April 23, 2004
Authorship 3
3. the responsible designer
a. "The designer, as initiator or working partner, shares responsibility with the writer for the production of meaning..." (p127) Does the ìdesigner as authorî idea allow designers to reconsider their own practice and take on a more responsible role (and therefore more responsibility) for their production of media? Rather than the service industry that does what it's told, might graphic design become more responsible for it's outcomes.
b. Is "designer as author" a response to designers having "something to say" being creative yet not having a medium in which to say it, is the self-initiated design project art or design? In creating self-initiated projects and writing the text is it possible for designers to actually damage meaning. (two instances; a T-shirt show, and a series of posters about September 11. Both acted as though they might be social commectary or art but were actually demonstrations by designers of their work and style of work - is this art or can it confuse what art is?
Posted by Neal Haslem at 03:46 PM
Authorship 2
2. creative pairings
a. "Burdick brought writers and designers together in more or less sympathetic pairings intended to 'explore and exploit the priveleged position of authorship'" (p126) - is this analogous to the designer/writer pairings that often take place in the advertising industry? or the programmer/designer pairings of multimedia design?
b. If we (Graphic Designers) want designers to become writers, why do we not want architects to become designers?
Posted by Neal Haslem at 03:45 PM
Authorship 1
1. moving forward
a. Is the "designer as author" idea an attempt to raise the profile and increase the scope of graphic design as a profession? Has it come from a desire to expand the role of the designer to encompass other areas (writing, directing, facilitating, etc). Is this an effort to maintain the validity of the profession, at a time when it can be seen as being under threatened by a ubiquity of design-software empowered ìgraphic designersî?
b. How does "designer as author" allow design to move forward? "Instead the graphic designer could be conceived as the language worker equipped to actively initiate projects..."(p124) Is there a position in our society/profession for such a designer?
c. "By transferring the authority of the text back to the author, by focussing on the voice, presence becomes a limiting factor, containing and categorizing the work. The author as origin, authority, and ultimate owner of the text guards against the free will of the reader" (p147) Michael Rock suggesting that the designer as author could be detrimental to empowering the audience and creating open-ended atifacts of meaning.
Posted by Neal Haslem at 03:44 PM
Authorship 0
Which paragraph is most relevant to your own topic?
For me...
"(Michael Rock) points out, unarguably, that the few clear examples of design authorship are the exception rather than the rule.... He proposes three alternatives - designer as translator, designer as performer, designer as director - as better models to describe the processes usually involved in design activity." (p147)
..since it seems to hint at a way forward for design that does not necessary involve designer as author (star) but does expand the role and give freedom to move within that role. I think we talked one week about technology as freeing designers expand their role / profession / responsibilities.
Posted by Neal Haslem at 03:43 PM
March 25, 2004
appropriation - response
Questions on appropriation
no answers - just more questions....
1.1 Is Garret's work [as discussed in this chapter] inherently any better than the junk mail I received from my ISP?
Garretts work is different since he was doing it in another time, meaning is stripped and then re-applied, stripped and re-contextualised, de-re-contextualised...your ISP are probably using a signifier many times removed from it's position in space/time. A bit like thoses images of "che"ñ what do they mean now? something very PoMo I guess..
1.2 Is it important that the original meaning of the 'thing' being appropriated is known by the receiver? [familiarity]
do you mean "is it right/proper/worthy"? what about the letter from the girl defending her use of the playboy bunny laser-cut on her car "because it's fun and cute" to the post-feminist critic who felt that the girl was being conned in by a patriachal commodification of gender....
1.3 Is familiarity neccessary when dealing with Saville's album covers?
many-layered meanings, many-layered responses...
1.4 Is familiarity neccessary when dealing with Parody, such as the Twin Peaks guide-book?
something about clubs here, and secret codes, ideas about how information becomes more meaningful. The social desire for difference yet togetherness - "it's important that not everyone likes the music that I like, it's important that some people I know and like, like the music that I like..." If I know TP and you know TP then we can talk and that other person doesn't understand (which is a lot of fun because they look a bit confused) and they think we're weird...which is great...
Tarantino's films....
