UNUSUAL, CHANCE, IMPERFECT, UNEXPECTED.
HAYDEN JONES
THE INTERSECTION BETWEEN IMPROVISATIONAL THEATER AND VISUAL COMMUNICATION
I began my thesis project as both an opportunity and as a challenge. An opportunity in the way that it gave me the space to explore and be in dialogue with the performing arts. The performing arts have always been an important part of my life, and something that has been for the most part absent from my art school experience (although I have found outlets outside of the college). Through this independent project I have been able to think about how the performing arts might look within the graphic design vernacular. More specifically, I have been able to explore the relationship between improvisational theater and visual communication. The spontaneity and magic that is inherent in improv presented an opportunity to explore more in depth the workings of improvisational theater and how these workings could be made visual. My thesis project also presented a challenge, within the framework of improvisation is this notion of imperfection. For me graphic design has always been a question of rules and perfection. This feeling that design should be perfect sprang from
my seeing craft and design as one, coupled with the fact that within my life I have always been one to follow and value the rules. I challenged myself with this project to explore the imperfect, to trust in my formal abilities as a designer and the process of improvisational theater to discover something unexpected and unusual, in my work and in myself. These words present a jumping off point in which Speed (fast/slow) presents the opportunity to design towards the uninterrupted. Performance is also a reoccurring theme in the word set, posing the question of “how might the work perform?” and “how might a collaborative process and/or presentation heighten the work?” Many of the words also circulate around the notion of play and being silly. How might letting go of my preconceived notions of design and letting imperfection and the unexpected help to inform or guide this kind of play?
I would describe my process as being idea-based, where conceptual thought and support fuel the outcomes of my work. This thought-based approach towards design promotes malleability through any given idea, allowing my work to encompass a variety of modes and media. In this way, my perceptive approach to working is about taking thought and translating it into what can be seen and understood. My process revolves around posing questions to be answered and creating spaces for that answer to be shared, examined, and experienced. Through this interest in the conceptual nature of design, I work to reveal how an idea can be made visual in unexpected and compelling ways. Through this lens of making, I am currently interested in how narrative and materiality can arise through form and typography. As I have progressed through school, research has played a key part in how I relate to and am involved in my work. The act of discovery, becoming familiar with the unfamiliar, and the ability to synthesize my thoughts through writing are important to how I see, contemplate, and get excited about my work. When I begin with research, I synthesize my thoughts and translate those thoughts visually in my sketchbook. I find a richness is often revealed in my design work through the knowledge that I have gained. This richness allows my work to be multi-layered and conceptually complex while affording me the space to distill this complexity into my work in succinct and dynamic ways.
In this way, my process is concerned with the distilment of ideation into conceptual lushness that translates to dynamic visual outcomes. I have found most recently that my practice has been about interpreting how the intangibility of ideas is manifested in visual, tangible ways. Approaching my work conceptually and articulating the conceptual message within my design work through the feeling that each piece conveys, and the research that backs these feelings, connects to how graphic design is about emitting ideas; making ideas visible. This research gives substance to my central idea and design direction, helping to convey feeling and emotion in my visuals. This has been especially true in the work I have been making this semester in Core Studio. The grouping of Core Studio with the academic class, Affect & Assemblages, has given me the space to engage in meaningful research that translates to rich and dynamic design. I have characterized the work that I have created this semester as being engaged in affectual play. This notion of affectual play encompasses how research, ideation, and materiality are all being considered through authorship and the transformation of feeling through design.
Through this ongoing study, I have engaged in a more holistic approach to design, engaging with how everything from material, narrative, typography, form, and composition are all working towards deliberate conceptual footing and expressing the clearest ideas. This study has also given me the space to consider how experience is made through the act of touching, seeing, and crafting an object as a vehicle for communication. This return to craft is an exciting development in my work because it was one of the defining factors of my interest in graphic design. Looking forward, I would like to take this conceptually based approach to design and expand upon how ideas can be used to convey visual messages and experiences. Through this lens of thinking, I hope to incorporate performative ways of making that draw upon my interests in improvisation and imperfection. This new avenue of exploration is something that I hope to incorporate and am excited about implementing into my design practice. The distillment of research into my design work and how that process articulates conceptual clarity is at the heart of where my work is currently situated. The way in which my work has been evolving has been an exciting journey. It has encouraged me to embrace the intricacies of my process and allowed me the opportunity to reflect on how my process truly shapes my design practice. I am excited to see where my process leads me as I continue through my time in school and how it will influence my path beyond graduation.
