MA Graphic Media Design - Portfolio 2016

Anderson Dalle Laste MA GMD PT 2016

Research Portfolio

Research Gathering and making sense of information

Reaction Sketches, experiments, writings, tests...

Results

Individual project outputs

Review Analysis of emerging research interests

This portfolio highlights practical and contextual crossovers found during Unit 1 of the MA Graphic Media Design course at London College of Communication.

By presenting three projects simultaneously, I intend to reflect more critically on each project’s similarities and differences. The reader can either focus on a single project at a time or follow the dialogue between the three narratives. This approach takes into account the evolution of Unit 1 through four universal sections - Research, Reaction, Results and Review.

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Research

Source material

Project 1

Environment

Project 2

Project 3

Words

Object

Ridley Road Market, Dalston, London

Dematerialisation of Screen Space, Jessica Helfand

Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer

Apart but a part

Environment

Reaction

Process x substance

Evolution

Urbanism

Exchange

Community

Social experiment

Speculation

Future

Ridley Road Market

Individual x collective

Narrative

Risk

Diversity

Technology

Science

Satire

Jeopardy

Conflict

Immigration Complexity

Screen space

Research

First steps

Observing

Analysing

Questioning

Practice of observational skills using diverse recording tools. Ridley Road Market is located in East London, it attracts a multicultural clientele everyday.

Some of the most common selling goods are food, clothes and house utensils.

From a focused reading, I have analised the author’s point of view in order to further develop my own position that would take the form of a visual essay.

The text poses questions about the limitations of the screen space and make predictions about the future of technologic avant-garde.

Before choosing an object for Project 3, I practiced observational and analitical skills in order to pose questions about a given object.

Research

Finding a route

The source text provided four key themes for exploration: 1. Technologic evolution 2. The role and rhetorics of the screen 3. Defining and delineating space 4. Elements of digital language Initial research

During a visit to LCC’s archive, I selected the object that became the basis for Project 3.

From photographs taken at the market, a selection portraying disengaged single individuals provided an unconventional perspective to the bustling environment. It also raised initial insights about the role of the individual within a community.

Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer is a tool in the shape of a flat disk that calculates the power and physical damages of a nuclear bomb attack based on a set of variables.

By rotating two plastic handles the users can specify numbers for each variable in order to generate an output related to their chances of survival. The stark nature of the object proved to be a rich source of further questioning.

Research

Rhetoric: satire Satire as a language for visual expression with humanistic approach: perceiving the individual within specific circumstances. Different roles are played - victim, hero and trend-setter.

Rabatti, Alessandro (2015). Facebank series

Sideshowworld (no date) Unknown title

Iconic banknote figures transformed into superheroes or villains whose personalities correspond to the public’s perception of the individual’s political influence. These characters represent the opposite of disengagement.

Questions regarding effectiveness of technologic evolution and how user trends follow those in order to remain up-to-date.

FKA twigs #throughglass

Visual analogies based on object’s form and nature. The individual’s active or passive role on a spinning game in which survival is the final prize.

Thanko thumb extender

ABC News (2013). Wheel of Fortune

Research

Insights through words

These are the most essential books during my research for Unit 1. Not only they provided useful information about contemporary design practice but also extended my interests to other fields such as sociology, technology and science.

Research

Insights through words

In cities, large numbers of people live in close proximity to one another, without knowing most of those others personally.

Contact between city-dwellers is ‘fleeting and partial, a means to other ends’

It can be said that evolution works because it sees ‘process’ not ‘substance’ as the main constituent of the world.

Forms of behaviour emerge from the process of the relationship and feedback between the organism and environment.

Anthony Giddens Sociology

Daniel Neville A Relational Design Process

How can design help strenghten every day exchanges and engage people? Everyday trades (at Ridley Road Market) cannot be completed without cash. The idea of a ‘social’ cash (or currency) emerged.

Daniel Neville proposes a rationale that approaches the value and nature of evolution in relation to design. Is it possible to create processes that alter the natural evolution of society and humanity?

Back in those psychedelic days of yore, you could order your own fantastic pastel plastic Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer directly from the U.S. Government Printing Office for a single green dollar.

