Derek Ercolano Sp2013 by Derek Ercolano

Semester Evaluation Spring 2013

SEMESTER EVALUTATION SPRING 2013 Coursework and Experiments Upon my arrival to Bergen last August I had some pretty solid ideals about what I wanted to spend my two years doing. I had an audience, a format, and a visual language I was really interested in exploring. Fast forward to now, and most of the variables in my project have changes vastly. This is by no means a negative thing, though I definitely did feel the growing pains of my thesis this semester. I am happy that I had the opportunity this first year to not only attend the compulsory courses, but do a lot of my own work and experiments. While most of them do not directly relate to the project I am ultimately moving forward with, I feel they were absolutely important for me to get out of my system so that I could clearly understand what I do want to be doing. I will speak briefly about two of these experiences: The first being Vegetable Comic, which I created to be Bergenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first unconventional narrative drawing anthology. Putting the book together was quite a task in itself, in that I have never put together a publication on a large scale. I learned quite a lot about assembling books, and the difficulties of screen printing multicolor covers for the publication. Secondly, I was able to show some work in Bergen for the first time, once in city center, and once out in a gallery space a few hours from here. This experience has really developed my and Tordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s working relationship, and we had the opportunity to some collaborative wall drawings together that taught me a lot about how he thinks about making things, which was inspiring. Additionally, I felt really inspired by the courses that we did take this semester. As they all sort of reinforced this experimenting approach to making things. They didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t pull us out of our projects, as we were allowed to take whatever we were working on into the classes and move forward with them. I myself discovered some new methods which I already have utilized in my project with results. The combination of these classes and some outside projects I took on gave me the chance to try out a wide variety of approaches in my work.

Developments in Written Research One of the more difficult moments for me this semester was our first presentation to the faculty here. I was doing quite a bit of reading about the the design versus art debate and I think that I got so caught up in the rebellious nature of it all. I made the decision to leave certain questions unanswered, and to leave an audience out of the forefront in my presentation, I began to think that if I was doing something I was passionate about that surely, someone else would connect to the project. I think I was just enjoying doing something that was so different then what I was used to in my

previous career in advertising. However, upon some critical reflection after the project I realized that any project that has resonated with me (be it design or art) has considered its relationship between the audience, and environment. I also realized that what I was getting excited about were more about my tool set as a designer and less about the idea I was approaching. After doing a lot of reading on the design and art debate I realized that it is such a well worn conversation, that I feel I would rather take my original motivations and move them into a different context. Once I had got past this way of working and returned to my normal way of problem solving things immediately got clearer for me. My paradigm shift in this project came from a method that I had previously heard about in bachelors and had been reintroduced to me by Anthony Quinn in his blow up course. This method called “Oblique Strategies” was created by Brian Eno to help push ideas into unforeseen directions by introducing a variable in the form of a random abstract phrase. I decided that I would spend one entire afternoon free writing about my project in terms of these different phrases that oblique strategies gave to me. During this process, I was give the phrase “move it outside.” Immediately, the writing I did based on this phrase began to become very interesting and I realized that what I was doing was flipping the entire original project on my head. I moved the project outside, into public spaces, and instead of working mostly for myself I became really interested in the idea of making work anonymously. What became initially interesting to me was the idea of entering public spaces as an anonymous visual provocateur, to break up the normal flow of advertisements in a public space with visual games, that stir up curiosity, comment on the location they are placed in, and provoke the viewers. Once I had a few of the seeds of this idea, I began to look for research that could help me develop it more. Some interesting leads came out of looking at the “Obey Manifestion” written by street artist turned entrepreneur, Shepherd Fairy. Fairy had used the ideals of a philosopher callers Heidegger, while forming the idea for his Obey campaign which grew from a couple stickers in one city, to an international brand, with underground and mainstream appeal. Fairy’s writings, talk a lot about how things on the street can manifest meaning due to their ability create to create curiosity in passerbys. In the case of Faireys Campaign, he paired the face of C list American celebrity with the word “OBEY”. Though the original intent of the poster was to make a comment on consumption in America it was still very ambiguous, and because of it’s repetitious placement around cities, people began to believe the image he created had some perceived power. Fairey’s writings on the project which contained some critical texts about phenomenology were a critical in me developing my new key question. I discovered two more sources in my inquiry, one was a thesis by an architect named Lily Shivanee at MIT media lab and a book by british scholar Gillian Rose called “Visual Methodlogies: An introduction to the interpretation of Visual Materials.” These books explained some truly exciting concepts that helped load the conceptual gun of this project. Shirvanee’s essay discusses her conception of this term “Locative Media”

