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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 April 26, 2005 07:59 PM