John Walker formilab.ch

The commodification of the object puts into question its utilitarian aspects. Is it meant to increase the population’s chance of survival or simply raise fear?

Research

Alternative realities Another recurring subject during my research was the theme of parallel realities and experimentation of possible futures.

Craig Freeman, John. (2012) Border Memorial: Frontera de los Muertos

Imagining an ideal urban community in which every new member could easily blend in. Not necessarily like a hero, but someone who is valued and values other people's service and work in return money would become secondary.

Augmented and Virtual reality technologies are extending the functionality of the screen space for these to become active frames of alternative realities. How can design create new processes and stories for this new window? How these technologies will affect the way we see the world?

Dr. Strangelove (1964), Stanley Kubrick [Film]

Dr. Strangelove is a fiction movie that portrays the start of a nuclear war. The link between this possible scenario and the real commodification of the Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer during the Cold War intensifies the sense of imminent jeopardy.

Research

Frameworks The lists below give context and represent possible routes for further research and experimentation of each project.

Sociological community integration Cultural Ridley Road’s diversity Urbanism exchanges and trades Capitalism proposal of a new currency, money as secondary Speculative What if a exchanges were firstly paid with gratitude rather than money?

Technologic the screen space: new inventions, new realities Sociologic society’s relation to surrounding technologies Scientific evolution (natural x artificial) Visual rhetoric metaphor, satire: human adaptation to new technologies Speculative What if the course of human evolution is profoundly altered by science and technology?

Political war, conflict Historical Cold War Psychological fear, threat, jeopardy Visual rhetoric metaphor, satire: gamification of danger Commodification presence of the tool in the household Speculative How useful would the tool be during a real nuclear attack?

Reaction

Sketching the narratives

Analisying the environment and its participants to question society's influence, the individual’s role and their perceived identity. Newcomers and immigrants are ideal protagonists in this story as they reflect how culturally diverse Ridley Road Market is.

The first drafts of my visual essay were composed of a mixmatch of ideas. A recurring interest seem to be the use of generative systems (or algorithms) as tools for the design of processes that create an infinite and unpredictable array of outputs.

The circular shape and spinning movement of the original object were chosen elements for the language of Project 3. A selection of images that make analogy to jeopardy were carefully sequenced to build and break the tension of the narrative.

Reaction

Visual experiments

Stamps and banknotes influenced the visual language for the project's narrative.

They reinforced the symbolic role of the individual. The new currency works as normal banknotes, it must be given when a trade is made as a sign of honest gratitude. Different messages can be incorporated to it through an online customisation platform.

Sound was incorporated to the visual narrative in order to enhance the oddness of the subject and increase tension.

Slow spins reduce tension, transmit heaviness and promote reflection.

A countdown creates a distressing sense of gamification within a scenario of imminent danger.

Mapping different evolutionary processes to serve as framework for the visual essay.

The nature of the pixel and analogic patterns is used to illustrate the evolution of the screen space.

Results

Overview

Project 1

Social currency

Project 2

Project 3

Visual essay

Moving image

Leaving, Arriving, Settling

Evolution is Reactive

Doomsday

Results

Project 1: the narrative To whom: Individuals who left their home countries for a better life somewhere else.

Leaving

Arriving

Audio: multiple languages expressing a single narrative: the excitement but nervousness of moving abroad.

Stamps as artefacts that travel across borders symbolising a link between the individual's original and new home.

In collaboration with Amanda Perry-Kessaris

In collaboration with Rebecca Worth

Settling

After testing different variations of the currency, a more universal version without picture has been chosen to extend the usability of the artefact.

The translations on the background link with the different languages that can be heard from the ‘leaving’ sound. The ‘1st’ watermark intends to evoke a progress from the ‘2nd’ present on the stamps.

Results

Project 1: overview At the market observation, people's movements, sounds, rhythms...

Finding a framework and developing the narrative urbanism, individual and collective

Visual experimentation and testing tools

Results

Project 2 Click to view

Results

Project 2

My key insight comes from Jessica Helfand’s ‘Dematerialisation of Screen Space’ (2001) in which the author analyses the progress of technological evolution: More likely, our response has been a reactive one: to technological imperatives, to pragmatic considerations, and to each other. To think beyond these practicalities is to respond to a broader and more compelling challenge.