which is described by her as “Media that actively create and sense a reciprocal awareness between people and their environment, thereby, merging various types of information and media within the limits of specific geographic landscape.” In her thesis, Shirvanee uses this term to create discourse underground forms of communication in the urban landscape. On the other hand Gillian Roses meditation on the concept of materiality was also inspiring to me. In this meditation she talks about the social lives of images in the world of people, in terms of mobility. Simply put it is a look at how the repetitious positioning of advertisements and subversive campaigns and how the different contexts effect the materiality, and relationship with people. This research lead me to a more solid key question which is now “How can I visually explore the concept of mischief in the context of public spaces? “. Additionally I am interested in how these images reawaken people’s awareness of the spaces they inhabit on a daily basis as well as the possibility for them to manifest meaning, and identity in the environment.This is something I am very excited about because it is not only an interesting topic, but I believe I can use my original motivations for my original project in a way that is hyper visible, and has a great possibility to engage the audience. In an age where all public spaces are plagued with the monotonous advertising campaigns, I think this project can be an important way to re-engage people with their surroundings in a playful way.

Developments in Visual Research Bearing all the previous knowledge I had gained in mind, I decided that I would need to pick a location that could serve as a case study for my ideas. I originally thought that I could choose New York, and plan some experiments out for my next visit. However, I quickly realized that I didn’t have the budget or the team to accomplish the things I wanted in a city like new york. It is too dense for one person, to take on in such a short period of time without engaging in some drastic vandalistic behavior, which is not the aim of the project. I then decided that I would take a walk through Bergen and think about the possibilities for me use this city as my testing location. What I discovered was that in a lot of ways Bergen is perfect for this sort of project. While it is a city, it is penetrable as a tourist within a day or two worth of time. Also, I noticed the lack of advertising for posters except for designated locations throughout the city which were virtual free-for-alls for posters and fliers. While some might see this as annoying, I think the fact that all the spaces you can post media is designated let’s me know where people are already looking at things. These are central to the city, and they allow me to try out my visual stunts in a legal manner, utilizing these spaces as a canvas for the project’s brand of visual communication. I used 3 days to photograph all these locations in the city center, and really get an idea of what kind of surfaces, shapes and dimensions I would be working in. I don’t expect to limit my endeavors to these sort of locations but I think they are a great starting

point for the project. These photos were then drawn on top of by me,so that I could directly create ideas based on the locations. Through that I was able to form some different concepts about how I could visually provoke people using my toolset as a illustrator and designer. Through these sketches I decided that I want to play around with the volume of my stunts in this project, which ones are loud and which ones are more soft and subtle. These sketches also brought up an interesting question for me to think about during this project which is “How much is created by me the sender, and how much is added by the receiver in conjunction with the environmental context?.” What remains from my previous version of my project is the motivation. I want to bring my character focused approach to the context of this project, but instead of making a lot of personal work, bring it to these public spaces and directly have an effect on the my audience. I think it will be exciting to measure people reactions, and have the possibility to try out new ideas under the cloak of anonymity.

Writing course I thought the writing course was a good way to start the semester off. These writing courses always seem to remind me how important free writing is to solidfying your ideas. I am particularly fond of the quick paces assignments given in class that allow you a certain amount of time to write freely about things. It reinforces the idea to me that sketches don’t neccesasrily mean drawings. In fact I find that I enjoy sketching with words as much as I do with words after taking these classes. I also thought it was cool to put up our thesis questions on the wall to have our classmates write notes on. I think this sort of dialogue is largely missing when we don’t have these classes. I felt like the actual text I brought to the class was able to evolve and expand on based on some of the critical questions that were posted around it during the workshops. Blow Up Course Anthony’s Blow Up course was simply just a lot of fun. Though it was slow getting started, the course really moved you into thinking about things in a really fast manner. Being someone who has been creating work based on the advertising industries ultra polished standards, it’s important to be reminded that a sketch should be a sketch, not something digital and refined. I wish I had the understanding that I do about my project now when I took the course, because it would have been nice to engage in the methods we learned in class with my new direction. Nonetheless,it was still a very good way to collect great methods for coming up with ideas. One of which, I mentioned earlier (Eno’s Oblique strategies) is something that I have used constantly throughout the semester for introducing strange concepts and cues into my thinking and writing. I am completely baffled by how I can draw up connections and new ideas to nearly every prompt I get from the method. My favorite part of this course was taking on someone else’s project for a day. It was a lot of fun to work with Alessandro’s project and of

course interesting to see how Tya worked on mine. In theory it would be great if we did way more often than just during this course. However, it seems that people are often not too keen on engaging in this behavior unless they are forced to. Another takeaway of this class for me was working intensely for set periods of time. I really feel the energy of the classroom and the excitement of having to finish a large amount of things in a short time was really a great method for me to use. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always a pleasure to work with Anthony, he is a really motivating person, and he brings a lighthearted atmosphere to the course which I think is paramount for these exercises.

