FEEDBACK LOOPS in GRAPHIC DESIGN
Hello!
Hello!
I am Alexander Bohn,
... and I have Tourette’s Syndrome.
Topically, this works out like you probably think it does, more or less:
I have a sizable panoply of involuntary spazzy muscle tics at my disposal... (which can be entertaining at parties, but are mostly irritating for me and those in my vicinity)
... I enjoy the use of bad words, such as “fuck” ...
... and words of all sorts, for that matter – I tend towards the “chatty” end of the mouth spectrum.
Indeed!
Indeed! — I must now say that
Indeed! — I must now say that
I NEVER, EVER DO THIS.
Indeed! — I must now say that
I NEVER, EVER DO THIS. (with “this” being “introduce myself as a Tourette’s patient”)
The social stigma of Tourette’s is still pretty gnarly, and I’ve dealt with enough of it to keep it to myself, and reveal it strategically — it’s not at all something I’ll bring up when I’m getting to know someone. I don’t even like to tell my close friends, really, if I can avoid it. I certainly don’t kick off high-stakes pivotal-life-moment academic presentations with statements like this.
But:
Statistically, I never give MFA thesis presentations either. This is quite a special case — where a discussion of my neurological issues will serve to truly and fully contextualize my thesis work, intertwined as it is with my design work in general, and thus everything else in my life,
But:
It’s important for me to tell you about it — Tourette’s is a part of the way I function, in a very basic way.
Now, with this proclamation of my neurological status,
I’m not interested in sympathy,
Now, with this proclimation of my neurological status,
I’m not interested in sympathy, nor do I seek to medically excuse my mistakes —
I want to talk about graphic design.
FEEDBACK LOOPS IN GRAPHIC DESIGN
FEEDBACK LOOPS IN GRAPHIC DESIGN
— which, conveniently, is the title of my thesis.
So.
As I grew up, I learned how to not have Tourettic freakouts — similar to learning how to ride a bike or tell time.
As I grew up, I learned how to not have Tourettic freakouts — similar to learning how to ride a bike or tell time. But I didn’t get my official diagnosis until I was 18 years old, so I didn’t know to call it Tourette’s.
I knew I had to fix it, whatever it was. That was why I originally studied psychopharmacology and neuroscience: I was naturally motivated in these fields, as part of my ongoing efforts to repair (or at least come to grips with) my errant brain.
My visceral knowledge — my raw perceptions of how I ticked — drove my abstract knowledge and interests. And vice versa: when studying neuroscience, I’d often happen upon some new abstraction, theory, systems, or what have you — and that new high-level concept would explain some fundamentally perceptual or visceral thing to me.
This was a feedback loop — a system whose output is sent back to its input — iteratively fortifying my antifreakout control system.
I gained more control over my impulses as I grew older —
But communication, verbally and otherwise, was always a dicey proposition for me. My neurological glitches hindered the most when I tried to talk or listen — in addition to the purely logistical complications, they make it very easy to void the social contract of etiquette, so to speak.
The prospect of actual self-control let me turn my interests outward. The move from neuroscience to graphic design might sound random, but really, it was a simple lateral hop ... a context switch, from intra-me to extra-me.
My need to deal with my own nervous system, stemming as it did from my own ever-present neurological experience, made the foci of those studies a matter of praxis — theory that is both derived from and simultaneously looped back into a complementary practice. That totality was what I found engaging, at the end of the day. But it was uncommon — standout polymaths like Oliver Sacks notwithstanding, it was my experience that most of my peers were cursed with a lack of impedent diseases. They sliced up the brains of lab rats in order to better understand human brains... whereas I was doing it just to understand mine, as it were.
But so: graphic design is all praxis, all the time — you may have heard of it as “design thinking.” Plus, you never have to cut up any rat brains whatsoever — unless you’re interning for Sagmeister, maybe, and he decides to do his next type project with them. Still.
(Personally, I prefer the term “praxis” to “design thinking” — it’s more compact and less boring, and it sounds like it’s a 70’s-era Star Trek villain. More importantly, the notion of praxis actually quite nuanced. A feedback loop is a simple praxime — but a praxis dynamic can be constructed from a system of atomic praximes. That is kinda completely beyond the scope of this talk — so if you like this sort of thing, be sure to read my forthcoming thesis book, Feedback Loops in Graphic Design — available in limited release next week.)
Feedback loops are a prevalent and useful type of praxime — a component of the dynamic at the heart of a given praxis. When I talk about feedback loops, it’s not a metaphor in any way — praximes are irreducible, even though the name “feedback loop” suggests other sorts of “loops,” which themselves may contain or consist of an analogous (but not referential) structure.
BUT REALLY: ENOUGH SEMANTICS,
I WILL SHOW YOU WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT.
— RIGHT? Please proceed with me to the Sol Koffler gallery.