- engraving of the "great chain of being" from the Rhetorica Christiana of 1579
- frontispiece to Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651)
- One reason why print-makers and engravers were often interested in depicting the social hierarchy, it is suggested, is because - as artists who were also craftsmen - they were obliged to occupy an ambiguous position within it.
- William Powell Frith's painting Derby Day (1856-58)
- "an unacknowledged conspiracy" since the 1970s on the part of both Labour and the Conservatives "to pretend [that] the mighty inherited social differences of previous ages are dead and gone".
- London as the "Great Wen"
- the split between north and south has been widening at a faster rate since the 1970s, not just because of de-industrialisation and the drain of money and talent southwards, but also because mass awareness of these things seems to have deepened
- extreme economic disparities that exist between different parts of the UK
- ownsfolk in Scotland and the north of England were disproportionately likely to see themselves as "happy".
- The Full Monty (1997)
- Yet perhaps what is most and unavoidably missing from Rank is the politics of it all.
- The United States was founded on a revolution that abolished the monarchy, aristocracy, titles and primogeniture. Britain may be able in the future to become a more equal and open society while retaining all of these things. But this has yet to be proved.
Notes from B.Anderson, Imagined Communitites
Page 3. Marxist movements and states have tended to become national not only in form but in substance, i.e., nationalist
Page 4. the 'end of the era of nationalism,' so long prophesied, is not remotely in sight.
Page 4. Hugh Seton-Watson
Page 4. No "scientific definition" of the nation can be devised;
Page 5: ‘nation-ness’ and ‘nationalism’ are cultural artefacts of a particular kind.
Page 5: Hans Kohn and Carleton Hayes,'founding fathers'
Page 6: easier if one treated [nationalism] as if it belonged with 'kinship' and 'religion', rather than with 'liberalism' or fascism'.or
Page 7: nation is an imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.
Page 7. Gellner: 'Nationalism invents nations where they do not exist’.
Page 7: all communities are imagined.
Page 7: nation exists when a significant number of people in a community consider themselves to form a nation, or behave as if they formed one.'
Page 8: The nation is imagined as limited
Page 8: It is imagined as sovereign
Page 8: It is imagined as a community,
Page 8: reasons for sacrifices lie in the cultural roots of nationalism.
Notes from: Dieter Lesage, The Academy is Back (2009)
Very often, the academic turn seems to be a way to turn away from the academy: indeed, if the art field becomes an academic one, then what an academy has to offer can also be found elsewhere, at other institutions and self-organized initiatives constituting the field of expanded academia. The suggestion seems clear: we don’t need the academy.
Why should there be a doctorate in the arts, rather than nothing? Weren’t we happy without it? It is no secret that many people see neither the socio-economic necessity nor the artistic relevance of a doctorate in the arts. There is fierce opposition to it from people within higher arts education, universities, and the arts field—at least in so far as it still makes sense to draw a clear-cut distinction between higher arts education, universities, and the arts. Indeed, among many other things, the Bologna Process could be described as a deconstruction of the old demarcations between precisely these three sectors.
The time of academy-bashing is over. Indeed, the academy is back, almost. It’s absolutely fine to situate yourself outside the academy. But one shouldn’t hesitate to play a role within an academy, as many former outsiders today do quite successfully. It is my bet that the art academy is going to be the defining innovative institution within the art field in the next twenty years, much more so than museums, galleries, biennials, whatever.
Source: e-flux
Mark Fisher - Capitalist Realism, is there no alternative
- p1 - 2006 film Children of men, 2005, V for Vendetta
- p2 - It's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism
- p3 - the new defines itself in response to what's already established; at the same time, the established has to reconfigure itself in response to the new
- p7 - postmodernism=capitalist realism.
- p8 - the horror about the ways that capitalism has seeped into the very unconscious
- p9 - Kurt Cobain and his struggling with realisation that he is a part of mainstream
- p2 - the film performes our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity
- p10 - Simon Reynolds, 1996, The Wire
- p.15 - what needs to be kept in mind is both that capitalism is a hyper-abstract impersonal structure and that it would be nothing without our co-operation.