Collage Course. I went into this course feeling like I would rather continue my own pursuits, since I feel I work visually more often then not. However, it turned out to be a extremely productive week and I created something at the end that, helped me experiment with no materials and a new expression of the way I work. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an interesting change of pace to have Arve as an instructor since his way of thinking is much more based on reinforcing ideas through form and composition. During the course I created a pretty big collage made out of building up of hand cut shapes out of colored paper. It was a completely new way about thinking about composition, I had no plan other to let the shapes build up organically and create some sort of character in the end. At this point in the semester I was beginning to really understand the direction I wanted to take my project in and so I began to think of this hand cut paper method as something I could utilize when I am creating visual stunts for the project. The cut paper allows you to simplify the forms of the drawing down into simple recognizable shapes, that are bold and colorful. Specifically, I began to think about how interesting it would be to create simple posters where different hand cut illustrations could be popping off and interacting with people on the street. There are two things that I want to mention that could improve the course for the next time. Firstly, I wish we had a daily dialogue among the class, to discuss what we were making and what we were thinking about the piece in the context of our own projects. There were a lot of interesting things being made and I felt like I really wanted to hear about why people were making certain choices with that they were making. Secondly, I think It would have been nice to mix up viskom and furniture students. I feel like the difference in approaches to this course would be interesting to see and make dialogue about.

Node Berlin THe Node Berlin Course with Anders provided yet a different dimension of thinking about things in terms of my thesis. Anders is buttoned up and pragmatic with his decisions and this sort of structure was a nice contrast to some of the other courses we have taken which were more freeform. For me it was also a nice to work with grids in a serious manner after focusing more on my skills as an illustrator for the last 6 months.

Tord and I chose to work together on the Vegetable Comic which we were working on designing for at the time. I spent my time designing the skeleton for it, there was a grid needed for the table of contents as well, as for some introductory text. I spent most of my time deciding on what sort of identity I wanted the anthology to have since most comic publications tend to be erratic and disorganized when it comes to this. After we were done with making the actual pieces Anders had us talk conceptually about how to create some sort of photo where the product was present, but in a unforced, natural way. I didn’t get the overall reasoning behind why we were doing this but I did think it was a great experiment. We experimented with a still life “alter” in our photo and then we published the image as a moving gif on tumblr. Overall, the biggest takeaway for me from this course was refreshing my interest in grid systems, I am planning on doing a small workshop for myself this summer when I start to create the skeleton of my thesis book. I am interested in how a deeper of knowledge off grids could also effect how I tell stories, and make pictures.

Mortons Lectures Mortons lectures this semester on Design Management and Marketing were something that was already pretty familiar to me because of working experience. During my time in the field I think I came to understand a lot of the concepts that he spoke about, however, it was really good for me to see the lectures because Morton always provides the bigger picture with the models that he draws during the lecture. I think one of the specific moments that stood out to me this semester within his lectures was during the marketing lectures where he drew up a chart about value. I think value is such an tricky word in this discipline because of the two different parties involved in the design process. Value to the designer, and to the person receiving the design service (read client) can sometimes be completely different things. I remember when working with pepsi, the client had fallen in love with a previous campaign my agency had done and constantly pushed us to recreate that campaign when working on different products. For him the value of the campaign was in the numbers, and given the tough economy he believed the value was in taking tried and true ideas and reskinning them for different campaigns.This for us, as designers was a complete nightmare. As designers, the exciting part isn’t necessarily to give the client what they wanted but to perhaps give them what they didn’t know they wanted. The value for the designer in my opinion is of course helping grow the clients business with their ideas but also it is to push the format and try new things that give new dimension to a brand. Though I digress slightly, I think Morton’s breaking down of the variables on this concept was very interesting. During both lecture series I also was really keen on when we were able to work together using the concepts he was talking about. These concepts can get pretty dense at times, and it is when he forces us to really use the models that I find myself more completely understanding things.

VISUAL PORTFOLIO

THESIS IDEA DEVELOPMENT A selection of sketches showing how I develeoped some of the concepts for my practical project this semester.

THESIS IDEA DEVELOPMENT: Mind Maps & Concept Sketches

THESIS IDEA DEVELOPMENT: Initial Character Development

BLOW UP COURSE A selection of photographs and pieces from the blow up course. The work shows my inquiry into my topic, through sculpture, drawings and small narrative experiments.

COLLAGE COURSE Piece created as meditation on my project. I began to think about how abstract cut paper forms and a specific color pallete could be used to build up an identity in a series of characters.

VEGETABLE COMIC (Node Course) Bi-annual comic anthology that aims to champion unconventional narrative work in Bergen. Intiated by myself and Tord Torpe. Shown here is a selection of photoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s of the publications, part of my comic on the inside and the photo we took as part of the course.

Weekly Experiments Drawings done throughout the semester in acccordance with my plan to engage in weekly experiments by myself or with others. Some of these experiments took place inside gallery spaces and are documented here as well.