful graphic drawing of the shape of your body. We could also look into having this image split up into steak pieces which we could then cut on a laser cutter and make a half sized model of ourselves.

After we each had been scanned, we discussed with Annie that since we all had the same data to start with, we had to go away and discuss what we could do with this as a starting point for the Digital Futures Option. We had a chat about what we could do with this and agreed that with the assessment coming up next week for us each to write a reflective piece about the body scanning session and how it can link into our individual practice and also in any way collaboratively. We will each write roughly 300 words about this and post onto a social network to share to spark other ideas and conversations. Rather than think together at this initial stage we thought it best to start with our own practice and see what may come from that, then move on from there.

INDUCTION - BERNINA AND IRISH SEWING MACHINES

 

 

 

 

 

BOOK - LANGUAGE OF THINGS - DEYAN SUDJIC

BOOK

The language of things - How we are seduced by the objects around us.

Language

With regards to his father’s portable typewriter

“From a practical point of vies it is entirely useless. But I stills can’t bear to throw it out, even though I know that someday whoever clears out my house will have to face the same dilemma that I did. To discard even a useless object that I don’t look at from one year to the next is somehow to discard part of a life. But to keep it unused is to experience silent reproach every time you open the cupboard door. The same reproach is projected by a wall full of unread books. And once read they ask, quietly at first, but then more and more insistently, will we ever read them again?”

Page 20 + 21

“Just a few of these useless objects re-enter the economic cycle as part of the curious ecology of collecting. But collecting is in itself a very special kind of fetish, perhaps one that is best understood as an attempt to roll back the passing of time. It might also be an attempt to defy the threat of mortality. To collect a sequence of objects is, for at least, to have imposed some sense of order on a universe that doesn’t have any.”

Page 21

Luxury

 

 

Image caption

“The carefully documented clutter on Freud’s desk testifies to a lifetime’s contemplation of the psychological resonance of accumulating objects.”

Page 106

“...If luxury is based on scarcity or difficulty then, once the effort has been stripped away, so is the luxury”

Page 118

“Design presented a chance to exercise the ego in a way that craft did not.”

Page 112

“Contemporary luxury depends on finding new things to do that are difficult.”

Page 120

“There are still people who bind books, but bookbinding has turned from a practical skill into a means of self-expression.”

Page 120

Art

“It is a curious paradox that even the most materialistic of us tend to value what might be called useless above the useful.”

Page 167

“Some designs are less useful than others, and they are the ones that enjoy a higher status than the rest.”

Page 167

“Art, supposedly, is about a whole category of entirely different things. One activity is about the material, commercial, useful world of mass-produced objects, and the other is about a more intangible, slippery world of ideas, and the aura of the unique and the useless.

In Britain, design used to be called commercial art, to distinguish it from the real thing. When designers first began to organise professionally, in 1930, they called themselves the Society of Industrial Artsists. That was when design came to be recognised in its modern sense, after a bitter divorce from craftsmanship. Mainstream commercial design now is treated as the idiot child of the branding industry. And the entire category of objects that can be considered as art is regarded by some cultural gatekeepers as superior to the category of objects that are designed precisely because of the usefulness of the latter.”

Page 168

“Yet there are good reasons to understand the design of objects at a deeper level. If you consider what it was that informed much of Marcel Duchamp’s thinking, and Andy Warhol’s too, there was certainly an intimate concern with many of the same issues that underpin the more reflective aspects of design. In particular, both Duchamp and Warhol explored the significance of mass production. The ready-made urinal and the multiple Mao screenprint suggest something important about our relationship with industrial objects and the impact of mass production on culture. They are, among other things, telling us about the power that art has to make base materials into priceless objects. But that is what design is about too - not usually as a critical tool, but rather by offering a step-by-step how-to guide.”

Page 169

“ Whether consciously or not, it is doing its best to suggest that deign is just as useless as art, and therefore almost as important.”

Page 173

“ Donald Judd got around the problem of defining where art stops and design begins with the aplomb you would expect of a conceptual artist. He simply declared that the two were entirely different, and that they never even get close. When he was making furniture he was a designer, and when he was making art he was an artist, no matter how superficially similar the products of the two categories might look, or how similar the process involved might be.”

Pages 195 + 197

“But a design museum is less interested in the idea of the original. And in the world of mass production, how can there be such a thing as a fake? The inescapable conclusion is that objects that can be categorised as works of design really do carry the burden of utility, and are therefore valued less highly in the cultural hierarchy than the essentially useless category of art.”

Page 203

“When they became valuable, dealers started to tear them out of the places they were designed for, and transformed into precious showroom antiques. Art creates a language that design responds to. Design also plays its part in creating a visual vocabulary that shapes what artists do. But in the last analysis it is the ability of an artist to question and to be critical that justifies what he does. For a designer to make a critical object is to bite the hand that feeds him. Without commerce, industrial design cannot exist. And yet we now have a generation that produces not just design that pairs to be art, but even industrial objects that also suggest a certain detachment from materialistic considerations.”

Page 213

“Uselessness is, it seems, the most valued quality. So designers aspire to be artists.”

Page 214

TENORI-ON INTERFACE KNITTING

 

 

 

Exploring the Tenori-on interface through the knitting machine.

JESSICA WALSH

From: http://www.booooooom.com/2013/12/03/designer-jessica-walsh-video-profile/

IAN ROBERTS (OBJECT & CONTEXT) MEETING

I discussed my current project with Ian and showed him the collection of music equipment that I have. Ian spoke a bit about some of the objects, what they do and perhaps why they are in the collection, which items may have samples saved onto them created by John.

