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April 12, 2005
Not Masters work?
it's come up time and again in the Masters course that it is often useful to work on projects that don't initially seem connected to the MA, these projects (take Dear John for example) seem to allow the ideas we have been discussing as a group, and our own individual topics to reveal themselves as living ideas...
I recently worked on a project with some artist friends, they are exhibiting/performing at the Melbourne Town Hall, the show is called "Lost and Found" (on until April 24). I designed a catalogue and invite for the show... we discussed the job at length; the format, the text, images, cost, the satirical "Fashion" theme running through the publication (the exhibition/performance was on during both the Fashion and comedy festivals). We discussed the desire for Neil and Katy (the artists) being able to re-purpose and re-configure the catalogue to become part of their performance, and a part of the narratives they weave through all their Museum of Modern Oddities work...
The catalogue ended up taking the form of a series of 12 double-sided postcard-sized cards which people could read any way they wanted to, the stories on the cards (10 - 20 words) were sometimes nonsensical, sometimes playful and sometimes totally unrelated.. the imagery had no explanation...though at first glance the stories seemed to explain the images...
(click to zoom)
For me, the show and the catalogue was all about the reader/viewer; their own personal connections, narratives and links, the catalogue and the show were in a sense "user-centred" (though not in the conventional "how do we communicate our statement to the user better" reading of the term) - the work didn't necessarily have anything to say, yet both the show and the catalogue provided "ways in" to multiple readings...the source for these readings and the depth and layering of meaning came from the viewer...
(click to see the space)
In this sense the way the design system worked was very similar to the poster series Keith and I created up in Brisbane last year (which I still have to write an entry up for)
One element of the catalogue was a Lost/Found form which people could fill out and post in (or fill out while they attended the show)...a lot of these Lost/Found forms have been completed and are on display at the Lost and Found show... people have engaged with this writing of stories to each-other / no-one / everyone, some stories are fiction, some are Oprah-esque, some say nothing and others a lot...my work continues as co-author of the catalogue (and the Lost/Found form) when I sit down and read the entries, I'm still thinking about the guy who lost his father and the girl who lost her bunny...
(click to zoom)
So, it's interesting how the work on this catalogue ended up communicating a lot back to me; stuff about audience, intention, authorship, meaning, communication forms, creating space for communication, creating/enabling community, egalitarianism...and design amongst other things. I could write about this work for almost as long as it took to do it (60.5hrs)....I will think about it some more and put up another entry about it...
Posted by Neal Haslem at 05:05 PM