Kineke degree process

An exploration in how we can recontextualize our existence

To Keep You Up At Night / To Quell Your Worried Mind

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To Quell Your Worried Mind

The journey

by Sebastian Kineke

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To Keep You Up At Night / To Quell Your Worried Mind

To Quell Your Worried Mind

To Keep You Up At Night

The journey

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I:Finding a focus

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II:Objectives

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III:Experimentation

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IV:Taking form

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Issue No. 1

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Issue No. 2

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“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

John Muir

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I. Finding a focus

I. Finding a focus

I. Finding a focus This began as a quest to reconnect humans with nature.

Imagine your kitchen. Now imagine being a caveman. Would you be able 6

to think up such a space as your

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floors, the cold granite counter tops, the takeout flyers on your fridge, the bananas and apples in the same bowl as a dragon fruit — would any of that come to your mind naturally?

Of course, this is an extreme example, and I harbor no ill will toward the 21st century kitchen, but it describes the cycle of thought that prompted this project,because it always ends with me worrying that we’ve become just a little too far removed from the earth around us, and too far from where we started.

To get started, I had to think of the times when I myself feel connected to the earth around me. That led me to the wolves.

To Quell Your Worried Mind

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kitchen? Would the walls, the tiled

I. Finding a focus

I. Finding a focus

I have a weird infatuation with wolves.

It began when I was a little kid, when I watched the movie Balto day after day after day. I could not get enough of it.

It’s the story of an animal struggling with his half-dog, half-wolf heritage.

By the end of the film, Balto learns to

“A dog cannot make this

keep his ‘civil’ nature as a dog so he

journey alone...but maybe

can mesh with society, but also to

a wolf can.”

channel the unparalleled strength of the wolf within him when necessary.

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Balto

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While this is most definitely a fictional

To Keep You Up At Night

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story meant for children, the things I learned from it have never left me. On the playground, I would think of a wolf when I wanted to run faster than the other kids. When I scraped myself up or got hurt, to be strong I would tell myself Wolves don’t cry. Even now, I still think of the fearlessness of wolves when coping with things like worries or anxieties.

This is what got me thinking: What are other ways in which we can channel animals to help us? What can we learn from them, from the way they interact, to the way they hunt?

But why stop at wolves?

Why not look at all animals?

Why stop at animals?

Why not look at all of nature?

I. Finding a focus

I. Finding a focus

We can learn from the ever changing sea, ebbing in and out, raging and lulling its way through life

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and we can learn from the vast eternities of canyons, their beauty carved by a calm patience.

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I. Finding a focus

I. Finding a focus

“Our Sun is a second or third generation star.

All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff.”

Carl Sagan

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the world around us. We must start discussing the things that make us feel uncomfortable in order to start feeling comfortable. There is something that must change if we are to take ourselves out of the rut of daily routine and see ourselves as members of the Universe.

But suddenly, it felt so wrong to be aggressively distancing humankind from nature and asking “what can

We are part of something greater than ourselves.

we learn? What can we take?”

Because it’s not ‘humans’ and ‘nature.’

It’s just nature.

We’re all in this together, whatever ‘this’ may be. Any disconnect we feel happens because we’ve lost touch with where we came from.

So where did we come from?

How can I help others see that?

To Quell Your Worried Mind

To reconnect with nature, we start thinking about

II. Objectives

II. Objectives

II. Objectives Now that I have an angle from which to approach this mission of recontextualization, I must begin to decide what lasting impression I would like to give.

When dealing with something as vast 14

as the universe, there is many direc-

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I want people to start thinking about their relationship with the Universe.

I want people to see themselves as a part of something that’s off the wall crazy. Each person is millions of years in the making, and so much has happened to get the human race to where it is today, but it’s so easy to get caught up in day to day routine and forget this entirely. What can I do to combat this?

To begin, I listed five words stating what I wanted my audience to do.

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tions to go in.

II. Objectives

II. Objectives

Realize Realize that we are a small part of something great.

This does not mean that our existence is unimportant, but we must recognize that, in physical comparison to all else, we are just tiny entities floating through time and space.

Transcend We must push ourselves to be able to think beyond our day to day lives, in order to ponder the things, and to have thoughts that might even make us uncomfortable.

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Recontextualize

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Consider ourselves as not only members of a city, state, or country, but also as inhabitants of a rock that is being hurled around the sun at 18.5 miles a second.