LETS SEE WHAT HAPP
S
T PENS
DING!
Hey I’m skiing here!
Wanna kill that bear first for some food
I’m so glad that bear didn’t try and kill us
Oh my gosh a bear!
Lets kill him with our skis/lets kill him with our hands/lets make friends with the bear!
Maybe we were just being a little too friendly
I think the bottoms of my skis are all scuffed up/are super clean and fresh/Aw man, both of my skis fell off
We should feed the bear/we should hug the bear
Maybe he was kind of confused
Hey man, are you ok?
This sounds like a very safe and good idea/this sounds like not a great idea
Yeah, he was here first I guess/I think he owns the place
Aw I don’t think so/ better than ever!/ Aw man, I’m so hungry!
Alright, maybe we should leave
I guess that’s why I paid in pinecones
Lets go, the cabin is right over there
We’re sorry bear, bye bear!
(laughter)
Take That Back, also known as ‘New Choice’ is an improv game outlined in The Second City Almanac of Improvisation by Anne Libera. The game description is as follows: Number of Players: Two or Three, with a caller. Suggestion: Location, relationship, or historical era. To Play: Players begin a scene using the suggestion. At any point in the scene, the caller will stop the action (often using a bell) and force the player who just spoke to “take back” the previous line and substitute a new choice — or several new choices. Example: I love you. [ding] I hate you. [ding] I just ate a chimpanzee. The scene must continue, with all players justifying the final choice. (p.127) This game functions as a document, revealing a process of chance in which to design towards. The “take back” structure of the game serves as inspiration in the designed object, with this object being a poster that exposes the process of the game through the content created within it. These posters become reflective of the process of the game, with the ability to view these posters as layers that indicate the shift in content with each “take back” or “ding!”
Inspiration for me has always been a conversation between genuine experiences that draw from the arts, whether it be learning to do the jazz square at my Grammy’s house when I was little, or watching old movie musicals with my Gramma. I have found myself along the way through these honest interactions. And, in this way, I have spent most of my life engaged with and informed by the visual and performing arts. I spent summers filling my sketchbooks with weird little worlds lending to my sense of humor and quirky sense of character. The sum of these experiences have shaped who I am and how I see the world, they serve as touchstones into what my interests are and how I find inspiration in simple, authentic interactions and experiences. I am very much interested in shifting perspective through conceptual clarity. There is a sincerity in conceptual clarity that has driven my practice for the last year or so. I think that I am drawn to clarity like I am always drawn back to my memories with my Grandmothers, there is always something to be learned and felt through what I take away from any given piece. I am constantly asking myself how to see things anew, considering ways of reshaping and rewriting how I see in order to better understand who I am, and more specifically, how my work is in constant flux to account for these new ways of interfacing with my world. These shifts are hard to come by, but when they manifest, they create a change that is profoundly important to my practice, and to my life as a whole. This is true in Mari Keski-Korsu’s Body of Us (Fig.1), a work created with Interfaces for Empathy, an action tank working towards uncovering empathic ecologies.1 In her work, she explores how it might feel to be a tree through the act of taping leaves to the ends of each of her fingers. Through this simple gesture, Keski-Korsu works to uncover a discourse between people and trees stating, “empathy, intuition
and imagination are the beautiful skills of humans and we should embrace what they can open in us and in the world.”2 The simple act of letting nature in and meditating on its relationship with people carries such rich conceptual footing and challenges me as a thinker and maker to consider different ways of approaching how I see, to better understand myself as well as the world and environment I find myself in. Building upon how gesture and a shift in perspective have inspired me in how I see and create, I have been greatly moved by the work of Herbert Bayer, specifically his landscape paintings (Fig.2). This work captures a completely different way of interpreting the natural world and served as one of the first truly emotional experiences I’ve had in response to design, when viewing his work in person. Bayer states that “I saw the mountains not in their textured and detailed shapes, but suddenly saw them as expressions of interior forces, as undulating forms whose motion is caused by the forces of time and geology.”3 Bayer’s ability to synthesize meaning conceptually created a truly remarkable experience that pivoted how I saw the world and inspired me to find meaning in all things, and celebrate that meaning in my own work. I happened upon this work when
I visited my cousin who lives in Aspen, Colorado. I find it particularly telling that I happened upon the exhibition publication, by chance, in a thrift shop to find that the show was still going on. This sense of chance has also impacted my practice and has helped form who I am. Embracing chance and approaching my practice and life as improvisational brings my current mindset back to my performing arts roots and my willingness to embrace any moment as an opportunity for genuine expression. This is where I find myself now, being open to the improvisational and navigating how that fits into my practice. I am actively investing in the notion of ‘let’s play’ and ‘yes, and’ wondering how aspects of the performative, improvisational theater mindset can influence and shift how I make and create work.
