Design History by Abby yang

Design History 2: Communication Design

19084538D Abby Yang Shu Fan Tutor/Kam Fai CHAN

SD2265

The "history" we read and learn from textbooks is the events compiled by the so-called history authority. Books broaden yet at the same time limit our vision. Did we really see the whole picture of the events? After all, the texts and images we recieved were processed and cropped in advanced. Even the word "history" itself is a controversy. The information considered "unnecessary" or "secret" is blurred out or kept away from our sight. There is no so-called complete and true history. We read, learn, and piece together the fragments to understand the whole picture, and often, the key missing pieces are the information not in the frame of mainstream.

In the following pages, I would like to apply the concepts I've learnt to the topics I'm interested about and resonant with my some personal experience as examples.

Spectacles The spectacles of spectacles. The focus, mainstream, authourity, and decency.

Camp

The ex result the un

Kitsch The medium that arouse an emotional effect which immitate the great artworks (without having enough knowledge of art). What's bad about kitsch isn't about immitation, but decieving audience without quoting the reference.

The domination o how the universe we acknowledge the accumulation images. We all liv visuality.

Spect

Annonymous The out of focus. Despite called as the so-called minority, however, they are in fact much more than the spectscles.

Vernacular

xcess in everything, as a often be considered as northodox.

Noise

The frogotten everyday scene. The origin of professional.

The "imperfect" and "unnecessary" that often be wiped out by photoshop. Yet noise contains the most primitive information which is indespensible to the whole picture.

of images.Bascially works now. What about the world is n and exposure of ve in the world of

tacles

Can You Hear the Whisper of Arts? "In a modern society where 'visual experience' is the priority, I think this room, which is all about touch, makes a lot of senese!"

What does the voice of arts sound like? Why only few people are able to hear the whispers? I think maybe we become a deaf because we focus too much on visibility. We use our eyes too much that we block our other senses, turning out that we can only see the world "inside" the frame, not the world "behind" the frame.

Les Chats du Louvre

A Nanny She got loads of anonyms, often showed up herself with different faces to others.

Before Vivian Maier known as "the" Vivian Maier, she was only a nanny, a nanny who was intensely guarded and private and secretly tooks massive street photography of the New York City. Though people called Vivian Maier as a street photography master, I think "a nanny" described her the best than other prestigeous titles.

Vivian Maier

The identidy and proficency of the street photographer perhaps is the last thing to be concerned. Street photography is the captured fragment of everyday life. Anoymity blends the photographer into the crowd, the shadow or the reflection, giving the authenticity to the vernacular. Everything is anonymous in street photography.

Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier didn't mind that she wasn't the only focus in her self-protraits. The noises (the camera, the reflection, the shadow, or irrelevant figures) were also parts of her. "If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you". Perhaps Maier didn't see her self-portrait as a self-portrait. She was parts of the street scenes. The street scenes were the extension of Maier. When Maier gazed into the scene, the scene also gazed into Maier.

Vivian Maier

"I saw myself seeing myself". -Jacques Lacan

Jon Renzella

This is an interesting and inspiring artwork I came across in a lithograph exhibition in this September. How does a person look like? Does he looks like his reflection in the mirror, his headshots, or his selfies? In front of the camera, we can pretend to be what we want to look like. In front of the canvas, we can used brushes to polish and hide the body part we are not satisfied with. We can fake ourself outwardly, but habits can't be faked. Habits are the evidence of our existence, and truly represent who we are. Just like the detective tropes, the habits tell a lot to the detective who the suspect is.

Self-portrait

Meme Taiwan is a highly democracy society. An interesting phenomenon I found in the recent decades Taiwan is the rising numbers of politics memes. When the lecture was introducing the politics related works, the active Taiwan politics meme culture just came up in my mind. Meme, for me, may be a new force of

annonymous politics in design field. Seldom do we know who made and spreaded these memes onto Facebooks, Twitters, or other social platform. However, people get resonance with the memes and memes become a modern carricature reflected the society we lived in. I think meme culture is an iconic envision of

politics in the 21th century, which is an interesting product of the cyberworld. Yet recently Taiwan politicians and even government institutions have the trend to use political meme to lead the social climate, which I think is not appropriate since meme also could be propagandas that brainwashed people's mind, escpecially in

todays internet society where people are restrained to their own comfort zone due to the algorithm mechanism. However, despite of my concern, I still believe that political memes could raise people's awarness to the political issues positively, which benefits the development of individuals and the world a lot.

Taiwan's reponse to WHO's neglection and exclusion.

Envisioning Politics

The Duration of Time It could be more or less than one day.