Remind Remind people that, once again, they’re somewhat small, and maybe what they think of as problems are not as much of a burden as they may think.

Comfort Comfort people with the knowledge that the universe has carved out a place for us. It took billions of years to get to this very place at this very moment. We are not random. We are the universe trying itself out as human beings, and we’re more powerful than we think. Comfort may be the most important word here.

Mood board

From the top left going clockwise: Comparison of nature to man / A projection of man onto celestial entities / Comparison of man to animal / Nature’s impact on nature / Man’s message to others about nature

III. Experimentation

III. Experimentation

III. Experimentation The following pages include artistic endeavors that would not necessarily be my final solution to my mission, but would inform my process. I did not know that at the time of creation, 18

but each exercise helped me to learn

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and to understand my goals more fully.

III. Experimentation

III. Experimentation

I start to scan things. I scan a lot of things a lot of times. As the scanner rolls, I zig them, I zag them, I crumple them, I wave them around. The subject of the photos begins as a simple thing — in these, a cowboy and a snarling wolf. Through warping them, they become more than what their original form allowed.

These were a way to explore human perception. How does distorting something basic affect the way we think about the subject? Can it make us less familiar with it? Can it make us laugh? Can it make us afraid?

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III. Experimentation

III. Experimentation

It’s at this point I realize I need to

So I buy a book. It’s called “The

As I read I learn things. I learn scientific

As I read and learn, I begin to

learn science. I can only get so far

Universe Within: The Deep History

things that I never thought I’d understand.

respond with visuals. This was not

with my own weird artist perspective —

of the Human Body” by a scientist

After years of barely passing my science

a goal, but a way for me to under-

I need to start getting to the known

named Neil Shubin.

classes, I thought understanding the

stand further, and to express what

truths of the Universe, and let those

intricate ways in which the world works

I was learning to others.

things begin to influence me.

were off limits to me, destined to be secrets forever.

But Mr. Shubin explains everything so gracefully: theories of the Big Bang, 22

the formation of our solar system, our

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our delicate and human perception of time.

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evolution from creatures of the sea,

III. Experimentation

III. Experimentation

“Each galaxy, star, or person is the

“The particles that make us have

temporary owner of particles that

traveled billions of years across the

have passed through the births and

universe; long after we and our

deaths of entities across vast reaches

planet are gone, they will be apart

of time and space.”

of other worlds.”

Neil Shubin

Neil Shubin

The Universe Within

The Universe Within

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Such a powerful sentence. So humbling, yet so empowering. Putting it on a sweatshirt seemed the best way to show off this information.

Everything is temporary. This is one of many stickers made to be put on anything and everything.

III. Experimentation

III. Experimentation

“Our need to keep time has itself evolved; an everincreasing necessity to fragment time corresponds to the

“The length of days and of months, like the workings of the seasons, derive from the rela-

demands of our society. The concept of moments parsed

tionship between the Earth and Moon. Every

into seconds would have been as alien to our cave dwelling ancestors as seeing a jet plane.”

clock and calendar, like the cells of our bodies, holds artifacts of a cataclysm that took place over 4.5 billion years ago.”

Neil Shubin The Universe Within

Neil Shubin The Universe Within

DAY 62

OF CURRENT ORBIT

FEBRUARY MOONSET

SU N RI SE

S

M

T

W

T

F

S

SOL AR N OON

MOONRISE

SU N SE T

Calendars make us think of days as white boxes to be checked off or crossed out, when they can instead be a way to measure gradual change, like following the waxing and waning of the moon. Moon phases were one the ways our ancestors originally kept track of the passing of time.

As a society, we think of days as a series of hours. I tried to create a day planner totally dependant on the rising and setting of the sun and moon. No times are included, but are proportionate to the 24 hour timespan we are familiar with. To plan this way would make us more considerate of daylight, as well as give a visual of how the amount of daylight changes throughout the year.

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IV. Taking form

IV. Taking form

IV. Taking form

Also, this thing had to complete the task of the five words listed in the second chapter: Realize, Transcend, Recontextualize, Remind, and Comfort.

At the very least, though, this object had to get people thinking.

Lastly, I wanted this thing to convey as many things as possible. By that, I mean that all of the things I learned - all of the science, all of the facts - it all had to be in there, and it had to exist in a way that it would not intimidate others. People have to experience what I create with a willingness to listen to what I have to say.

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After going though the experimentation phase, I came to some conclusions about what I wanted out of this next step. First of all, it had to be physical.