He exclaimed that in choosing to do something, you’re not doing something else. So in essence, what you are choosing is what not to do. You have to be comfortable with your choice. It’s moor about the things you chose not to do, than what you chose to do.

With the collection being so large it is important to chose one piece to focus on. I had already discussed this with Jonathan Hitchen in a meeting last week and have since chosen to focus on the Tenori-on. Otherwise Ian said, with this amount of equipment, the possibilities are endless.

The process of pricing the equipment and selling it should not be taken lightly, this should be a very slow process that I should take my time in doing. Ian offered to help me with things when the time arises.

From meeting Ian, I’d say he reitrified what Hitch and I had discussed last week which proves I am on the right path. What he has perhaps pointed out more so is that it is important to take my time doing these things as it is a big job. This worries me a little, not in terms of whether I can do it or not, but whether this is the right time to be doing it. Have I chosen a project to emotionally involved for my Ma or will the structure of the Ma help me along this path?

ADAM SAVAGE - OBSESSION WITH OBJECTS - TED TALKS

Today I watched a TED talks by Adam Savage titled “My obsession with objects and the stories they tell”. I was quite surprised by the outcome of the video as it wasn’t what I expected and proves that people can be obsessed with objects and react to that in various ways. Adam spoke about his obsession with the Dodo bird. He collects hundreds of images of things that he is obsessed with like the Dodo bird, cockpits etc. Whilst playing with his child with some modelling clay he decided he wanted to make his own Dod bird skeleton. With the various images he had collected, he mapped out the structure of the skeleton to exact size and modelled it himself.

Adam ended his talk with “achieving the end of the exercise was never the point of the exercise to begin with.”

Wikipedia: Adam Whitney Savage (born July 15, 1967) is an American industrial design and special effects designer/fabricator, actor, educator, and co-host of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters and Unchained Reaction.[1] His model work has appeared in major films, including Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and The Matrix Reloaded. He is a prominent member of the skeptic community. He lives in San Francisco with his twin sons and wife, Julia.

http://www.ted.com/talks/adam_savage_s_obsessions.html

WORD OF THE DAY - HOMO FABER

SYNCHRONATOR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SYNCHRONATOR – The SYNCHRONATOR device transforms your audio into a composite video signal, compatible with all video equipment supporting composite video input. With 3 audio inputs and 1 video out, the SYNCHRONATOR device enables you to visualize your sounds on each of the primary color channels of the video signal.

It adds video sync pulses and color coding signals to your audio, effectively disguising the input as a composite video signal. The device is powered with a 6V adapter and features a color/b&w switch as its only on-board controller. Other manipulations are done solely with the audio input.

Stills of video above and video of visuals on vimeo here: http://vimeo.com/channels/synchronator/7834070

Taken from: http://www.adafruit.com/blog/category/idevices/

http://www.synchronator.com/device.html

SAM MEECH KNITTING DIGITAL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sam Meech is an artist based in Liverpool. Sam usually works with vies but has recently shifted his practice into digital knitting. Sam was struck by the parallels between punchcards and film reels, stitches and pixels and he began to relate them in terms of digital imaging such as textiles. Sam has outline a series of experiments for himself over the course of 6 months. He will be collating and sharing research around a field of artists working with knitting/digital, working with knitting groups to document his practice and create discussion around digital textiles creating a large-scale knitted banner for the 8 hour day movement (Punchcard economy) which will be exhibited this December in FACT Liverpool and lastly developing and proving the concept of knitted animations in an approach to moving image textiles.

http://knitting.smeech.co.uk/

http://punchcardeconomy.co.uk/

TENORI-ON & PUNCH CARDS

 

 

 

 

 

The Tenori-on launch in Berlin. The Tenori-on was designed by Toshio Iwai & Yamaha in Japan. Toshio is a visual artist and has spent most of his life finding ways to make music accessible to people in visual languages. Toshio was inspired by a hand-cranked musical box which payed the song happy birthday. The box works by running a punch card through it. He played the tune at the launch and then turned the card around and played it in reverse. He began to question the holes in the punch card and asked which way was the top and which was the bottom? He transcribed the visual element of one musical device into another. I’m interested in using the Tenori-on “punch card” patterns to run through a knitting machine to create knitted musical visuals, also to see whether you could link a Tenori-on to a computer that would knit the patterns in real time as you created the music.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thingstocomerecords/2401331806/in/set-72157604458710437

PHILLIP GLASS REWORK APP BY BECK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REWORK_ (Philip Glass Remixed) is an interactive tour through the amazing new REWORK_ album, produced by Beck that remixes Philip Glass’ music. The app includes eleven interactive visualizations corresponding to eleven of the remix songs, along with an interactive “Glass Machine” that lets people create their own music inspired by Philip Glass’ early music.

The idea for the REWORK_ album came together during a conversation between Philip Glass and his friend and new collaborator Beck. The pair recruited producer Hector Castillo (David Bowie, Björk, Lou Reed) to help assemble a collection of remixes of Glass’ works by a list of critically acclaimed artists including Beck himself, Tyondai Braxton, Amon Tobin, Cornelius, Dan Deacon, Johann Johannsson, Nosaj Thing, Memory Tapes, Silver Alert, Pantha du Prince, My Great Ghost and Peter Broderick. To complement the album, app developer Snibbe Studio (creator of Björk’s Biophilia app) created the REWORK_ app to give fans an interactive musical experience.

