Last week the decomm blog editing software, movabletype, went down...I was stuffing around trying to add new authors...for some reason I couldn't, I looked it up on the movabletype knowledge base and there was entry that said I needed to drop my mt-config file out of the dataBase...after a bit of frigging around (finding passwords etc) I managed to do this...and then couldn't get back in to the system...it shut me out entirely...this made me think about a few things:

- if one is going to host blogs, research blogs of colleagues, and essentially by doing so, set oneself up as sys admin for that service, then there's a whole swag of responsibilities that goe with it...the thought even crossed my mind that Luke (who's whole research is on his blog) could, quite validly, sue my arse...anyway, I'm now writing this which means it seems that on this hot March Sunday afternoon I have got the thing back up and running ( a misplaced "<", was the culprit)
- learnt a bit more about movabletype
- learnt I'm going to have to back it up more frequently and be more careful when I "play around with PHP" in the future...
- that sometimes one needs to sit down and actually take the time to work through things, well, I do anyway, take the time to look, absorb, "sit-with" and not panic in order to work an idea or issue through...I find that my practice now (nowadays) has less and less of this sort of time in it. Technology itself seems to reduce this form of time – I find technology (phones, email, internet, TV, software apps) often seems to fracture time; constant interuptions, waits, actions to take, things to put in the "do later" basket, etc. And, in fracturing time, fracture conciousness and focus...I end up bitsy and constantly "thinking on my feet". This certainly applies to my MA, where I yearn for the time to settle into the thinking, do some reading and "be" in it for a while. I resolve to take the time to do this...but that's another entry...

I have become a little distracted by Anthropology and so have been mooching around in that area online in google scholar and in the physcial library shelves at Swinburne. I can never remember how to spell Pierre Bourdieau's name and so can't find him in the catalogue...

anyway I found this book...Jay writes about Producer - process- product - audience...and the necessity for anthropological works to have a reflexive nature and reveal their authoriship - obviously one might also apply this to communication design...what forms might emerge and what new ways might one look at authoring the visual or material nature of the artefact.

Imagine a comm design practice that looked for transparency and complete enunciation of intentions to be incorporated into the work: what form might that take...

It's a good comment, and one that has sunk in over the last couple of days. I think I need to look at a few projects I have done with students and think and write about it. I remember this brief bio on Ivan Illich, and how much I connect with the ideas, particularly his ideas about the creation of educative, social life within society. His ideas connect and support my own leanings towards an opening-up of connections, a path of non-specialisation, and a valuing of the incidental interchange.

Jeremy also spoke about ethnography and I spoke of my knee-jerk reaction against it...what little I have read I felt was closing-down relationships and seemed patronising...it still seems to in it's foundations: "the PNG tribesmen smear goats blood on their foreheads to promote courage and stealth..."... However, I do realise how important it is to situate myself and not dismiss...I wonder whether education theory, and particularly some of Illich's work might provide some foundation for me....there's something about it that I can't quite put my finger on, something that connects....It connects with the DIY and the "facilitator of system" approach, it connects with my belief that my teaching work is really "the facilitation of an educative environment"...and it makes me feel like I am still playing with buckets in the sand...I have got no-where, if anything I might now be able to see how far my work with this MA has got to go...

actually it's not that new....

but it has made a big change to my work...Now that I have been in here more intensively (since the end of semester) I am really getting a feel for the space...watching the sunlight move across the wall, the people walk by...

I've also been trying to sort out my internet connection and the VOIP phone. Some hassles, but overall it is such a better head space, a phase shift in my ability to focus. Well worth the extra costs; after two years in the front room at home I'm not so sure about the whole "working from home" thing, it is a lot better for me to be able to "come to work" and "leave work"...

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...

What is the current role of communication design in creating and defining
public space? What are the implications of marketing-driven communication
design in terms of mental environment? Beyond the barrage of calls for
consumer action, what contribution can communication design offer virtual
and physical public spaces?

Commencing with an analysis of the visual language of a streetscape, this
research project will investigate the impact of marketing communications in
public space. A series of project based outcomes will propose alternative
visual forms and/or languages which communication designers might deploy in
their role as citizen designers.

a. "The designer, as initiator or working partner, shares responsibility with the writer for the production of meaning..." (p127) Does the ědesigner 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?

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?

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 ěgraphic 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.

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.

(never really like talking about what I do and dont like - always thought it was the start of becoming a fashion nazi, or just a plain nazi....maybe it is the opposite of that though and is the only way to fight that)

Have you read the book 'Imagination' by Richad Bach?

triggers:
communication / design / public space

abstract:
The role of Communication Design in creating public space (whether virtual or real). What responsibilities does CD have to accept in taking part in public space? Does CD show an awareness of public space? How might CD help to better achieve its aims of effective communication, adequate transferral of meaning, aiding and augmenting discourse, creating more interesting and creative spaces, reducing mental strain in highly urbanised spaces, reducing antagonistic marketing practices (eg fear, body image, self-image, pecking order, bullying, teasing, ordering, commanding, insulting, marginalisation, ideology pushing, racial stereotyping, gender stereotyping, promotes monoculture, supporting dominant paradigm, anti-democratic, didactic, religious stereotyping, individualism, divide and conquer, etc), helping to develop new practices/languages in line with utopian future directions. Are there possibilities of new CD languages and forms that might perhaps help to empower greater human connectivity and communication?