(Fig 1) Mari Keski-Korsu, Untitled, Aspen Leaves, 2018.
(Fig 2) Herbert Bayer, Undulating Landscape, 1944, Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 26 ¾, Collection of Denver Art Museum, Gift of the Estate of Joella Bayer.
1 Mari Keski-Korsu, Maarit Laihonen, and Petri Ruikka, “About Us,” Interfaces for Empathy, Accessed November 11, 2019, https://ifempathy.org/About-Us. 2 Mari Keski-Korsu, “A Promise To Aspen,” Body of Us, Accessed November 11, 2019, http://bodyofus.com/ publication/a-promise-to-aspen. 3 Barnard Jazzar, Herbert Bayer: Mountains and Convolutions, 19441953 (New York: Artists Rights Society, 2018), 8.
Still waiting for your partner to show up?
I wasn’t expecting to wind up here
I guess that’s why this TV show is so shoe themed, people just need the shoe
Out house is full of shoes/only has one pair of shoes, we share it!
Wow this isn’t scripted at all/I forgot my lines/ next time I should be more prepared
The shoe crash really hit you hard didn’t it
Have you ever thought about investing in new shoes?
And maybe you should not forget your wife at home
Man, that shoe crop really fell under/it was so promising
I see a lot of couples going through a lot of things, mostly show related
Maybe we started off on the wrong foot
But it’s on the up and up and that’s why on this show we’re going to give you a brand new pair of shoes!
Are we on a TV show/ wait what are you saying?
Tell me more about shoes, why do you only have one pair?
You can forget about your wife now because you have a new pair of shoes!
I’m saying we’re on a TV show/we’re live from a studio audience
She said let’s share a pair of shoes, we can get rid of all of our other shoes
All for you, I’m saying keep ‘em and run, what I can’t fix in marriages I can fix with shoes!
DING!
SUGGES SUGGES SUGGES SUGGES SUGGES
STIONS STIONS STIONS STIONS STIONS
I began to use the index as a means of suggestion, randomly selecting five words to design towards. This design process became one of intuition that favored visual associations to the words imagined, flux, arranged, environment, and layered. Through this process I had hoped to arrive at an unexpected visual outcome, yet the process became less important in this exercise as the emphasis was put on the final product. This project became a turning point in which to question how important the design process was in creating compelling, improvised work. I realized that favoring the final product hindered exploration and discovery and that improvisation meant trusting in the process to reach compelling solutions.
Stop Stop Stop Stop
Stop Taking Everything So Seriously
The switch to online classes and having to work from home because of the Covid-19 pandemic presented an opportunity to reimagine how process can be used as the product. Moving outside of the classroom has given me the opportunity to embrace ways of making that I may not have considered when at school. This has manifested in utilizing more DIY approaches to making. I ended up using hand-cut stencils as a tool in creating work that is environmental, graphic, and active.