This series of 3 photos was taken around mid-July by me. I found that a pigeon had its nest on the rooftop of my home. Suddenly an idea just came up in my mind that I should take a record of it. However the documentary only lasted for 1 day. On the next day the pigeon was gone and there was only a shattered egg left. For

me this event only lasted for 1 days, but maybe it could be even shorter. Maybe after I left the rooftop, the pigeon just flew away and accidentatly broke its egg. For the pigeon, it could sense the event same as me, which is 1 day, or shorter, say 1 hour or even 10 minutes only.

After having the lecture about montage and seeing this series of photo again, I think I built up my fascination to montage. Montage is the visualized length of time, and the length could be different to everyone despite talking about the same event. If I skipped one day to photo the pigeon, though I would still probably get the same

pictures, but the time duration I experienced would be totally different and I would be less desperate and disappointed after finding out the shattered egg because I may think the tragedy hadn't happened that early.

Pigeon Diary

The Sense of Experience The past (and all the virtual memories) is the condition for us to live and act in the present.

"If you don't have memory, you can't be seen as a mortal, since the foundation of a mortal is his memory", this is the statement I heard from a Taiwan podcast episode discussing about time traveling. The hosts also suggested an interesting hypothesis, "if a person keep having a same daily routine, could we say he is somehow having a time travel?".

Clocks quantify the "physical time" but can't tell the "experience" of time. As discussed in the lecture, time works under the sense of experience, and memory is the documented experience of what we've lived through, notwithstanding the accuracy. We examing our memory to check where and when are we located at. I think to some extend, we are all

unconciously having time traveling in the same speed of physical time and accumulating experience. When we lose our memory, it feels like our time is moving backward, and hence maybe the Alzheimer paitents are actually having time travelling without a time machine.

Podcast: Nile Drinks Milk Ep32- The time travelers who saved the tragedy

Time Travel

Am I a Kitsch? Should I and how could I avoid kitsch?

The design trend of the coming year will be released around the end of the year. Every time after I finished the trend list, I feel complicated and kind of lost my direction. Of course it is important to keep up with the trend to meet the need of the markets, but however, every time I was looking up for the reference, I would doubt myself am I really designing something or just simply kitsching something. We as a student are taught to learn from masters and be sensitive

to the trend. I think it's not a bad thing to learn from others, since it is a need for development, and the "masters" we know nowadays experienced the same route. Yet sometimes this kind of learning method holds me back. I'm worried that I'm just blindly immitating the works like a robot, trying to act like the professional instead of really learning something from the process.

Sometimes I understand w trending abo does it really simply a visu

Through my learning process, this "kitsch" question bothers me a lot. If I resisit to take references and learn from trends, then I put the cart before the horse. In fact, I did avoid seeing works on design websites for references for a time, which was quite foolish and immature. Kitsch isn't a bad thing. What is bad about kitsch is neglecting the context behind the pieces. The way how I made myself blind to avoid being kitsch in the past, I think, is actually another kind kitsch in

reverse direction. Therefore, I think the real problem of this question isn't about kitsch; it is about the progressing and deprogessing of a designer. All in all, back to one of the main points in this subject: critical thinking. Critical thinking is the key difference between making reference and kitsching. We think, and therefore we are not a mirror that simply do the reflection.

I just wonder do we really what the trend is really out, the context behind it, y contain context or just ual variation of the year.

As A Designer

Reflection Design History 2 is an inspiring experience for me. Before having the first lectures, I thought we were going to have a more specify introduction on visual design history. However, it turned out that I had a 13 weeks philosophy lectures. I quite enjoyed the process of the visual moment project. The project gave me an opportunity to develope my own criticism on an issue I'm interested about. Although it was quite challenging since the statement was my opinion and hence it was hard to find relevant academic papers as reference. Yet I think this difficulty gave me more freedom on focusing on my own thinking, instead of compiling the fact information I found. This course gives me another way to appreciate, criticize, and think about the world we live in. What is design history, or what is history? I think there is no such a thing called history. What our ancestors and we left for our descendents is the evidence of our existence. Every evidence has the same weight but the term "history" makes the judement. Daily live and ordinary matter. If we only study on the focus in the foreground of the moments, than we lost the midground and background, which give depth to the whole pictures. The weight of history should be more than stacks of books. "I think, therefore I am", for me, is the essence of studying history. When we start to think, history is more than an irrelevant experience to common people like us. Though we can't actually participate in the moments, but thinking let us experience the moments. Although authority makes diffrentiation on which should be remember and which are minnorities, I think we don't need to resist and be picky to the "star" history. Since everything is relative, what is minority today may become the alpha on the next day, vice versa. Focus on more than a single point. Look around our live. Think, question, and find the answer.

Me kitsching Vivian Maier