2.1 Is appropriation more valid when it is used to bring up or develop new forms or ideas? [as opposed to simple literal pastiche. Eg: Swatch poster]
I like your fertile/infertile analogy...
more valid, less valid? "Sherrie Levine presented a photograph by Edward Weston as her own"...by doing so she certainly throws spotlight onto new ideas - I guess intention comes in here. I guess it is what Yoko is starting to talk about on her blog when she says "detaching from the output" , that the intention and "the way of doing" define the artefact more than the final form....or is this Art?
something about Jeff Koons here
2.2 Does Saville's work rely solely on ambiguity to create the "3rd idea"? Could his work be criticised as being formulaic if this is the case?
The 3rd idea - it does allow some sort of forward movement or momentum, it does encourage past/present/future awareness and connectivity - it certainly could be formulaic but it doesn't kill meaning in the same way that the Garrett work might.
2.3 Of the work illustrated in this chapter, which has the most 'added value', in terms of bringing something new to the appropriation? [or possibly that should be; getting something new out of the appropriation]
3.1 Who is more authentic: Gary Cooper or Clint Eastwood? Elvis Presley or Carl Perkins? Art Chantry or Tibor Kalman?
3.2 Can anyone appropriate anything?
ummm...yes...
copying used to be seen as a fair-enough way to understand what "the masters" were doing, being able to replicate. They were always seen as learning though - not ways forward...
The idea that one has the right to appropriate something close to home over something else is strange but it does exist - I guess I was thinking about Malcolm Mclaren going to NYC, or Paul Simon going to Africa.
However, look what the European Impressionists achieved by poaching formalistic devices from totally other cultures (Japan) - actually using the other to re-define your own direction in an obviously valuable way (colour, framing, composition, etc). In many ways it seems that the appropriation of the mis-understood can be more valuable than the appropriation of the known.
3.3 Is Kalman's work with the vernacular "patronizing"?
I always thought it was him agonizing over why that work seemed to be so much more interesting to him than what his peers were doing. It starts to become patronizing when it is used as a style...but then if someone else's work throws light on your own and seems to lead a way forward...is it patronizing to see the decals on revheads cars and like them, and even want to emulate them?
3.4 Is Chantry's really any better? Does he just fake naivety better than Kalman? [note: might be worthwile looking up some more of Chantry's work]
There's something kind-of righteous going on here; "what is better, what is more worthy, what is appropriate etc". I think the "third idea" idea obviously shows a way forward. I think it's telling that Art Chantry's work leads into (becomes eaten-up by) Duffy and "Old Navy" commercialism (so it's OK if the original was not political in intent?). (Art Chantry interview)
If the work has connectivity and multiplicity, if it has some sense of possibilities and purposefulness, if it is not "thin" or veneer-like then it allows for and encourages "the on-going" - it implies questions - like the "Encyclopeadia Persona" at the end of the chapter.
Posted by Neal Haslem at 03:25 PM
ch3. appropriation
re. para relating to my topic (whatever that is..):
p76 Poyner on Garrett
"What gets overlooked, when the past is treated as a quarry from which useful visual material can be extracted at will, are the changes of meaning ñ the drainage of meaning ñ that occurs when visual ideas with specific purposes are are applieds in new contexts." (ie ripping off Lissitzky's Red Wedge)
why:
why:
meaning. the transfer of meaning, the accruel of meaning and the destruction of meaning.
It's anarchic and political, it's "bear in a china shop" playful but potentially destructive, perhaps this graphic appropriation (as Poynor suggests) actually supports a conservatism, a dilution of the importance of history, perhaps designers do become the unknowing accomplices of a political "status quo" - a stagnation borne out of the rendering of everything as pastiche and meaningless. Historical events become seen as a style to be used, a style that still carries the "smell of meaning" while it's actually had to be shot and stuffed... something like the sanctity of watching Nature Documentaries from our armchairs....
part of me agrees strongly with Savage...
this graphic appropriation seems to have fed directly into more commercial GD and advertising to create the "eater of culture" which we might come to fear...
Posted by Neal Haslem at 12:09 PM