Through visual research I have identified a group of shapes that are commonly used to illustrate evolutionary patterns and these became the framework for the essay. My initial idea was to explore how humans and technology are reactive to each other. From this starting point I then looked for further writing material. Neville (2011) highlights the process of feedback between organism and environment, which led me to expand my research to the scientific field. Taking also into account Charles Darwin’s evolution studies I came across the concept of Eugenics and how DNA manipulation technologies can distort our notion of natural selection.

The visual language of this project was mainly inspired by “The Media is the Massage” and “The Age of Earthquakes”. I believe the appropriation of relatively unrelated imagery to create new relevant meaning helps accentuate the highly critical tone of those books. I tried to explore a similar approach. For example, the use of a diamond on page 8 helps illustrate the ‘elastic’ instance of the evolution process, but it also serves

as a metaphor that questions the value we give to mobile devices (such as the iPhone). Even though these devices are on the extreme opposite of a diamond in terms of rarity, their value is linked to how much of our own lives are transferred to them and how much we are willing to adapt our mental capacities in order to make the most of our user experience.

Some of the graphics are overlaid with different pixel densities, RGB stripes and blurs. These represent the progress of the digital space from undefined, rough and unknown to a crisper ‘retina display’ that portrays the medium’s relevance in modern urban society.

I decided to materialise the essay through printing as an provocative response to the title of the source text. The book format is a simple but efficient communication tool, which allowed the development of the theme in different ways for each page spread. The book also allowed the experimentation with superimposition of layers of content using drafting film. The initial intention was to print the essay with strong contrast of black and white. However, I learned that the dense black ink in some of the pages would compromise the quality of the final output from a riso printer. I then modified some of the artworks in order to match risograph’s printing limitations. For this project my efforts were focused on content.

The research produced some intriguing ideas which I tried to communicate in a metaphorical and hopefully thought-provoking way.

Results

Project 2: overview

Visual language screen-based systems

Contextual reseach natural x technologic evolution, human evolution and science, DNA manipulation, eugenics

Structure mapping and visualising evolution

Results

Project 3 Click to play

Results

Project 3: overview

Experimentation Sketching, time factor, moving image, sounds (new software skills: After Effects)

Contextual reseach Dr. Strangelove, characters as caricatures

Review

Annotated Bibliography

Editing Humanity The text references an emerging technology in the scientific field called CRISPR, which promises to make it possible to edit genetic information quickly and cheaply in order to cure and treat diseases.

The central hypothesis of the text is based on ethical issues related to non-medical enhancements made possible by the technology.

For the author, it’s not the role of scientists to determinate whether it is right or wrong to edit the genome for improvement of human attributes - the judge of that should be society as a whole. The text also raises awareness of some countries which may have legislation gaps or poor enforcement, letting privately funded scientists or fertility clinics carry out unregulated CRISPR research.

The author concludes that those concerns should not obstruct CRISPR’s progress since it’s ultimately a tool that gives people healthier, longer and better-quality lives.

Rehearsing the disaster: Pre-enactment between reality and fiction According to Cavallo (2011), our vision of the future seems more tangible than ever thanks to the increasing confidence in the human ability to devise tools capable of modifying it. The author approaches risk assessment through preenactment practice, which serves to identify ways that supposedly forthcoming dangers and worst-case scenarios are performed before they happen.

Pre-enactment is a useful tool for governments to produce a more risk-aware society in the hope of making their countries safer. However, it can also be used by artists to reflect on, speculate and critique the consequences of current world affairs.

Pre-enactment is constructed and often perceived as a narrative - meaning an organised sequence of events.

It is described by the author as a ‘sort of spiritual vaccine which injects fear in order to release immunity antibodies’.

Review

Annotated Bibliography

A Relational Design Process

Speculative Everything

The thesis refers to Andrey Blauvelt’s theory of Relational Design which views the last century in design and art as consisting of three waves. The first one focused on the creation of a universal visual syntax for those fields, the second continued by exploring it’s semantic and meaning making potential. The thesis focuses on the third wave, which takes into account changing scientific paradigms that have shaped recent design practice.