Taken from http://www.adafruit.com/blog/category/idevices/

INDUCTION - WORKSHOP - LASER CUTTING

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although the Tenori-on is quite a tactile piece of equipment I decided to run the design of it through a laser cutter to enable me to use some more crafty techniques with the results. My initial thoughts were to create embroidery templates through which I could embroider wool. This gives the Tenori-on a different context but doesn’t relate well to the patterns it creates. From the reverse of the template made in the laser cutter I also made a stamp so that I could print out the template of the Tenori-on grid to experiment with in terms of how it translates into knitted punch cards.

POSTGRAD SOCIAL

To get to know the studio better and everyone using it we organised a postgrad social and invited all first and second years to attend. I dsigned the poster using an image I had taken on the recent trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

INDUCTION - CORNELY SEWING MACHINE

 

 

 

INDUCTION - ETHOS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To experiment with and to learn to understand the Tenori-on interface a little more I have booked a digital embroidery induction/workshop. Once I stopped trying to use Ethos like Illustrator I began to really love this side of the process. I was also excited when setting up the thread on the machine and when it started to embroider the piece out but this soon became tiresome having to sit and watch the piece be stitched up.

TENORI-ON MANUAL

TENORI-ON DIGITAL FASHION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little Boots is an English electropop singer-songwriter and DJ. She started her music career in a band called Dead Disco but with each of the members of the group wanting to do different things they soon broke up. Little boots started to record her own music which she shared through social media and is well known for her youtube posts of her using the Tenori-on when it wasn’t a well known piece of equipment. Recently Little Boots has been working with New York based Michelle Wu to create a wearable visual of the Tenori-on. The dress is fitted with LED lights to mimic the visuals of the Tenori-on. It is fitted with an SD card reader which loads pre-programmed shows so that the dress dances with pre-configured choreography that fits the particular song playing.

http://createdigitalmotion.com/2013/11/wearable-visuals-little-boots-dynamic-led-dress-like-tenori-on-fashion/

SKILLSHARE WORKSHOPS

 

Being able to work collaboratively on the Ma has been a great benefit to me, I have worked more alongside other practitioners than I have Graphic Designers. As I already have a long list of projects some of us as a group decided to set up a skill share workshop where we could work together to share one anthers skills. Any one can arrange an event and anyone can go based on any limitations in numbers. My part in the collaboration as well as setting up my own skill share workshop was to create a poster that would work for any style of work that was used in it and could work as a template suitable for all practitioners to use to spread the word about their workshop. the first two workshops arranged are with Ane Baztarrika from 1st year Design LAB and Kate Dunstone from 2nd year Graphic Design and Art Direction.

WORD OF THE DAY - TRANSPOSITION

WORD OF THE DAY - ACCESSION

WORD OF THE DAY - TRANSLATION

WORD OF THE DAY - AD HOC

NOTES FROM ONE TO ONE MEETING - 3 - 26.11.2013

• The objects are surrounded by narratives, write these down and use design to translate them. My relationship with the objects and their narratives.
• Excession - The equipment moves on, I part from that part of my life in a structured and very carefully planned way, My work translates music/knitting into media. I am making my own excssion for the equipment which allows me to take the next step.
• Translation and transposition. These may be good words to use when describing what it is I am doing.
• Ian Roberts - Object & Context tutor. He has an interest in historic guitars and our relationships with objects, worth getting in touch with him to chat about the project.
• Use the tenori-on to translate knitting punch cards into music and use the tenori-on templates to transfer back into knitted patterns.
• Constructive criticism to be aware of is that I can try to focus on too many things at once and so wont ever go into real depth in a project. If you I were to concentrate on too many projects then they would all accelerate at the same level. By leaving some projects behind I can come back to them later and with the things I have learnt from going ahead with just one, the projects will move forward a lot quicker and with more depth, meaning and understanding then if I went ahead straight away. Just note down any other ideas for future reference.
• Good idea to pull out one piece of equipment to translate everything through and to focus on. Why the tenor-on? After all it is the one piece of equipment that I brought to Manchester with me.
• Do I need to collate everything, i.e. music collection, bookmarks, shops equipment is bought from etc? Is this part of the story?
• My work almost has a nod to fine art but does lean towards design for it to work.
• Spoke about the set up of John’s equipment, it doesn’t take on the role of a recording studio but more an ad hoc kind of environment.
• Where the equipment goes onto next. Hitch and me discussed ebay but I’d like for the objects to remain within a close circuit of friends, or friends of friends. People around me who I haven’t known for very long, each want a piece of equipment to buy, they respect me for allowing them to use the equipment and respect the journey I am on and want to show their appreciation by owning one of the pieces, does the story make them want a piece more?

JONATHAN HITCHEN MEETING -1

Today I met with Jonathan Hitchen to discuss the personal music publication project.

• What’s the story?
• Guitars are bought due to the musician wanting a particular sound, one that they have heard another musician accomplishing
• Effects pedals are more for experimenting with and sometimes several of the same pedals are owned by the same person
• If it were just a catalogue the objects would just be seen as hardware, what were John’s arrangements with the hardware, how did he have the modulars set up?
• You can re-create a digital version of the modular synthesisers online (where?)
• The set up is like looking at an artists studio, you could perhaps link the colours on a paint palette to a particular painting, could you do this with the music equipment, what wires were in where to create what sound?
• WHat’s my story and reason for doing this?
• Ebay - part of the transaction could be that you ask for a story from them in return for them receiving a story from you. Does this add value?
• Attachments to the objects
• Map destination of where the object go
• Use the Tenori-on as an interface.
• Equipment - Tenori-on - what comes out from this side?
• Not so much about other peoples stories, more about the stories that John’s equipment has.
• Tenori-on stores it’s sounds almost like a miniature version of a punch card.

