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April 27, 2005
Technology
So many monsters come from technology. New technology. Technology that, at the given point in time, isn't well understood so we fear it, or it's consequences. Monster stories have often evolved either as metaphors for these technological anxieties, or as direct consequences of the technology. It is often the figure of the mad scientist who brings our fears to life. The 'man of science' who has strayed from the path of morality . . . might there be an analogous position/character in design? The designer as a social scientist maybe?
I really just wanted to mention technology here. My lack of interest in it. Do I fear it? I literally know nothing about what's happening inside this plastic box right now . . . the idea of losing files, my machine dying, etc. That scares me I guess. But I wasn't even going to mention that. I'm not sure I'm interested in scaring myself right now, I just thought it was interesting that I'm so non-plussed by technology and science yet they seem so central to ideas of creating monsters.
Posted by Luke Wood at 06:41 PM
April 26, 2005
Some loose ends and some connections, possibly?
1. EXCITEMENT AND CONTROL
Band: re the gig on Saturday... the excitement of playing live . . . not being in total control of what you're making and presenting. Comparison to recording where you are in (relatively) control. LINK TO McCahon Font... the excitement of releasing something unto/into an audience that is in some sense beyond your control. Proximity seems important here? The distance from the maker to the made, the 'freshness' of the artefact?
2. MONSTERS
Artefacts or ideas that don't fit neatly into professional practice or dominant discourse. The loose-ends in one's practice... artefacts or ideas that are not fully-formed, half-finished, and possibly ugly. The monster will often embody (throughits very being, and therefore possibly unintentionally) a critique of that which it is other to.
3. THE MAD SCIENTIST/DOCTOR/PROFESSOR
Loosing your self in the making. Getting gone, as in "let's get real real gone for a change" [Elvis Presley's intro to Milkcow Blues Boogie,1954]. Also Tav Falco's references to getting gone and the "unbridled howl". Also Charlie Feathers, Hasil Adkins, and Jack Starr. Also Lee Scratch Perry and The Mad Professor. There is something in here about the performance of the practitioner... the practitioner as a performer... perhaps the creating and inhabiting of a character. Look at the alias, the aka, the nom de plume... writers, artists, and musicians who take on another identity to make or present their work. Dionysus is in here . . . intoxication. Dionysus critiques [4] design as an Apollonian discipline.
4. CRITIQUE
Critiquing (seeking an other to) design as a necessarily and purely rational, considered and measurable discipline. I am interested in the less immediately tangible, more speculative aspects of designing... aspects commonly denied or obfuscated in practice and discourse. Critiquing artefact and process [Practice], and Discourse. Also [3] questions the designers role as an anonymous one.
5. FAMILIARITY, THE EVERYDAY
The monster [2] is a critique [4] of (an other to) the everyday. Through it's transformation of everyday artefacts and/or ideas, it should, ideally, question and displace familiarity. Whose familiarity is displaced . . . practitioner or audience?
6. THE NATIONAL GRID
The National Grid should fit into 1. Excitement and Control. I should be able to develop it as a project in the same way as the Band and the McCahon Font? So . . . how might this project engage and invite response from an audience? Without necessarily being user-focused or user-centred? How might the not fully-formed, half-finished, and possibly ugly, engage an invite response from an audience? How might the designer/author perform [3], or inhabit a character [3], in a project like this? The National Grid should displace everyday notions of graphic design.
Posted by Luke Wood at 07:59 PM
April 19, 2005
The Grand Saloon
We played our first gig as 'The Grand Saloon' on Saturday night. It was a big hit! We completely packed out the Wunderbar, and had everybody up dancing around like crazy. I had the show filmed and we recorded it to DAT . . . I'm hoping to review it and try and figure out once-and-for-all how (if?) the band (or just perhaps 'music') might fit into my research topic. I guess I'm ready for it not to, but am more and more into the idea that my theorising (my topic) come from my 'existing' practice . . .
Posted by Luke Wood at 03:20 PM
April 14, 2005
How can a poster be out of control?
Nothing flash to say here. Just illustrating my point from previous posts about the difference between the 'typeface' as an artefact (a means to an end) and the poster (an end). Interestingly, I've been getting loads of good feedback about these posters . . . hopefully that means we'll have a few punters at the gig?
Posted by Luke Wood at 02:51 PM
April 08, 2005
Divergence, and the location of my own monsters
Lately my topic is looking like disintegrating into many different fragments. I'd like to try and figure out if these fragments can be pieced (roughly sewn!) back together?
My recent ideas relating to design discourse and monsters, motivated by The National Grid project, have been running parallel to my working on the above image. This image extends on, and attempts to combine two projects from last year (Hot Rod Biology and The Elvis Presley Project), and is an attempt to "make" a monster. Rather than get into that specifically I wanted to try and figure out (through writing this) how this image related to a couple of other things . . . [a] discourse, and [b] the McCahon typeface I designed a couple of years ago. Ok, so . . . briefly:
1. with this Grand Saloon poster I was trying to "make" a monster by applying my notion of the monster to the process of designing it. I guess 'drawing' or visualising a monster? It occurs to me that a monster is only monstrous (unacceptable) in comparison with some existing (accepted) thing. The monster in this sense is always a critique of something, it subverts some existing 'dominant' form or idea (of course it is quickly assimilated and no longer a monstrosity once it can be easily categorised), but I guess what I'm getting at here is that 'this' is a personal monsteróit critiques my own habits, or style (I should point out that I am uncomfortable with this image, though perhaps this is only because it is being stuck up around town as publicity for our next gig, and I'm not that confident it will "pull a crowd"?)