The authors approach design as a means to change reality (so it becomes more ‘malleable’) rather than simply describing or maintaining it (p. 3). The book offers a contemporary crossover of art, design, architecture, science, sociology, futurology, political theory, philosophy of technology and literary fiction. Speculative Design complements those disciplines in order to propose imaginative alternatives for a better future.

It explores how contemporary design can be applied to create processes (generative systems / algorithms) or evolving solutions that are somehow ‘alive’ by reacting to the context they are part of.

The text references a few case studies. It explores how the use of contingency is used to alter the colours of the logo system for the Casa de Musica, a music hall in Portugal.

This logo responds to the immediate design environment in which it is viewed. Another case study looks at how the use of generative systems is able to influence aspects of a dynamic typeface used for the twin cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The author affirms that design practice must always respond to the broader culture in order to stay relevant in a constantly changing and increasingly complex world.

According to the authors, one area which design as critique has obvious practical applications is science research (p. 47).

Biotechnology allows not only the manipulation of things in the environment around us but the design of life itself.

This have huge consequences for what it means to be human, how we relate to each other, our identity, our dreams, hopes and fears.

Review

Context Review

My emerging interests include design as an investigative tool focused on a future in which science and technology will provide ways of designing ourselves and therefore our evolution. The diagrams below cross-references four selected texts which might influence the next steps of my research.

New technologies, such as genome editing, usually pose risks that must be considered. What impact would the manipulation of innate aesthetic features have on a society that is strongly based on self-image? Will genome editing promote the revival of eugenic ideals of an ‘ideal race’ that was popular in the first decades of the 20th century?

Perhaps some answers could be provided by a connection between genome editing technology and Relational design ideas. Both subjects deal with evolution and promote the design or manipulation of processes. Genome editing alters the route of human evolution (transforming it to something less 'natural'), whereas generative systems provide evolution through design.

The Relational design process also has parallels with Speculative design as both take into account environmental variables and overall context in order to generate design outputs or raise questions. The first method creates

solutions that may be inserted into the present whereas the Speculative approach takes into account socio-political variables and focuses more heavily on the future.

Both design methodologies also dialogue with pre-enactment practice, which can be considered a speculative narrative that plays with variables in order to create scenarios of risk in the future. The interaction between the visual language of design, risk assessment and science should provide a rich and scalable range of possibilities for rhetoric argumentation.

I would like to explore the role of design in communicating how present actions can raise future social issues. Design methodologies can help create visual narratives, processes and systems that pose questions regarding whether or not we are entitled to completely manipulate the route of our own evolution.

Review

Context Review: overview

editing humanity editing humanity

risks: eugenics, ethic issues, identity crisis...

visual language: science x graphic design

risks: eugenics, ethic issues, identity crisis...

designing human evolution

risk assessment and pre-enactment

designing human evolution

risk assessment speculative everything

speculative narrative

and pre-enactment

methodology: context has a leading role

pre-enacment and generative systems: design of process with variable outcomes

visual langu science x gr

speculative narrative

methodolog context has

pre-enacment and generative systems: design of process with variable outcomes

relational design process

relational design process

key texts cross-overs

key texts cross-overs

Review

Practice Review The following examples provide an initial and broad scope for my emerging research interests. The languages that compose those narratives can be combined in order to develop a multilayered approach to my chosen subject.

The War Game (1965). UK: BBC.

Pre-enactment and satire In the 1960s Dr. Strangelove could have been considered a pre-enactment of the Cold War that becomes a nuclear conflict. The film was shot in black and white to enhance the starkness of the content. The characters in the movie are highly expressive, almost like caricatures, which intensifies the nonsensical and satirical nature of the plot. The War Games by Peter Watkins is similarly critical. It was also placed on the blurred line between reality and fiction by posing the visual language of war against pacifistic ideals.

Dr. Strangelove (1964). USA/UK.

Speculation and utopia

AMO (2010) Roadmap 2050.

Roadmap 2050 Eneropa is an alternative map of Europe which takes into account the geographic landscape of the continent to determine areas of shared renewable energy sources. The reinterpretation of such an instantly recognisable graphic is done by delineating and renaming its parts. This piece speculates new ways in which social and political interactions could potentially occur in the future. The visual language is carefully planned – serif typeface and use of motif in the compass design evoke the past. Those elements contrast with the futuristic subject thus marking its atemporal relevance.