CLINTON CAHILL - ASSESSMENT - 26.11.13

1000 - 1500 written piece - 9th Dec

- Desktop, objects, mind maps, sketchbooks, bring all in to tell the story.

- You can just use text but also make it more persuasive by using illustrations to show things.

- Find a style of design to match the content.

- Design your words - persuasive through style.

- Reflective and analytical.

- Individuated - it’s not an argument or thesis.

- Thoughts, research - reflect on these things.

- Can include the practice intentions sheets.

Presentation assessment - 12th Dec

- Articulate your ideas clearly and the relationships of the course units to their own research or professional needs or practice.

- Convey a good sense of the intellectual and/or practical motivation and know why the areas in which they want to work are especially interesting or challenging.

- Are able to articulate how they will build and extend work they have already done, e.g. from you Ba or professional experience.

- Present a clearly focussed statement when using complex concepts or language, make them clear and concise.

- As you write you think, so to not write you are denying another level of thought.

- Doesn’t need to be a curated piece.

- Pieces are grouped or clustered for a reason.

- Arranged right and they could be used as a good visual aid.

- Mood board of other peoples work.

- Arrangement of mood board should reflect their style of work, very visual, write some text and quote them, by doing this it shows that you are understanding their work.

- Practice being a designer by arranging someone else’s work, absorb what’s important about them.

- Branding your own project. It has the info and identity.

- Influences, proposals, the branding of the work, show experiments in the workshops, conclusion? Bibliography (where is your info from?) books, websites, list of figures.

- Make a piece of work by writing about your project.

- Include things that are pictorial to your thinking, show how ideas led onto other things. Don’t need to pack everything in.

- Testing our ideas and experimenting

- Trying things that are unfamiliar

- Broadening research methods.

- Blogging is a method - might need advancing if we are comfortable with it.

- Ok to be lost! - Am I doing the right project

- Collaborative practice - what is your rolled? How are you managing problems?

- Show development of ideas, investigation, prototypes, initial reading/thinking, capturing system, sketchbooks, mind maps etc

- Apply teamwork and leadership skills, you taking decisions for your own practice. Manage your own developments reflectively.

Sketchbooks

- Allow you to: speculate, think wildly, develop your own exterior language to get ideas down and moving them around.

- Diaries, list making, bullet points, poems, feeling relaxed and not pressured.

- Personal space to empty your head and to show your thought process.

- Try out different ways of using a sketchbook - digital?

- Capture everything, smell, feel.

- Re-call and record everything, conversations, work from memory.

- Scraps of paper - Annie Shaw uses scraps of paper to note things on and then puts them together later so she can easily move things about, they are what they are, just clipped up - being honest.

See note book for references:

Sarah Howarth.

Nichola Wood & Harriet Rodgers.

Hillary Judd.

Ming Yi Weu.

Sara Cullen.

David Molloy.

Brent Hardy-Smith.

Alice Smith.

John Astbury.

Q&A (Example from previous student about his own practice)

- What is my project?

- Do you like what you have found?

- Is this proving difficult?

- How close is my practice to me?

- Do I hide behind my work?

- What are my real influences?

- Is it ok to copy?

- Do I feel comfortable using other peoples work in my own?

2022 - HANDWRITTEN LETTER PROJECT

Today I went along to see the Handwritten letter project by Craig Oldham at 2022 in Manchester. Craig is a British designer based in the UK. He has produced work in design film, television, art, retail, sports, entertainment and education.” The project extended an invitation to designers and creative thinkers alike to simply write and make known their thoughts posed by this situation: in handwritten form and on their stationery (both of which were seemingly expendable to some, their idea taking preference).”

I love the typography used in the exhibition and it really suite the space well. The letters are displayed cleverly, I’d like to use this in some way in the future. Maybe for my poster presentation.

CODING REFERENCES

References from Alex who is an account manager for a radio station

Codeacademy.com - Has online tutorials

Types of coding - My SQL, Java, CSS, HTML, Flash

Augmented reality, Zen coding, HTML 5, PSD tuts, Web tuts (tutorial sites)

W3 Schools - wikipedia for code

References from Jessica Hische’s website (Letterer, Illustrator & crazy cat lady known for her silly side projects & occasional foul mouth!) - http://jessicahische.is/heretohelp

1. A List Apart A wonderful site covering all things relating to the web with well-written articles by the field’s top practitioners.
2. Codecademy
3. Code Academy
4. CSS Tricks Chris Coyier’s excellent and extremely helpful site with articles, code snippets, and other goodies.
5. Don’t Fear the Internet A site I created with Russ Maschmeyer to teach basic HTML and CSS to Non-Web Designers.
6. Kirby CMS I use Kirby as the content management system for my website. It’s amazing.
7. Method and Craft Web-centric interviews and articles “exploring the creative mind and beauty within each pixel.”
8. Microformats A resource for semantic HTML in general and microformats.
9. Mozilla Developers Network An open community of developers building resources for a better web, regardless of brand, browser or platform. Top online documentation for HTML, CSS, JS, DOM.
10. Awwwards Pure web candy.
11. WordPress Codex A massive site full of articles and forums as well as extensive documentation of all Wordpress features that is relatively easy to read and learn from.
12. Zeldman Web Design news and information since 1995.