2. Revisiting my McCahon project recently I began to see it as a very successful monster, but of a different kind to '1' above. It is not necessarily 'formally' monstrous (maybe it is, but that doesn't matter), it is a monster in that it; [a] was/is beyond my control (and hence enters into unexpected outcomes), [b] is 'scary' and potentially offensive (to a certain audience), and as such [c] contains or embodies a 'critique'.
3. Ok then so it would seem that perhaps I have discovered the linkócritique? The National Grid is motivated by a lack of critical discourse in NZ, and wishes to support and develop speculative and poetic models of enquiry. This will most certainly be a monster to our good friends in Government, at DINZ, and in much of the tertiary education sector. Actually this is precisely where this fits inóthe fact that the kind of research I'm doing (motivation and methodology wise) is not at all valued within the increasingly dominant, pseudo-scientific and restrictive monologues of user/client/industry-focused discourses.
My monster embodies a critique that moves beyond my control.
Posted by Luke Wood at 08:59 AM | Comments (4)
April 07, 2005
Searching for monsters . . .
As a quick follow-up to my post here yesterday I thought I'd do a quick search (outside of NZ discourse) for 21 terms I associated with my notion of the 'monster' in two well known design journals ó Design Issues and Visible Language. The results were surprising!
Failure = 0
Chance = 0
Speculation = 0
Random = 0
Practitioner = 0
Poetic = 0
Serendipity = 0
Guess/Guessing = 0
Incomplete = 0
Unfinished = 0
Unacceptable = 0
Error = 0
Loose = 0
Evolve/Evolving/Evolution = 1 in DI, and 2 in VL
Mutation/Mutate = 0
Exploratory/Explore/Exploration = 1 in DI, and 4 in VL
Discovery/Discovery-led = 0
Hybrid = 1 in DI
Marginal = 0
Monster = 0
My search wasn't that methodical, I searched Design Issues for references in the titles only, and searched Visible Language for refs in both titles and abstracts. In fact it should be noted that all but one of the 'hits' in Visible Language were in the abstract not the title. One other thing I found interesting was that the term 'Exploratory' didn't appear, only 'Exploration'. Like I say I'm not really sure where I'm going with this? But it was interesting as an initial 'look' at the use of language in dominant design discourses. And the overwhelming emphasis on the 'user' as opposed to the practitioner was, ummm . . . shocking!
Posted by Luke Wood at 11:56 AM
April 06, 2005
Inviting the monster out from under the bed
More and more my thinking in relation to graphic design is being colonised by a dumb arse argument I really have no interest in. The NZ Government, as a part of their initiative to promote the 'creative industires' within the new 'knowledge economy' (buzz word, buzz word, etc etc) has latched onto 'Design' as the great saviour of the NZ economy . . . the thinking being (basically) that if we could only make shit look better we could sell more overseas. Not exactly innovative, but it's be proclaimed as such. Previously I've been able to sit back, smile, and joke about impotent politicians being led around on little sparkly leashes by big-business.
However, I'm being dragged into the ring by the new head of school here (University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts) who wants to seperate out the design deparment from the fine arts school. Basically he's of the old 'design-is-social-science' frame of mind (actually a friend of Jorge Frascara!), and, of course the pro-science rhetoric coming from government in terms of the kind of education and research they want to see in the universities supports his intentions. Increasingly any form of design research that is not economically, industry, or 'user' (ugh!) focused is being crucified . . .
I was becoming increasingly frustrated by the fact that this kind of shit was taking up all my time (having to write lengthy communications supporting my views), but I have just begun to think about this in relation to my topic. I've been wondering where to locate the monster? The Government, the industry, and the academy, are all part of the dominant narrative. They are not the monster. The monster is always the 'freak'óthat which the dominant narrative cannot understand, control, or pigeonhole nicely. I'm beginning to think the monster might be 'poetic' or 'discovery-led' research. Speculation, guess-work, chance, failure . . . this is the monster (the mysterious other) to dominant design discourse.
This seems to fit in with my work on The National Grid as a site for discourse, and I'm wondering if I might use it as an invitation . . . "Calling all monsters out from under beds, in cupboards, and shadows."
Posted by Luke Wood at 11:52 AM | Comments (3)
April 04, 2005
The National Grid
This is the title for a project I am working on with Jonty Valentine. Initially this is being developed as a website through which we can to collect our own thoughts, and then the ideas/work of other interested parties, with the end in mind being a kind of design-research fanzine to be published early next year. Anyone interested please check out the site www.thenationalgrid.co.nz . . . there's not much there apart from our ever evolving 'about The National Grid' blurb/text, but we should be getting some work up in the next few weeks ñ certainly before the end of May, and the next GRC.
In some sense a collaborative project, The National Grid will explore common ground between Jonty's research interests (indexing and browsing) and my own (loose ends and connections). The projects within my own research program will take place within the context of The National Grid, and I will be spending time over the next couple of months prior to the GRC in May, figuring out what form these projects may take. I'm hoping to be able to present a fairly structured proposal for the remainder of my research at the next GRC.
Posted by Luke Wood at 09:47 AM