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July 14, 2005

Poster surgery . . . the mad designer

These are stills from DV footage of me performing a 'surgery' on one of the bollards that my posters went up on last week. They'd been pasted over two or three times by this stage, and I didn't really think this would work, but thankfully whoever pasted over mine didn't use that much paste! I dressed up in a lab coat and went to work with a scalpel to bring my monster back to life (I did this at exactly midnight of course). I thought the process of disecting the bollards might be interesting, but predominantly I liked the idea of performing this 'live' ó relating to an idea I'd had a while back to do with the practitioner inhabiting a 'character'. I guess I liked the insanity (and humour) involved in this ó maniacal, obsessive behaviour! I think this kind of behaviour will lead really nicely into a fanatical and evangelical type of manifesto (to create monsters).

It was quite exciting seeing my images come up from behind the others as I cut and peeled layers away, but what I think what was most successful about this exercise was that it made me really uncomfortable. I was slightly paranoid, a little scared, and maybe I just felt like a dick (is this just 'stupid')? I really don't like the idea that this would be/become performance art. Why does that sound so icky!? I mean I 'perform' in the band, and I really enjoy it . . . in fact I ham it up quite happily, it's strange that I felt uncomfortable doing this?

Having done this, and thinking back to the previous project, I have been thinking that it could be interesting to actually design a poster 'live' on the bollard. My aesthetic's so cut'n'paste anyway, I could just show up with all my photocopied material and arrange it on site . . . in this sense I'd be performing the design I guess . . . and maybe exposing the process in a much more meaningful way than the previous project (see Emilie's comment)?

Posted by Luke Wood at 08:04 PM

July 06, 2005

Reflection

Ok so what the hell have I gotten out of this project, and how does it relate to the monster (if at all)?

At the beginning I stated that I was interested in 1. exposing the process of designing, and 2. exploring the unfinished nature of the designed artefact. This was in relation to my use of the metaphor of MONSTROSITY, and the unfinished, half-made aspects of a particular type of monster.

1. Initially I would say this project was a failure because of my inability to expose the "real design process" . . . but of course this is actually quite interesting in itself (and relates directly to another aspect of the monsteróthe significance/value of failure). In this respect the idea to expose the process essentially became a part of the process . . . not only in the sense that I (to some extent) fabricated the process, but alsoómore importantly perhapsóthat this 'idea' actually drove formal/conceptual decision making from very early on.

2. Not sure how important this is, but during the week I grew quite frustrated by the fact that I wasn't getting any feedback from the audience . . . were people noticing? Were people engaged? Some were stolen? This of course brings up the questionówho's this for? Does the monster serve the practitioner or the audience. Right now I'd like to say the practitioner primarily, but . . .

3. The practitioner is used to seeing their work in various stages of unfinishedness, the important thing about this project is that the unfinishedness (supposedly) is 'shown' . . . to an audience. This is where the discomfort would/should come into play ó the practitioner is not comfortable showing an unfinished artefact. I think this has to do with engagement? We want the work (if it is being 'shown') to engage the intended audience (I want people to know about and come to the gig), and perhaps ironically, I'm most uncomfortable when I feel like I might not acheive some form of engagement! With this particular project I was hoping to 'engage' the viewer by revealing the process, but of course I fretted over each poster 'working on it's own' at the end of every day. So there was a discomfort there . . . but I essentially tried to nullify it, make it comfortable . . . I'd like to elaborate on this.

I guess I've learnt that moments of discomfort are pervasive within the process of designing. They are however quickly 'dealt with', either through rationalising them (thinking ahead, speculating as to how they might 'work out'), or deleting them (stepping back). Either way you end up "happy" before you move on. In this sense disruptions (which are unavoidable) are made tolerable.

So what if I were to focus on/look for the intolerable disruption? This would make sense in terms of the monstrous metaphor, the figure of monster being necessarily unacceptable and/or offensive. Is it in the intolerable disruption that the monster comes into play . . . where things begin to get uncomfortable?

I'm reminded of Cameron's pointing me to the etymology of the word monster, 'monstra'óthe Latin, 'to show'. That monstrosity has something to do with 'showing', which is what graphic designers do, is interesting. Cameron said (I think) something like "a monster manifests it's own showingness . . . it shows it's showingness" or something like that. I'm reminded of this conversation because through this project I've become quite aware of the fact that as people we tend to only ever 'show' that which we are comfortable with. So, of course, I'm wondering, why wouldn't we (only show what we're comfortable with)? And, how could we not? (being that the desire to refine/correct is almost subconscious/automatic)

4. Laurene's suggestions:

[a] do it again. . . I think I will. I have a couple of ideas involving different iterations of this project, one involving collaboration (rest of the band), and one involving taking random screenshots.

[b] think about where the posters are displayed . . . this was (I think?) in relation to me saying that Christchurch wasn't a good 'poster town' ó that it's hard to get posters up here (council bylaws!), and that I'm not sure there's a culture of 'looking-at-posters' here.

[c] perform a 'surgery' on the bollards . . . I'm going to get myself a white labcoat and a scapel, head into town at midnight and do this. I'm hoping to cut back the posters that have now been pasted over mine and reveal the different layers of my own images. I'm going to get someone to video this and I guess I'll have to do it in the next couple of days.

[d] try finishing it first and then working backwards . . . I like this idea. I have no idea how this might work, but I'm going to give it a go.

[e] work towards discomfort . . .

Posted by Luke Wood at 04:21 PM | Comments (2)

July 04, 2005

Saturday

Elvis finally showed up. Along with a real life 'error' ó the window with the band motto "with our reverb . . ." corrupted when I output it from Freehand as a .jpg file. I put this one up on Saturday morning. This is the LAST poster . . . 'finished' supposedly?

I want to reflect on this project this week (via this blog). I had a good discussion with Laurene half way through, and I have a lot to think about esp. in terms of where to go with things now . . . the possibility of doing this again based on what I learnt this time is appealing.

Posted by Luke Wood at 08:43 AM | Comments (5)

July 01, 2005

Friday

Stuck this one up this morning. This one's interesting because I kind of feel like it's finished. What do I mean by that? I think that I'd be quite happy for this to 'be the poster' that stays up for a while . . . so it's interesting in that I 'have' another dayóand, another poster. So what do I doórefine this one more? Move back? Degenerate the image? In talking to Laurene last night she asked how this project had made me uncomfortable . . . I'd like to the final poster (that I make today) could be a push towards discomfort . . .

Posted by Luke Wood at 09:32 AM