WORD OF THE DAY - COPY

Copyright (Quoted from Wikipedia)

Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time, with the intention of enabling the creator of intellectual wealth (e.g. the photographer of a photograph or the author of a book) to get compensated for their work and be able to financially support themselves. Generally, it is "the right to copy", but also gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for the work, to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who may financially benefit from it, and other related rights. It is a form of intellectual property (like the patent, the trademark, and the trade secret) applicable to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete.[1]

Copyleft

Copyleft (a play on the word copyright) is the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work. In other words, copyleft is a general method for marking a creative work as freely available to be modified, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well.[1]

Copyleft is a form of licensing and can be used to maintain copyright conditions for works such as computer software, documents, and art. In general, copyright law is used by an author to prohibit recipients from reproducing, adapting, or distributing copies of the work. In contrast, under copyleft, an author may give every person who receives a copy of a work permission to reproduce, adapt or distribute it and require that any resulting copies or adaptations are also bound by the same licensing agreement.

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States, devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.[1] The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons licenses free of charge to the public. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. An easy-to-understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons license. Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright, but are based upon it. They replace individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner (licensor) and licensee, which are necessary under an "all rights reserved" copyright management with a "some rights reserved" management employing standardized licenses for re-use cases where no commercial compensation is sought by the copyright owner. The result is an agile, low-overhead and low-cost copyright-management regime, profiting both copyright owners and licensees. Wikipedia uses one of these licenses.[2]

WORD OF THE DAY - COMPERE

ARTWORK ATELIER

I recently ventured out with some of the Design LAB group to check out a new space in Salford called Artwork Atelier. It is a new initiative to help Manchester (and Salford’s) creatives flourish. It’s an old lighting warehouse on 95 Greengate which they have gutted to create a collaborative cultural/business initiative. The space is vast and they are just in the early stages of developing it. The guy (apologies for not remembering his name) who showed us around said that they have a space available for a maximum of 10 students for 6 months for free, all we need to do in return is present a proposal. the Design LAB team have been working on a kettle space proposal recently which they are just about to send through, but this doesn’t really fit in with any of my current practice. Whilst I would love to get involved I have to remember why I am here and how much work I have to get through. And so I am hoping to write my own proposal to use the space as an exhibition venire to test out or actually host the full event of a couple of my projects - “Get Your Bits Out” & “To keep or not to keep?” As I am still in the early stages of developing these ideas I don’t think it is quite the right time to write these proposals for the venue just yet until I have researched and experimented a little more.

MACJOUNRNAL VS EVERNOTE

I have recently been teasing out the Macjounrnal and Evernote software as a means of collating all of my software. I have switched repeatedly between the two never knowing which is the best one to use! Here are a few pointers I have learned across the way. Some points may be inaccurate if I haven’t researched them correctly however...

Both do very similar things

Macjournal

Advantages

• Easily allows you to post your notes out to your blog
• Allows you to colour label your notes
• Allows you to easily view your journals and notes along side one another
• Online, one-to-one help was very good and personal
• Easy to create a pdf of all of your notes
• Allows you to see which notes you have posted out to your blog

Disadvantages

• I did have some problems starting up
• It costs $35
• No limit on upload amount
• Doesn’t have much online help other than a guidebook which doesn’t really give you visual examples of what it is explaining

Evernote

Advantages

• Nicer user interface
• No upfront payment
• It has an atlas function which you can tag your entries to certain places
• It has more online videos on how to use the software
• You can clip a webpage straight into a note

Disadvantages

• A bit more complicated to post out to your blog, you have to link it up through ‘if this then that’ recipe
• If you want a premium account you have to pay a monthly fee

WORD OF THE DAY - SIGNIFIED & SIGNIFIER

Digital Futures - 2 - Moodle etc!

With Chris Meadows.

Moodle is only really useful to tutors, students can ask for things to be set up but cannot set thing up themselves. Various platforms can be embedded into moodle for others to see which is about the most useful thing for our group. Before the meetings today Chris had thought about different platforms that might be of some use to the group and categorised them into 5 sections as follows

• Connect - Twitter, Email, SMS, Padlet, Facebook
• Collect - Delicious & Deiigo (Online bookmarking with tags and public collections), dig, stumble upon, interest, google drive, dropbox, box.net, flickr
• Curate - scoop.it, storify.com (Links all the various platforms)
• Conclude - Blogs, Journals
• Co-ordinate - Eventbrite (e-tickets, map, email list, print off attendee list, analytics)

Other useful platforms:

Google hangouts - similar to Skype but you can have multiple people talking at the same time.

Padlet - Brainstorming, organising tool, you can link out to a Facebook page

Mindmup, Mind meister, freemind, x mind, simple mind, my note - Main Map creator

Sketch book pro, Notability, Ink pad.

Pocket - Bookmark tool to read websites later.

if this then that - automation tool which makes recipes to link different platforms and perform different automated tasks

LinkedIn Groups - Handy to get involved as you can get jobs from this.

 

POSTER PRESENTATION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today we had to present where we are up to in Practice 1 and it was great to see where everyone else is up to and to get some positive feedback about where I am at. The cigarette cards layout when down really well with everyone today, I really enjoyed to see people getting up close to the piece to have a proper look. Once person remarked that the type was too small and he wanted them larger, but I explained that the whole point was to attract people closer so they would interact with them and treat them delicately as if they were a part of someone collection. Clinton commented on how it worked well using the pencil to show that it is still an ongoing thought process, not a finalised piece.