- p.16 - Michael Schudson, Advertising, the uneasy persuasion, 1984
- p.17 - Badiou, modernisation;Zizek
Zupancic: the rally principle is... ideologically mediated
- For Lacan, the Real is what any 'reality' must suppress
- p.18 - green issues, capitalism destroys the environment
- p.19 - privatisation of stress. Bureaucracy changed its form, didn't disappear
- 20. - education is the dominating imperative in capitalist realism
- p 21 - reflexive impotence, knowing that things are bad, but we can't do anything about it
- p22 - inability to pursue anything but pleasure, hedonism
- p22 - Kafka's The Trial, Ostensible acquittal and Indefinite postponement
Working from home, homing from work.
- 24 students: Post-literate 'new flesh' that is 'too wired' to concentrate
Page 33 - If the figure of discipline was the worker-prisoner, the figure of control is the debtor-addict
Page 33 - The attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Page 33 -C apitalism is profoundly illiterate
Page 34 - Teachers are caught between being facilitator-entertainers and disciplinarian-authoritarians
Page 34 - Control societies are based on debt rather than enclosure;
Page 35 - combine rapacious pursuit of profit with the rhetoric of ecological concern and social responsi- bility
Page 35 - Being smart means being dynamic and nomadic, and against centralized bureaucracy
Page 36 - The persistent association of neoliberalism with the term ‘Restoration'
Page 39 - Michael Mann’s 1995 film Heat, ’
- p32 - R.Sennet. The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism
- p33 - the situation of family in post-Fordist capitalism is contradictory. It requires the family, even as it undermines it.
Notes from The Book Trust Prospectus, 2010
P79 - L. V. Deursen: I also don't like it when publishing is meant to just satisfy a small group. Book publishing is interesting because a book can travel easily, because it can be purchased cheaply, and because it's actually the best device to distribute thoughts and ideas.
P84 - you can talk about the book and you can make dummies, but to all of a sudden have it back from the printer is often quite a shock. Especially the way this book came back - sort of purposefully casual, not very expensive-looking or particularly beautiful.
P86 - I quite like when there are some restrictions in a given project; I think that's actually quite healthy.
P88 - I can imagine a lot of people study graphic design because they have an interest in books and their content; in that sense, maybe it's not to weird that this field is now somehow new and more inhabited by designers.
Why do people want to look alike? Why do they want to do the same thing?
P90 - I can't really say that every graphic designer is a good publisher. Not every graphic designer is a good writer, far from it. Not every graphic designer is a good designer, even! [laughs]
-p91 - creating your own content is a good exercise and it can be really helpful when you have to make work for clients.
- p.98 - Goods allegedly exchange for a single bulb [of tulip]: two lasts of wheat, for lasts of rye, for fat oxen, wit day swine, twelve fat sheep, two hogshead of wine, for tuns of beer, two tons of butter, 1,000 pounds of cheese, a complete bed, a suit of clothes, a silver drinking cup.
Notes from De Duve, When Form Has Become Attitude
LP. 21 - creativity= ability to perceive + imagination (gestalt). Allows art to be taught, not only the technical skill
Pedagogues: Froebel, Montessori, Decroly. School reformers, Rudolf Steiner, John Dewey. Great modern theorists of art: Herbert Read, E.H.Gombrich, Rudolf Arnheim.
- p.22 The difference between talent and creativity is that the former is unequally distributed and the latter universally.
- p.23 - the difference between metier and medium is that the former has a historical existence and the latter a transhistorical existence.
- p.24 - the difference between imitation and invention goes without saying. Whereas imitation reproduces, invention produces; whereas imitation generates sameness, invention generates otherness; whereas imitation seeks continuity, invention seeks novelty.
Richard Serra on drawing
“I have dealt with hand-eye coordination all my life – it’s another kind of language for me. To see is to think and drawing is another way of thinking"
(The artist on his drawing retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in an interview with Charlie Rose, 21 April 2011).
Source: Bildwerk
From S. Heller, The Art Direction Explained at last
The value of multiple entry points
Any universe simple enough to be understood is too simple to produce a mind able to understand it
John D Barrow, p. 56
The rewards of black and white
- Yosemite: one of the "565 world's 565 largest photographs", p. 63
- p.64, color was considered less real, truthful
The use of parallel narratives
- Glazer: I'm convinced the re's a link between all things... you could take two of the most random objects... a chair and a skyscraper... and you will discover an uncanny series of relationships between them. p.68
It's his creative methodology,free associating in order to uncover hidden interconnections.
-Crossing words out, erasing
The difference between What and How
- p.83 Designers have to think about What, not How.