How can speculation create a pre-enactment narrative?

Which risks and variables would be involved? What would the tone be? Satirical?

Stark? Fictional? Realistic?

Review

Practice Review

MuirMcNeil (unknown date) Intersect.

Designing the process Studio MuirMcNeil explores parametric design systems to generate cuttingedge typographic solutions. ‘Intersect’ is a type system that uses a dynamic grid to subvert typographic weight. It exceed binary limitations of letter forms and counter-forms by emulating a successive range of linear screens to give the illusion of tint densities within the body of the type.

This allows a wide range of design options.

Scientific visual language The humorous movement of the animation allows different interpretations that don't necessarily represent a fact. This gif has recently become viral and presented as an enzime producing feelings of happiness. Although easily believable, it turns out the information isn't correct. I am interested in how science on a microscopic scale can become a powerful graphic tool that allows free reinterpretation and communicates life on its rawest level.

Art of Cell (2014). Animated GIF of Kinesin Protein walking.

Could a rigid grid system simulate an organic al process? Would generative systems be capable of designing evolution? What kind of visual cross over would be generated between the molecular and the systemic?

Bibliography and references AMO (2010) Roadmap 2050.

Available at: http://oma.eu/projects/roadmap-2050 (Accessed: 19 March 2016)

Available at: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/09/25/business/ gadget-maker-offers-thumbs-remedy-overly-large-smartphone-screens (Accessed: 19 March 2016).

ABC News (2013). Wheel of Fortune.

Available at: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/ 2013/04/13-things-you-didnt-know-about-wheel-of-fortune (Accessed: 19 March 2016).

MuirMcNeil (unknown date) Intersect.

Available at: http://www.muirmcneil.com/project/ intersect-2/?section=about (Accessed: 19 March 2016).

Art of Cell (2014). Animated GIF of Kinesin Protein walking.

Available at: http://www.artofthecell.com/animation/ well-you-can-tell-by-the-way-i-use-my-walk (Accessed: 19 March 2016).

Neville, D. (2011) A Relational Design Process.

Available at: http://nevolution.typepad.com/theories/ 2011/03/a-relational-design-process-thesis.html (Accessed: 19 March 2016).

AstraZeneca (2015) CRISPR technology for genome editing.

Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrtrM_CPtQQ (Accessed: 19 March 2016).

Purestock (no date) High angle view of group of spectators sitting in a movie theater wearing 3-D glasses.

Available at: http://www.thinkstockphotos.co.uk/image/ stock-photo-high-angle-view-of-group-of-spectators/79072701 (Accessed: 19 March 2016).

Cavallo, Francesca (2011) Rehearsing the Disaster, pre-enactment between reality and fiction.

Available at: https://independent.academia.edu/ FrancescaLauraCavallo (Accessed: 19 March 2016).

Rabatti, Alessandro (2015). Facebank series.

Available at: http://www.alessandrorabatti.com (Accessed: 19 March 2016).

Craig Freeman, John. (2012) Border Memorial: Frontera de los Muertos. Available at: https://johncraigfreeman.wordpress.com/ border-memorial-frontera-de-los-muertos (Accessed: 19 March 2016).

Sideshowworld (no date) Unknown title.

Available at: http://www.sideshowworld.com/44-KTDA/2013 /Knife-Throwing/Frank-Dean.html (Accessed: 19 March 2016).

Dunne, A., Raby, F. (2013) Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. The MIT Press.

The Economist (2015) Editing Humanity.

Available at: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/ 21661651-new-technique-manipulating-genes-holdsgreat-promisebut-rules-are-needed-govern-its (Accessed: 19 March 2016).

Dr. Strangelove (1964) Directed by Stanley Kubrick [Film]. USA/UK. FKA twigs #throughglass (2014) FKA twigs #throughglass.

Available at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99YyWeqHaBo (Accessed: 19 March 2016).

Japan Times (2014) Gadget maker offers a thumbs-up remedy for overly large smartphone screens.

The War Game (1965) Directed by Peter Watkins [Film]. UK: BBC. Walker, John (2005). Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer Online Edition.

Available at: https://www.fourmilab.ch/bombcalc (Accessed: 19 March 2016).