In a society where half of our lives take place in a virtual setting, tangibility has taken on a new meaning. This form was going to carry such an intense message, and so its form had to give the impression that it was, to some extent, something that could last.

IV. Taking form

IV. Taking form

A zine made the most sense.

A zine could be the vessel trusted to carry my message to others.

“Zines are self-published, small-circulation, often nonprofit books, papers, or websites. They usually deal with topics too controversial or niche for mainstream media, presented in an unpolished layout and unusual design.

[Anyone] can be an author, editor, art director, and publisher of a zine, and that’s part of what makes them so awesome.

Since the invention of the photocopy machine, zine-making has been one most popular forms of independent publishing, especially in underground communities. But it’s hard to generalize about zines, the same way it’s hard to generalize about culture. Not just hard—impossible.

ideas and concepts about our relationship to the universe, a zine would be something else. It’s very history spoke very much to the topic at hand. Zines were originally meant to address things that no one wanted to talk about.

The miraculous existence of our universe is, somehow, just that.

A zine, something able to be mass produced, could be distributed and passed from person to person. It could also be tossed in the trash .

These things would be temporary, taking up space but not meant to be kept forever.

Because like all art and media, zines can be

What was the most intriguing to me about the

anything and everything. And they are.”

culture of zines, though, was the lack of rules.

Creating a zine would be a perverse paradise

Emma Dajska rookiemag.com

for a designer, no longer bound by suffocating rules and isms.

I could do whatever I wanted. Knowing this, I freaked out and immediately gave myself rules to follow.

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While all of my other methods of communicating

IV. Taking form

IV. Taking form

I start by scanning things. Anything.

I just find things and go for it.

Zine rules

Each issue must have a topic The Universe is quite literally the broadest topic that can exist. Much like the visual responses in the previous section were referencing a particular passage in Neil Shubin’s book, these zines have to have a focus.

Think as little as possible When creating these things, I must think as little as possible. I had to make these as raw as they could be, while still visually intriguing, and at the same time, not over-designed.

Do not make anything precious Everything is temporary.

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IV. Taking form

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IV. Taking form

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IV. Taking form

IV. Taking form

To Keep You Up At Night / To Quell Your Worried Mind This publication is meant to do two things. It’s meant to make you think about things that might make you uncomfortable, like how crazy small you are, but it’s also meant to put your life in a new perspective, and convince you that any burdens you may carry are not as heavy as they may seem.

Issue No. 1 The recycling nature

of the Universe 41

Issue No. 2

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Perceptions of Time

Before you continue: By going further, you will be exposed to To Keep You Up At Night / To Quell Your Worried Mind in an annotated form.

This is not how these zines were originally intended to be experienced. These pages exist as a guide to the thinking behind their creation.

It is recommended that the original copies are experienced first.

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One of the first passages in Neil Shubin’s book, and the focus of the issue.

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THEY WILL BE A PART OF

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OTHER WORLDS

Our good fortune, the perfection of circumstances that have defined our existence, is just a moment in time.

The passage is taken apart, dissected, and repeated.

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THEY HAVE TRAVELED BILLIONS OF YEARS ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

THEY WILL BE A PART OF OTHER WORLDS

A picture of my parents before I was born. Two people whom I love more

the Universe will take care of them. They will become stars, planets, and

than anything, and they are just a collection of particles. When they die,

galaxies. They will continue on forever. They deserve nothing less.

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And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph1, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.

1. Cenotaph: an empty tomb or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere.

The closing verse of ‘The Cloud’, a poem by Percy Shelley. It tells of the

much like the matter that forms us. The poem is summed up by the line “I

life of a cloud. A cloud is immortal, but it is changing at every moment,

change, but I cannot die.”

To Quell Your Worried Mind

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

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Contemplate the chain of events that connects your body and mind to place billions of lightyears away, deep in the distant reaches of space and time. Recall that massive stars, many times larger than our sun, spent millions of years turning energy into matter, creating the atoms that make up every part of you, the Earth, and everyone you have ever known and loved.