- P.84. African creation myth in which God gives Man a choice between a happy life as a cattle rancher and "What" - but His refuses to define what illusive "What" is. It's up to man to figure it out. Those who choose to pursue this question must leave their ancestral Africa forever, the same way Adam and Eve had to leave the Garden of Eden.
- p.121 Eike Konig, Hort: Every job is a completely new situation and needs to be considered in a new way. The is no room for self-actualisation, or giving your personal design profile a boost. It's about performing the task, learning from it and enjoying yourself in the process.
- p. 127, Vince Frost: Get used to being invisible. Never treat projects as if they are 'bread and butter'.
Art direction goes digital, Khoi Vinh
Art direction has traditionally meant controlling the narrative.
Art director's talent is ... high level of control. Good at direction is good storytelling. P.163
- options transform an audience of consumers into a constituency of users. Users want to retain at least some level of control. p.165
- the need for an art-director is not lost,... it has been re-distributed across many different fronts.p.166
- it is now a form of conversation, many-to-many paradigm
- see Roland Barthes, 1967 essay The Death of the Author
- good narrative gives rise to great conversation, p.169
- great digital art direction lets users shape their own experiences. P.170
At directing myself, Ross MacDonald
- p. 173 personal work - code for "I don't get many paid jobs these days" . Wow! What about rather "I have found an opportunity to finally do something for myself?!"
- p. 178. It would make life a lot easier if I worked digitally, but what fun would that be? Oh, my!
- p.199. Any aspiring art director, no matter what you do or where you work, should read the book Allure by Diana Vreeland
- Movies on my list : Zelig, Shampoo, Sleepers, Day for Night, Andrei Rublev, My Favourite Year, Touch the Sound, Three Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Broadway Danny Rose, Once Upon a Time in the West, Death in Venice
- p.212, Annette Lens, Selina Konig.
I don't think that being creative should ever require me to 'direct' people and deprive them from certain inalienable rights.. Among them Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
So i don't want to be called an art director. I would never want to work with people who would agree to follow my directions.
-p218- so that's how i meet David Bowie, genius music legend and world's worst at director. Having said that, i worked with several hundred horrible art directors, and not one of them can sign "rebel, rebel" worth a damn.
-p232- 'the possibility of future work' - If you'll let us take advantage of you now, you'll win a chance for us to take advantage of you in the future.
-p246- Milton Glaser likes to say his role is "to inform and delight" - an expression he borrowed from Horace
I'm so Excited!
Pedro Almodovar's latest film backgrounds almost exclusively consist of iconography:
Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones talking about their work
Source: Font men
Heated Debate: an article on Grafik
A book by Emma Tucker, which is a first ever translation of a renowned 1972 Crouwel/van Toorn debate. Read more on Grafik website
Source: Grafik
Ideas: experiments
13-jan : Iconography+crumpled paper tracing - at which point the sign is not working anymore?
- drawing with light: how can shadow from a 3d part of drawing be a part of the drawing, too?
- drawing breaking out to space: a mix of drawing and 3d objects of line- like quality: thread, paper cuts, matchsticks.
- Rorschach tests, ink drawing by bending the paper.
11 jan: Folding the paper: a sequence of drawings made througholding the paper 1,23 times, etc. What the algorithm for such folding could be?
9 Jan : Family tree: connecting standing matchsticks with thread, add names of relatives to matchsticks.
8 Jan: resistance of form. Fold the letters, tie the paper on which the letters are printed with thread and test how these forms resist the tention. (This te had been completed. Outcome: there is also a tension when you physically hold a resulting object, a strive to open and see the letter fully, without the bend. Feeling of psychological discomfort).
Notes from Graphic Design, Education and Schools, Brno Catalogue 2014
P 114 - Pestalozzi, Table of Unit
P. 209 - Vojta Naprstek and Alois Studnicks divided collections into 20 groups:
A. Machines and apparatuses.
B. Metalworking in Industry.
C. Minerals.
D. Processing of clay, earthenware, ceramics and porcelain.
E. Glassmaking.
F. Wood processing
G. Clothmaking and weaving, laces
H. Animal Products - leather, leather goods, hat-making
K. Stationery, book binding, papermaking
L. Small items - miscellaneous
M. Chemical industry
N. Food stuffs and delicatessen
O. National industry
P. Household goods - tools, instruments, common furniture.
R. Civil Engineering
S. Light, heat, magneticity
T. Graphic art - book binding, photography, pencils, drawing tools.
U. Commercial section - measures, weights, international currencies.
V. Education - school aids, templates for drawing and modeling.
Z. Art and applied arts: a) assorted arts and crafts items; b) collection of artworks and assorted casts; c) arts and crafts antiques.