CLINTON CAHILL - APPROACHES TO NARRATIVE - 19.11.13

• What is narrative? - narrative models, narrative and design.
• Telling a story. An account or story, as of events, experiences etc. That part of a work that relates events. The process or technique of narrating.
• Jonathan Culler - Literary theory: A very short introduction.
• Scientific logic, A + B = C Reading fiction feels more real than reading history. History is facts.
• It is sometimes better to leave out things in your designs so the viewer has to fill in the gaps themselves, it engages a sense of imagination.
• Illustrations where you see everything but it doesn’t really explain a lot, we want the whole story and to know what is happening.
• Tick-Tock. Gives the noise of the clock, a fictional structure, differentiating between physically identical sounds.
• Humanising time by giving it a form.
• Tick-Tick is not a story
• Tick is the beginning and Tock is the end. It is the model of what we call a plot.
• Structure, shape, transformation, resolution.
• Narratives are transferable, they work in different media.
• Stories - myths, legends...
• Moving Image - Film, Video...
• Sequenced image - Graphic Novels, Custom stories...
• Static Image - Narrative Painting, advertisement...
• Display - Museum design, exhibition, visitors centre...
• Performance - Theatre, dance, readings...
• Abstract narratives - Process of reading, immersing ourselves in a painting.
• Dealing with time:- capturing events (e.g. as video/film footage or recorded sound) Streaming real time and/or the manipulation of time through editing.
• Still image compositional devices: Stop frame, multiple exposure.
• Temporal Separation and sequencing of related images/information.
• Interactivity and user choice: Web navigation, open print layouts, maps, game design.
• Time is and ingredient in composition. It is one of the materials that you work with in a narrative.
• how time changes the way we read illustrations from the knowledge we have of shapes and objects. As a modern audience we can keep up with the editing because we have learnt how to do this.

 

Examples of narrative models in film making.

• Designing narrative still isn;t the same as writing the story.
• Narrative models - Archetypes
• Joseph Campbell - The hero with a thousand faces (1975)
• Shake up the form to look at what you are trying to say.
• Single frames might not make sense without it being in the context of the others.

See notebook for more references and notes.

POSTER PRESENTATION IDEAS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In order for me to get my ideas across I began to look at the different objects and forms within the work I am intending to do. I started with the project proposal that I intend to take forward which is the Music Equipment Publication and began to look at how this equipment could translate into info graphics. Also keeping in mind the other projects I wanted an aspect of the curated exhibition space to come through in my presentation. the first idea looked at having graphics framed and using the wires that connect the equipment to show the links between projects. This idea soon moved on as the problems with expenses in buying frames that would suit the wires got in the way.

I next moved onto exploring knit through illustration as, illustration is something that I would like to improve on but for it not to become a main focus of my practice. I delved quite deep into this idea thinking about having a hanging illustrated knitted umpire and trousers. Within the knitted patterns the info-graphics and supporting images would sit. I also planned for there to be pockets in the piece so that you could pick out cigarette cards with more information on them. After a while of looking at this idea, I decided that to have the two mediums brought together, knit and collected cigarette cards was a bit confusing with too many points of focus and so moved onto just using the cigarette cards format to display my work with.

This idea went through a few stages, initially following a meeting with Clinton, I decided to make small drawers. This didn’t feel visual enough for me, it wouldn’t have the instant impact I wanted. I then looked at the way the letters were displayed in the hand written letter project from 2022 by Craig Oldham and planned to display them in a smilier way. This would give the piece movement and encourage the viewer to move around it. Next I decided I wanted the viewer to pick up the cards and feel them as you would a pack of collected cigarette cards and settled on the idea of having them on a small shelf which would draw people in. I planned to write on the walls around the display to help explain the setting without you having to get too close to the piece initially but then in wanting to know more you would have to pick up the cards and read what they said.

FACT LIVERPOOL

I recently contributed to a unique and invaluable resource for craniofacial surgeons in collaboration with Alder Hey at FACT in Liverpool. The information gathered will help figure out the average head size. A recent graduate from LJMU designed the graphics for the event, Isobele Seacombe - http://cargocollective.com/isobelseacombe

My friends who I went along with also joined me in the echo installation by Mark Boulos where it projects your image into an environment, a street pavement, and on closer inspection your image distorts or changes ever so slightly.

STRATEGIES OF THOUGHT - MEMORY & FORGETTING

The Eiffel Tower wasn’t a popular piece back in the day and was only meant to be up for the expo. People got used to it and quite attached and in the end didn’t want it knocked down. One fellow went to the Eiffel Tower every day to have his lunch, he hated it that much that he did this as he remarked that it was the only place he could have lunch and not have to look at the Eiffel Tower. It was used as a radio mast but it didn’t need to look like that and so took on a useless function. Symbolic power of something. What the Eiffel tower has become is a ritual, a ritual to go up to the top of it to see the views of Paris. Las Vegas, Paris, Venis + gambling, it’s what it generates and produces not the thing itself. Blackpool tower was modelled on the Eiffel Tower but it wraps buildings around it in the form of amusement arcades as it cannot exist on it’s own.

Rodchenko’s tower design - overly literal, overly determined. Material, functional, symbolic. Important in sights of memory, embed memory - how these things come together, they have to co-exist at the same time. Memory and history interact, the creation of memory. Overdetermined because of this interaction.

Rachel Whiteread memorial - temporary and eternal at the same time. memorials preserving, immortalise death. What happens around that? One artist (annoyingly can’t remember who) created an art piece which was a blank memorial. This didn’t matter that it was blank as it was symbolic, people still attached memorials to it, it’s the symbolic language of things. Automatically geared to inscribed things onto the surface of things.

Events themselves are not as important in terms of memory, its what attached itself to the event, i.e. the memorial.

memory - sights

history - events

Barthes writing a biography, not an autobiography for himself. Biographine, made up of fragments, his choice for images was a treat to himself.

WORD OF THE DAY - TURGID

NOTES ABOUT ASSESSMENT

• What is it that you are doing?
• How do you go about it?
• and who cares?

Annie - You should write in the 3rd person, don’t write as in , me, my and I.