The idea of improvisation in graphic design and visual communication is not unfamiliar to the discipline as a whole. Even when viewing improvisation in the theatrical sense, it is not hard to find parallels in the conceptual approaches, process, and final outcomes within the historical canon of graphic design. Throughout the history of graphic design, I have found connections within the improvisational process that speak to the notions of chance, the unforeseen, play, ideation/creation, and the search. The breadth of these historical connections have surprised me in their relevance, and through this analysis, I hope to uncover deeper connections that will spark new ways of approaching my thesis body of work. When thinking about some of the building blocks of improvisational theater techniques, we see how the philosophies of “yes, and” and “explore and heighten” play into works of graphic design. Anne Libera speaks of these principles in The Second City Almanac of Improvisation when she talks of how embracing “yes, and” entails that you agree and build upon what is said or given to you.4 “Explore and heighten” acts similarly but involves building upon what is given to you and then transforming it into something new.5 These techniques circulate around a design vernacular that becomes more clear when thinking about the improvisational rules of denial, question, and story. Denial is about not saying no, acknowledging that anything said or given to you must be supported and regarded as true.6 Questions are looked down upon as they shift responsibility and provide filler for needless information, it is more important to take responsibility and build upon what is given to you.7 Finally, it is important in improv to stay out of the story because “everything each character does or says should affect the other characters on stage.”8 In this way,
the “story” should unfold naturally through the act of building upon what is said or given to you. This understanding of improvisational theater describes a process not unlike that of graphic design, these techniques are about taking what is given to you and building upon it truthfully and freely. The Futurist perspective of violence and movement plays off of a freedom of expression in which improvisation directly sits. When looking at Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s futurist poem After the Marne, Joffre Visited the Front in an Automobile (Fig. 3), we see the implementation of improv as a technique which engages in an unforeseen discourse that disrupts expectations, creating a “performative stance that leaves room for accident and surprise.”9 Through the act of improvisational disruption we not only get the sense of Marinetti’s performative mode of making, we see that process reflected in the work that engages with an omni-interpretability that leaves space for the viewer to play within the composition. These notions of performative play and possibility coincide with the Dada artist Hans Arp’s Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Law of Chance) (Fig. 4). In this piece, Arp randomly dropped pieces of paper onto a colored ground and fixed them where they landed, creating work that was in conversation with the laws of chance.10 Arp, among others, was engaged in a kind of “aleatory art” that embraced the random and capitalized on the virtues of chance.11 This sense of freedom and trust in what would happen combined with the performative act of dropping the squares correlates with my interest in the process of improvisational theater as it relates to the design process. Constructing prompts that embrace this outlook and trusting these prompts to lead me to the next step in which to build off of is important in the way that I approach this semester-long body of work. Both
Marinetti’s and Arp’s pieces cast aside judgement in the name of constructing new ways to think and approach work. How might I use seemingly imperfect outcomes as a means of creating new relationships in my own body of work? Focusing more on art historical movements spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s, both the International Situationist and Fluxus art movements find parallels surrounding the notions of improvisation. The International Situationist movement was a radical avant-garde art movement that played with the notion of “the dérive (drifting), which involved creating situations (hence the group’s name) in urban environments that encouraged creativity and a critical attitude toward everyday life.”12 Improvisational theater directly relates in the way that performers are actively creating these situations within an environment, with that environment both being the stage where the scene is being performed as well as the environment which is imagined and created by the improvisors. This relationship to the environment is an important intersection to consider in how design work can perform within a space, as well as the situation it is creating or imagining through its content. The Fluxus movement functioned in a similar vein to that of the International Situationists through their activation of space as a means of artistic expression. Fluxus artists implemented a ‘do-it-yourself’ ethos that used a variety of media and processes to stage performances with whatever materials they had at hand.13 Through this way of making, the Fluxus artists embraced chance and accident as part of these performances.14 Improvisational theater functions in this same way as ideas are made from scratch and imagined through performance where chance and accident are embraced as the unusual within a scene, contributing to playful and spontaneous outcomes.