Rob Tufnell: Paul Elliman launches Beyond Police Call
Paul Elliman’s ‘Beyond Police Call’ 2014, comprises of all the equipment
required to turn a car into a police car (radios, sirens, lights etc). The
resulting stack of equipment (purchased from internet retailers) is
presented on the gallery floor as an informal sculpture. The lights have
been slowed to the frequency of an average human pulse.
Anthony Huberman: I (not love) Information
- A total absence of information about a given subject usually solicits no curiosity: without an awareness of its existence, we can't possibly care about it;
- When we come to realise the existence of something we never knew was there before, our curiosity is sparked: What is it? How does it work? What should we call it? Why is it there? But we remain in the early stages of our ability to recognise and read it;
- We attempt to accumulate information and, while additional research provides many answers, it also reveals additional questions, fuelling more curiosity still;
- At a certain point – at the top of the bell curve – we come to a place where effective discussion and debate is possible, but much still remains speculation. It is a moment of intense scrutiny and educated hypothesising when questions, answers, contradictions, controversy, desire, violence, disappointment and determination make up a complex system;
- Little by little, though, speculation gives way to consensus. The power structures that make up the socio-political fabric begin enforcing their choices. The many questions gather around common answers, and information becomes more and more organised, making the transition into 'the understood';
- Sinking into 'the understood', our given subject provokes less and less curiosity;
- Eventually, we have a dictionary definition.
This progression is also a loop: thanks to scientific, artistic or intellectual pioneers – from Copernicus to Duchamp – common assumptions about the world are second-guessed, challenged, and 'the understood' once again becomes 'no longer understood', prompting the cycle to begin anew.
Source: http://www.afterall.org/journal/issue.16/i.not.love.information
JOHN CAGE: 10 RULES FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS
Rule 1: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.
Rule 2: General duties as a student - pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.
Rule 3: General duties as a teacher - pull everything out of your students.
Rule 4: Consider everything an experiment.
Rule 5: Be Self Disciplined - this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
Rule 6: Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make.
Rule 7: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It is the people who do all the work all the time who eventually catch onto things.
Rule 8: Do not try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.
Rule 9: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It is lighter than you think.
Rule 10: “We are breaking all the rules, even our own rules and how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X qualities.” (John Cage)
Helpful Hints:
Always Be Around.
Come or go to everything.
Always go to classes.
Read everything you can get your hands on.
Look at movies carefully and often.
Save everything - it may come in handy later.
Silvia Federici@ Revolution at point zero
As the economic, environmental, and cultural model in which we live continues to collapse, people across the world are starting to realize that the lifestyle, dictated to them by capitalist governance, is no longer (and for many, never has been) fulfilling, meaningful, or even viable. The need to learn from historical resistance subjects and "commoning" practices (like the collective management of resources by peasant or indigenous communities) is therefore a worthwhile venture. Activist and theoretician Silvia Federici describes the commons as follows:
"For me the idea of the commons is that of a society built on the principle of solidarity rather than the principle of self-interest and competition. It is a society in which wealth is shared, there is collective decision making, and production is for our wellbeing and not for monetary accumulation. So it would involve a radical change. I would not call it a take over, however. That society is still only on the horizon. But we can begin to create new types of relations".– Silvia Federici during Revolution at Point Zero, an event organized by Casco — Office for Art Design and Theory, 1 February 2013
Ideas before Urbino
Have found my notes from before the Urbino Summer School last summer. Contains some ideas that I never actually realised!
A view from our hotel in Falconara Maritima - the morning before the School began.
Ideas before Urbino
15-Jul Taking a walk for a line - if I could only use one line to describe Urbino, what could that line be?
13-Jul Modernism and postmodernism exist together and influence one another. There's no changing of fashion.
13-Jul
Vignelli: three aspects of design - Semantic, Syntactic and Pragmatic
Design is one - it is not many different ones
White, in typography, is what space is in Architecture.