Clinton - It should be practiced based writing about how you feel about things. In first person

You need to keep asking questions and take a look at yourself doing it. Be yourself as much as possible, don’t adopt a turgid style of writing like for example from our strategies of though lectures or from the books we are reading.

Who is commenting on the subject now?

15 - 20 minute slot, you don’t have to talk during the whole slot, it should be more of a conversation.

9 - 11 am - set up time, 11 presentations.

You will be assessed by 2 members of staff

See guidelines online

Use Harvard system to reference things

Use turn it in to submit monograph - you can have a draft version until the deadline where it become your final turn in piece. It checks plagiarism.

Include a few quotes and references in the monograph.

WORD OF THE DAY - LUDDITE

DIGITAL FUTURES - 1 - INTRO

6 - 9th May = symposium...

of our work and how the digital has contributed, led etc. There will be a keynote speaker, a “poster” presentation or pecha kucha style perhaps, it can be whatever we want it to be.

12 + 19 Dec, 9 Jan, 3 + 10 March = Independent study days. Next week we will meet with Moodle Guru, Chris Meadows to help us maximise our use of moodle. We should set up a dig futures blog or space where we can all talk to one another.

DIGITAL IN DESIGN

Code Creatives (http://www.codecreatives.info/) project which is a part of MIRIAD. Projects are based around skills development. Year long project to look at how to use computer coding in creative projects.

Derek Trillo - http://www.insightimages.co.uk/

The flow of life: Architectural photography as populated spaces.

Produces pictures which are aesthetically pleasing.

Cross over of architecture and urban design.

Light trails photographed of people walking.

Justin Quinell bridge - long exposure, Terrence Chang 2010.

Derek combines several takes of the same space with people moving mourn the space and makes them into one images - Is it a true representation?

Oscar Ryalander (?) image made up of 52 negatives in 1857 - this is an old concept.

Digital constructions showing the flow of people challenges the notion of photography.

Sally Morfill - http://www.artdes.mmu.ac.uk/profile/smorfill

Cerebral

Interest in movement and space

“I’m wary” collaboration with Mary Maclean 2001

• Movement of the viewer in the space is what is important
• 2 viewpoints to move between to find the right and wrong way to view it.

Sally asked 2 people a question and they had to discuss this whilst they had motion sensors on which recorded the X and the Y axis. From the information gathered she creates a vector image and reproduces into vinyl. The motion monitored that Sally is interested in is the hand gestures people use whilst talking. The vinyl is displayed as the final piece with the text discussed next to the vinyl.

David Ogle - http://www.davidogle.co.uk/

The value of site and technology drive to abolish distance. Fundamental to his research is value. Artworks and buildings, the experiences of things. The telephone and aeroplane shrink distances and have conquered space. “ All distance in time and space are shrinking” Technology shrinks distances but does it bring value to the experience of something? To look at an image of the Sistene Chapel on your computer, what is the value compared to experiencing the real thing? Things which are scarce and hard to reach are the things we most value. What we struggle to conquer elevates the worth for instance climbing a mountain. Kittler 1999 german, “any medium can be translated into any other”. Site specific installations based around the idea of drawing - quite ephemeral. Walter Benjamin 1935 “In even the most perfect reproduction...”

Ben

Uses a non-visual way of communication data to a user. Arduino tongue - plate put onto mouth which sends data to your tongue and creates visuals in your head. Audio scanning - 3D environment, 1D sound - you can make anything into a button. He records a space using a ball which links up to the computer which the software remembers, then if anyone moves near this space it makes a sound - i.e. it is a button. the user knows through audio where the space is and so is being fed information through a non visual form. 3D sound - 3D world - is the current project he is working on using 2D dots as the visual. the blue dot is your ear and you move this around which changes what you would normally hear if you were in this virtual 3D environment.

Genevive Say - http://genevievesay.com/

The stream project wired - dancer and choreographer. Interested in exposing the inner workings of the body and brain through dance and performance. Neuro feedback - brainwave data, heart rate and respiratory volume. This info is fed back to the user so they can respond to it and help. i.e. reduce anxiety etc. Footballers use it to get into the zone before a game. Initial experiments proved not to have good relationships between the art and the science, the equipment was restricting for the dancer, the sounds weren’t very nice to respond to and there was probably too much data. They introduced a new technology, the mind wave headset.

Brain - Mind wave - wifi - laptop - midi interface - lighting desk

So the computer controlled the lighting desk with the signals given from the dancers brain. Various lights were used in the performance, fairy lights, light bulbs, theatrical lights etc. When the dancer went into a meditative state it was an alternative focus so the lights would change accordingly. To control the cognitive states the dancer was given certain tasks to perform like reading a newspaper, doing some mathematics etc. which in turn would change the lighting in the performance.

Ralph Mills - http://theantimuseum.wordpress.com/about/

Field archeologist and writer. The anti-museum. The land of lost content in Shropshire has lots of everyday things. The museum has no labels so the viewers can make their own experiences up. The problem is we don’t capture the stories the viewers think/make up when they see these things. We are all curates. Ralph has done his phd research into things/objects. Museums how things in glass cases what value do these objects have. They all have meaning to the people who put them there but what do they mean? Everyday narratives - Crookshanks. Ralph has begun to create a virtual museum in which he records objects so that they can be viewed in 360 degrees (he did this with his iphone!). He is looking into producing photo kiosks which you can go to use to record your own objects to be stored in the museums and galleries. Trying to capture the personal values in objects. In the Q&A it was brought up about Oxfam, where people would write narratives about the objects they donated to the shop.

