THINK Log Book Blocks 3+4

THINK Workgroup Blocks 3 + 4 Logbook

BLOCK 3 WEEK 1 “To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, and trampled on?” Marinetti (1909, Futurist Manifesto) Marinetti’s understanding of the future, past, and present is quite unlike any other up until this point. He wrote the Futurist Manifesto in such a way that makes it substantially difficult for his audience to fully understand his intentions on the first try. This may be a result of the piece being translated from Italian, or it could just be the writer’s need to describe things incredibly thoroughly. Throughout the manifesto, he denounces tradition, culture, and any other form of holding onto the past. He goes as far to say that libraries, museums, and other institutions meant to preserve culture should be abolished entirely. While wanting to leave the past in the past is understandable, Marinetti takes this to a new extreme.

He highly romanticized war, violence, and speed. He claims that war is “the only hygiene of the world”. Before the section “MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM”, he details a car crash in a way that glorifies the event and highlights the violence of machinery with the intention to present them as beautiful or marvelous, while ignoring the danger that comes with the thrill of violence.

Marinetti’s writing style is quite convoluted and difficult to understand, however, it does have its highlights. While his beliefs may be a bit controversial, it can be noted that his writing truly reflects his emotions and thoughts in reference to futurism and his own political standing. He calls the readers to action using ethos and communicating the passion behind his thoughts.

For my Open Lab course, I’ve decided to learn bookbinding, but my goal is not just to master the skill. I want to create something strange and unconventional, and really redefine what bookbinding is. Similar to how the futurists create and follow their own rules with little regard for how things are supposed to be done, I am creating my own rules for how I will bind my books, just with a lot less…violence.

BLOCK 3 WEEK 2 “How to Make a Dadaist Poem (method of Tristan Tzara) To make a Dadaist poem: Take a newspaper.

Take a pair of scissors.

Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem.

Cut out the article.

Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.

Shake it gently.

Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.

Copy conscientiously.

The poem will be like you.

And here are you a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar” This week, our assignment was to write a Dadaist poem using the method of Tristan Tzara, as listed above. Originally after seeing this assignment, I was very confused and did not entirely understand the point of doing this. I did some further research into the Dada movement, some of the artworks, and the purpose behind the movement. The art from the Dada expresses themes such as irrationalism and nonsense. It is taking these abstract concepts and visualizing them in a way that is interesting to look at.

The Dada movement centers around the irrational and things that don’t quite make sense always. In Design Research so far this semester, our assignments have been to take life goals that are absolutely irrational to complete in a week and find some way to visualize them. This week, I have taken the goal “to live like a bird and travel the world” and created a found footage video with clips from cameras attached to birds flying over different parts of the world such as Paris and Dubai and paired this with a VR headset so it feels as though you really are traveling the world like a bird would.

The original material for this assignment (found footage) was not mine, much like the words I used for my Dada poem.

BLOCK 3 WEEK 3 (Film is) “a medium at hand that was able to present the continuity of time and motion through space in a unparalleled manner, empowering the creator to embark upon unprecedented journeys of expression in exploring the new dimensions of a new age” Film is not a medium that I work with often, but as someone who has a strong background in audio I find it really fascinating. Especially seeing early films and where it all started really illustrates how far film has come.

I usually work with static media, which often makes it difficult to convey the idea of time passing without creating a larger body or collection of works. With film, you have both visuals and audio to work with, as well as being able to use a variety of clips from different locations and times to express an idea, a story, etc.

My first experience working with film was last semester in my Open Lab course. I worked with two other people to create a short film centered on themes of addiction and mental health. Our entire group had very little experience, so there were many challenges such as learning how to edit, use a camera, and how to write a film. Although there were a lot more factors we had to take into consideration compared to past group projects, we all agreed that this was the best medium we could have chosen to fully convey our idea to our audience.

BLOCK 3 WEEK 4

I think the fact that many signs we consider universal, are really just things that we all learn when we are young. These things are all taught, but we’re so used to thinking that they are universal. I think that this can also be applied to the way in which we look at art. In general, what people who are not artists consider to be good or bad art all seems to be pretty similar in that it all comes from the same Western and often male canon. Especially in the Western world, we seem to live in a sort of bubble where many of us do not often acknowledge or seek out the art of artists from East Asia, Africa, etc.

Of course I cannot exclude myself from this. It’s not something done to intentionally harm people, it is simply the way that we are taught and something we need to work on. I think one of the first times I realized this was in one of my high school literature classes. My teacher at the time really made sure that we were consuming literature that was both inside and outside of the Western canon. This way, we could still read and understand the classics, but also learn that there is much more outside of this canon that we need to explore. I think that this also applies in Think Workgroup. More often than not, the idea of the Western canon is brought up, and we discuss how this can affect our relationship with art and the standards surrounding art and design.

BLOCK 3 WEEK 5 “Graphic design was both an expression and a key instrument of this ideology, and it was key to promoting consumption as an ideal, not simply a practicality” The Modernist movement served as a turning point in the way that we consume media and how advertising is created. In a world of social media and microtrends, overconsumption is all around us. Modernist advertising began to promote consumption and consumer culture as something that you had to partake in, versus something that was a luxury. This was a new concept at the time, but nowadays it’s everywhere.