Light is the master of form and texture
10-Jul Combining both the architectural and the painterly, the space itself was meant to act as material and to become the support medium of the installation
10-Jul Urbino: a research into the experience of built space and of building materials in their sensory aspects.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(architecture)
07-Jul Intro: I draw and I go graphic design, and I use both those disciplines as methods for analysis. Now, there are many things that can be analysed visually, and here I've collected some of them.
06-Jul semiotics as a method focuses our attention on to the task of tracing the meanings of things back through the systems and codes through which they have meaning and make meaning. (Slater, 1995, p. 240)
05-Jul Teaching of Kandinsky - analytical drawing: Schematic drawing, Compositional diagram, Characterisation of objects, constructive analysis, geometrical connections and linear analysis
05-Jul Best drawings are done when I look into my feelings and analyse them in my drawing try to find the marks and method express my emotion. Graphic design can also be applied analytically to explore emotion/subject matter.
05-Jul
Design for analysis, including analysis of:
* Information (data vis)
* Structure (books, etc.)
* Form
* Content
30-Jun Ideas for Drawing techniques:
* drawing made by folding, tearing, cutting (maybe paper different colours)
* drawing+projection
* thaumatrope
* The project researches the interplay of perception and memory in ordinary experience of reality and adopts drawing as a language of visualisation outlining the structures and grammar of the phenomenon ( Maria Teresa Ortoleva)
29-Jun The early stages of a science must be dominated by empirical work, that is, the accumulation and classification of data. Only as a discipline matures can an adequate body of theory be developed. - Walliman, N., 2001. P.83
29-Jun Georges Braque: Seek for common in dissimilar.
29-Jun Drawing = motor factor+Visual organization (Flashlight drawings by Picasso)
29-Jun Make a map drawing of all my movements around Urbino during two weeks. Make a GPS drawing by moving around town.
29-Jun Drawing as analytical tool - plan/map, unmotivated looking, drawings based on drawings, or drawings as analysis of drawings or other types of data collection.
28-Jun Urbino - make icons/ symbols based on street sketching. Also, make a black square - as a sign that graphic art has gone into a circle and started repeating itself from 100 years ago.
Urbino - collect all icons, mix icons and drawings
Also try to make nonrepresentational street sketching - eg making a different kind of notation on the paper. Scratch, put charcoal on found icons and make prints.
Also black square means that this 100 years have ended - and now it's time for different graphic art, although deeply rooted in that era. Non conceptual? Simply mine?..
Think as when doing computer graphics, but express it with means of drawing
Sample problem definition: How does drawing help us learn?
Make referential drawings: cognitive aspect of images won't change if the constituent elements are to be rearranged. Eg gather all vertical etc - add a level of abstraction. Also make Infographic drawings, eg draw the data conveyed in the drawing, how much light, space is there, etc.May be do a plan/map of some kind.Make several drawing with different amount of abstraction - from very subtle to extremely wild.
Drawing facilitates analysis.
Do a series from one stencil - white square, with white spray paint (so that it was a bit visible that part of area is covered). And a black square. And then when they are displayed together you'll have a nice after image from black square, to make white lighter than the paper on white square.
27-Jun That's why we call a drawing a 'study'. Drawing studies seeing in the same way as music studies hearing, architecture studies our perception of space, perfumery studies how we smell and fashion studies our sense of touch (as we touch our clothes all the time and touch our surroundings through the clothes).
Learning aspect of drawing/images is very much underestimated in contemporary culture and could contribute immensely to learning if thoroughly researched and fully employed. (Including digital means.)
Drawing as experience: when we read, we learn from someone else's experience, but when we look at the image, we learn from our own. This is why learning from images is easier and more direct.
26-Jun We always learn from images. When we read, our brain constructs a mental image of a subject described, and then learns from it. The same with numbers, brain has to combine numbers in one coherent image before it can analyse them. When the image is readymade, brain can learn directly, without having to transform words or numbers mentally.
Emotions/essences described when reading -> expression in images.
Drawing and Cognition - learning through drawing, learning through creating images
19-Jun It is from first words in a book, when you start to read it, you understand what this book is going to be about.
End of Form - a story in drawings
Mario Garcia: When sketching by hand was the only way
A font for building charts: FF Chartwell
Such a great idea, to use OpenType technology to convert math formulas to actual visualization! Have yet to test it - but thank you very much to my colleague Jim Kynvin for spotting it! Font is made by FontFont: here's the source link.