A sense of play is inherent in the work of Push Pin Studios, their belief in challenging the traditions of graphic design and illustration in favor of a fresh new outlook shifted expectations and forged new relationships in which to reflect upon modern society.15 This way of thinking and making relayed the social and political issues of the time where its members were given the space (the publication) in which to build and transform upon what had already been established in the modern design zeitgeist of the time. This playful nature is reflected in Seymour Chwast’s Bestial Bold (Fig. 5) typeface in which the letterforms became anthromphosized through the addition of faces. This unexpected treatment of the typography projects how play and playfulness can arise through the juxtaposition of what we perceive typefaces to be and the characters and personalities in which the letterforms become. This relationship to how we might find personality in the tools in which we communicate is a valuable reminder to be aware of how ideation and creation present the chance for malleability in embracing “yes, and,” never denying any idea as not valid in the steps towards further refinement. Polish poster designer Roman Cieslewicz speaks towards this philosophy as it relates to the hand, something that I would like to return to in my own body of work where tactility presents the opportunity for the unexpected. Cieslewicz speaks about the perfection of the handdrawn image with its inherent value of freedom in which new images grow out of fortuitous accidents made by hand.16 This sentiment directly relates to the tactics of improvisational theater where the unusual is happened upon, presenting a point in which to build and grow from. In Cieslewicz’s poster Teatr Wspolczesny Zaprasza (Fig. 6) we see this looseness that comes from the hand and a dynamism in the relationship between imagery in the poster. These elements come together to reveal that perfection of
the hand is something that could be very valuable throughout my creative process as it relates to my thesis body of work. The idea of “the search” relating to the freedom of improvisational theater is an important step in finding the next place in which to evolve from and transform in order to keep the action moving. This way of thinking is personified in the German design studio Cyan, when they say that “without freedom there is no creativity. It is just as important to us to take the content seriously...Design is always a search; it changes in the process, The result is never identical to the first idea.”17 Cyan’s work emulates this ethos in their poster Magmec Berlin (Fig. 7) where the poster itself indicates a kind of search, where the layers are in constant conversation with one another and the typography becomes fully integrated within the composition. This notion of serious freedom and process in flux through the search is at the heart of my exploration into improvisational theater as it relates to visual communication. My aim is not to be funny or humorous, although much of the content may gravitate in that direction, my work is about embracing the search and engaging in a process of serious freedom. Keeping these historical precedents in mind when creating will not only serve as an inspirational starting point but also function as indicators towards what can be achieved in my thesis body of work as it relates to notions of chance, the unforeseen, play, ideation/creation, and the search. Through these connections, I will continue to explore how “yes, and” can positively shift the way in which I create.
4 Anne Libera. The Second City Almanac of Improvisation (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2004): 10 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 11 8 Ibid. 9 Marjorie Perloff, The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1986): 102. 10 David Hopkins, Dada and Surrealism: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004): 69. 11 Ibid., 71. 12 “Juli Susin, Véronique Bourgoin and Yasha Gofman Collection of Situationist Material, Ca. 1950–2012,” Situationist International Collection (Getty Research Institute), Accessed April 23, 2020, https://www.getty. edu/research/special_collections/ notable/situationists.html. 13 “Fluxus – Art Term,” Tate, Accessed April 23, 2020, https://www.tate.org. uk/art/art-terms/f/fluxus. 14 Ibid. 15 Seymour Chwast, “About Push Pin,” Pushpin Gallery, Accessed February 13, 2020, http://www.pushpininc.com/about/pushpin/. 16 Margo Rouard-Snowman, “Reputations: Roman Cieslewicz,” Eye 3, no. 9 (1993). 17 Angelina Lippert, Paul Stirton, Rick Poynor, Daniela Haufe, and Detlef Fiedler, Designing through the Wall: Cyan in the 1990s: in Conjunction with the Exhibition on View June 20-October 6, 2019, (New York: Poster House, 2019): 38.
JUST KEEP PLAYING
AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS!
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts, Maine College of Art, Portland, Maine, May 11, 2020 Major in Graphic Design. Typeset in Tiny from Velvetyne Type Foundry and Covic Sans from Oh no Type Co. Designed and Written by Hayden Jones.