Graphic design is used in advertising in a way that makes you feel as though you have to have something and that maybe a certain product would greatly improve your life.

Especially with services like next day delivery and services that allow you to pay later like Klarna, consumption truly has become an ideal. In design research, a classmate of mine is doing a project on how many Earth’s it would take to sustain everyone currently on this planet if they all lived like she does. During our feedback session, we had a conversation about consumption, overconsumption, and where this leaves us all. While many of us make our best effort to purchase second hand clothing, take public transport, etc, we still do not realize how much we consume and how much graphic design in advertising may influence that.

BLOCK 4 WEEK 1 In December of 1961, Claes Oldenburg turned a downtown store on the East Side of Manhattan into a place in which he would sell his sculptures, which were made of plaster, chicken wire, and cloth, painted over with household enamel to form crude representations of everyday things—dresses, tights, panties, cake, soda cans, pie, hamburgers, automobile tires.”

I think that Oldenburg’s entire concept is really interesting, because it bridges the gap between fine art and everyday life. While we no longer live in the year 1576 and much of fine art now does surround topics of people and everyday life, the way it is presented is often not quite like this. Having this type of general store setup really changes how the art is viewed. Typically when we see fine art outside of ArtEZ, it’s in very carefully curated museums with very clean layouts, not something quite this relatable.

I think that the topic of accessibility comes up quite often throughout my education at ArtEZ, especially in Design Research. We are often shown different examples of art and art installations, some of which are intended to make getting involved in art accessible to everyone such as Moradavaga’s Vira-Lata installation. This installation consisted of 2,300 cans that you can turn. Each side is a different color, so if you turn the cans, you are changing the appearance of the installation. I thought this was interesting both because it is making art accessible, and also because in a way, the artist is losing some control over their work by allowing others to change it.

BLOCK 4 WEEK 2

Robot Number 4 People have been reimagining the future for decades and in many different ways.

Some designers have imagined utopian or dystopian futures, while others have imagined specific parts of what life may be like centuries from now, rather than all of it. One specific example I found interesting is the one above, titled “Robot Number 4”. The designer behind it created a robot that is technically capable of many things, but stuck inside a pod shaped body which makes it not physically capable of much of anything. This means that it needs humans to help it and listen to what it wants.

In Design Research, we talk a lot about speculation, especially about the future.

This week, we played a card game in groups where we would have to select different cards to decide our topic, context, etc and construct some sort of product for the future.

BLOCK 4 WEEK 3 “, in a culture of rampant commodification, with all its blindspots, distortions, pressures, obsessions, and craziness, it‘s possible for visual communicators to discover alternative ways of operating in design. The escalating commercial take-over of everyday life makes democratic resistance more vital than ever.” (FTF 2000) Art in relation to commercial culture is something that could be discussed for years on end without actually coming to any form of a conclusion. The First Things First Manifesto discusses graphic design in relation to capitalism and how designers tend to get stuck in some form of a capitalism rat race with no foreseeable end, using their skills only to create work for advertisements, brand development, and other marketing. To get a job where you can do that in the first place, you have to market yourself and your work. In Interactive Media, I’m creating a portfolio website for myself and while at its core it’s meant so that there is an overview of my work in one place, it will most likely be used in the future as a form of advertisement for myself so others can see my work.

BLOCK 4 WEEK 4 “There is a right way and a wrong way to do everything. A good way and a bad way, a rational way and a crazy way, a clear way and a chaotic way, the modern way and the modern way.”

Keedy argues that within the field of graphic design, Modernism is widely considered the only “good design” when it shouldn’t necessarily be the one true standard.

Especially in design, there isn’t always a good or bad or right or wrong way to do things. We are always encouraged to experiment and attempt the impossible, especially in Design Research this past semester. We were given a week to try to accomplish someone else’s life goal; a week to visualize what someone wants to do within their entire lifetime. Many of the experiments that came out of this (or at least I know some of mine were) just straight up weird or confusing or even a little concerning sometimes. It has been emphasized in class many times that we should just try an experiment, even if the end result yielded by said experiment didn’t work out the way that we wanted it to.

BLOCK 4 WEEK 5 “But design values and history is taught through a canon; that accepted pantheon of work by predominantly European and American male designers that sets the basis for what is deemed “good” or “bad.””

One interesting thing that I think all designers come to notice very early on is how design is evaluated. Like the quote says, the standard for what defines good and bad in terms of design is mainly decided by white Western men, and most of the work in this canon is made by them as well. I think that social media has done a good job at exposing us to design made by people who are not white Western men, but the problem has not been solved yet. This is something that has come to be over so many years, and it will take years to reverse.

However, across all of our classes especially Think Workgroup, I think that we are also taught about other artists, art styles, and works. During Project Month, for example, one of the workshops was modeled after a certain type of Chinese printing that was popular for political protests. We were given the context to what we were learning about, examples and other information, as well as getting a chance to try it ourselves. In Think, we read different forms of literature that acknowledge this, such as the piece that the quote above is from and that this entire logbook entry stems from. Representation is important!