Anthony Rowe - http://www.squidsoup.org/blog/about/

Founder of squidsoup.org His particular interest lies in mixed reality immersive experience. He has looked into combining the digital world into a physical space. A programme he has developed which people can interact with brings digital animals to life, if you stick your arm into the projection they walk up it. If projected into sand, the software can detect of people have made a high barrier that the animals can’t walk over and so have to walk around. If two bugs meet they would magic up a bigger bug. The software was used at Glastonbury, one of the animals was invincible, kids get quite physical with the interactions, young adults too. In the Infestation project where a room was full of digital bugs and real bean bags, kids would try to demolish the creatures whereas older people would have a more calming effect from being in the room. squidsoup.org/infestation No one really went in and looked out for the projector, all people would instantly start to interact with the projections.

Ocean of light - Uses light, volumetric, it has volume in the space. The piece is an environment that you can walk into. the creation was influenced by a modular system found at the Zurich Train Station. They were able to lend the prototype to experiment with to inspire their creation. However people saw the object rather than the context as it was beautiful and intriguing. their invention became more organic and allowed you to interact by walking into the piece. Ephemeral space can be created and destroyed there and then. Submergence

JONATHAN BARNBROOK - 11.11.13

 

I’m a big fan of Barnbrook’s and I am lucky enough to say this is the second time I have heard him give a lecture.

- Hasn’t had a job as thinks design studios produce shit work.

- You can do what you want if you stick to it and make sacrifices.

- Where is Graphic Design in society?

- Economics and digital have forced us to blur the boundaries between skills, graphic designers are expected to be good at a few things.

- He was once told “You are a citizen first and a graphic designer secondly”

 

Political Work - Occupy London

Barnbrook was asked to re-design the Occupy London logo, although it had to be put forward to a democratic vote against 5 other. Barnbrook’s logo was chosen! the other logos contained images of people marching and clenched fists which is something we need to move away from. Barnbrook chose to use simple graphics to translate a clear and concise point, through using a circle and an arrow in red and black. The newspaper for Occupy London uses one of Barnbrook’s fonts called bastard. It is a blackletter typeface designed in 1990. which was intended to be used by corporate fascists.

Olympukes

If Barnbrook doesn’t reference other designers, why does he think it is important for students to have practicing guest lecturers like himself do lectures? Barnbrook said that he doesn’t do any work for the likes of coca cola as it would be hypocritical for himself and towards students. In the past he has worked a lot with Damien Hirst and most recently with Bowie. Barnbrook commented that record covers don’t get discussed anymore like they used to, people just tend to say whether the design is good or not. The album cover he designed for Bowie’s The Next Day album took 2 months to arrive at a final design after going through various ideas. The project had to be kept a secret until it’s release and so Barnbrook had to use the codeword table whenever talking about the album cover design. Several attempts later on the design and things still weren’t working, Bowie suggested turning the image he had chosen to use from a few years back upside down. They decided to settle on using the album cover from the Heroes album which represented Bowie in his youth looking forward. Inside the album cover, Barnbrook intentionally chose the colours to clash with regards to the lyrics as he said you can get all of that kind of information online these days, and so the print inside was just a nod to them. Some of the lyrics were chosen to stand out (and the next day, and the next, and another day) which Bowie had referenced from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth (tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow). It’s the why not the how that is important. The vinyl label is a white square and as there’s no right way to hold a record up the text is printed all around the square. The white square was very important in the design as it was translated into all of the advertising for the album release and was applicable to any format, fast food, perfume, consumer desirables, luxury hotels poster, it was anti advertising.

“Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming”

Online the campaign continued for the album where by the public were invited to create their own versions of the album cover.

Why design a new typeface?

1. Expression of language. Double think - George Orwell 1984. Anthony burgess - Fuck it!
2. To improve society. Modernist utopia.
3. Using our past to create something new.
4. To create beauty. Mason 1992 (Originally Manson after the serial killer) letterforms taken from architecture

PART 2!

You shouldn’t work for who you think you should work for but with who you want to work with, if you don’t ask you don’t get.

Barnbrook was on the curating team for the V&A show “Bowie is...” He said it is difficult to show music in an exhibition without it looking like all other exhibitions about music. The level of design that needs to be used, needs to show that you care about the people who like Bowie. Not everyone will get the design but it’s important to those who will. A phrase was printed onto all of the exhibition tickets which changed every three hours, the V&A didn’t understand why you would need to do this but it was important to make the show become something different. The exhibition was designed by theatre set designers who also worked on the opening of the olympics

If you work in another language you have to understand how to play with it. Hirst books 1997 - Barnbrook explained flicking through it like flicking through the tv channels, there’s no right part of the book to start with and that every page was like it’s own record cover, each had it’s own design.

People tend to commission what they can see, so you have to show them what you can imagine. The Barnbrook studio tend to work on about 70% commission work and 30% their own personal work.

Vernacular design - use the things around you to create design.

First Things First Manifesto 2000 Various authors This manifesto was first published in 1999 in Emigre 51.   We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it. Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession's time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best. Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse. There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help. We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design. In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no more decades will pass before it is taken to heart. Jonathan Barnbrook Nick Bell Andrew Blauvelt Hans Bockting Irma Boom Sheila Levrant de Bretteville Max Bruinsma Sian Cook Linda van Deursen Chris Dixon William Drenttel Gert Dumbar Simon Esterson Vince Frost Ken Garland Milton Glaser Jessica Helfand Steven Heller Andrew Howard Tibor Kalman Jeffery Keedy Zuzana Licko Ellen Lupton Katherine McCoy Armand Mevis J. Abbott Miller Rick Poynor Lucienne Roberts Erik Spiekermann Jan van Toorn Teal Triggs Rudy VanderLans Bob Wilkinson