The large block of text accounts the most recent scientific facts about the

the Earth. Theee are both things that have resulted from this five billion

way we came from stars. The images are of myself and another person I have

year journey, but things we have very different associations with.

a personal connection to, as well as lava and minerals, elements born from

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All stars come from humble beginnings: namely, a gigantic, rotating clump of gas and dust. Gravity drives the cloud to condense as it spins, swirling into an ever more tightly packed sphere of material. Eventually, the star-to-be becomes so dense and hot that molecules of hydrogen in its core collide and fuse into new molecules of helium. These nuclear reactions release powerful bursts of energy in the form of light. The gas shines brightly; a star is born.The ultimate fate of our fledgling star depends on its mass. Smaller, lightweight stars burn though the hydrogen in their core more slowly than heavier stars, shining somewhat more dimly but living far longer lives. Over time, however, falling hydrogen levels at the center of the star cause fewer hydrogen fusion reactions; fewer hydrogen fusion reactions mean less energy, and therefore less outward pressure.At a certain point, the star can no longer maintain the tension its core had been sustaining against the mass of its outer layers. Gravity tips the scale, and the outer layers begin to tumble inward on the core. But their collapse heats things up, increasing the core pressure and reversing the process once again. A new hydrogen burning shell is created just outside the core, reestablishing a buffer against the gravity of the star’s surface layers. While the core continues conducting lower-energy helium fusion reactions, the force of the new hydrogen burning shell pushes on the star’s exterior, causing the outer layers to swell more and more. The star expands and cools into a red giant. Its outer layers will ultimately escape the pull of gravity altogether, floating off into space and leaving behind a small, dead core – a white dwarf. Lower-mass stars like our sun eventually enter a swollen, red giant phase. Ultimately, its outer layers will be thrown off altogether, leaving nothing but a small white dwarf star. Lower-mass stars like our sun eventually enter a swollen, red giant phase. Ultimately, its outer layers will be thrown off altogether, leaving nothing but a small white dwarf star. Heavier stars also occasionally falter in the fight between pressure and gravity, creating new shells of atoms to fuse in the process; however, unlike smaller stars, their excess mass allows them to keep forming these layers. The result is a series of concentric spheres, each shell containing heavier elements than the one surrounding it. Hydrogen in the core gives rise to helium. Helium atoms fuse together to form carbon. Carbon combines with helium to create oxygen, which fuses into neon, then magnesium, then silicon… all the way across the periodic table to iron, where the chain ends. Such massive stars act like a furnace, driving these reactions by way of sheer available energy. But this energy is a finite resource. Once the star’s core becomes a solid ball of iron, it can no longer fuse elements to create energy. As was the case for smaller stars, fewer energetic reactions in the core of heavyweight stars mean less outward pressure against the force of gravity. The outer layers of the star will then begin to collapse, hastening the pace of heavy element fusion and further reducing the amount of energy available to hold up those outer layers. Density increases exponentially in the shrinking core, jamming together protons and electrons so tightly that it becomes an entirely new entity: a neutron star. At this point, the core cannot get any denser. The star’s massive outer shells – still tumbling inward and still chock-full of volatile elements – no longer have anywhere to go. They slam into the core like a speeding oil rig crashing into a brick wall, and erupt into a monstrous explosion: a supernova.

The extraordinary energies generated during this blast finally allow the fusion of elements even heavier than iron, from cobalt all the way to uranium. The energetic shock wave produced by the supernova moves out into the cosmos, disbursing heavy elements in its wake. These atoms can later be incorporated into planetary systems like our own. Given the right conditions – for instance, an appropriately stable star and a position within its Habitable Zone – these elements provide the building blocks for complex life. Today, our everyday lives are made possible by these very atoms, forged long ago in the life and death throes of massive stars. Our ability to do anything at all – wake up from a deep sleep, enjoy a delicious meal, drive a car, write a sentence, add and subtract, solve a problem, call a friend, laugh, cry, sing, dance, run, jump, and play – is governed mostly by the behavior of tiny chains of hydrogen combined with heavier elements like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus. Other heavy elements are present in smaller quantities in the body, but are nonetheless just as vital to proper functioning. For instance, calcium, fluorine, magnesium, and silicon work alongside phosphorus to strengthen and grow our bones and teeth; ionized sodium, potassium, and chlorine play a vital role in maintaining the body’s fluid balance and electrical activity; and iron comprises the key portion of hemoglobin, the protein that equips our red blood cells with the ability to deliver the oxygen we inhale to the rest of our body.

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THEY THEY

THEY WILL A

BE

PART OF

OTHER

WORLDS

WILL WILL BEBE 54

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A APART OFOF PART (I change but I cannot(Idie.) change but I cannot die.)

OTHER OTHER

WORLDS WORLDS

Another repetition of the theme of the issue, repeating the line from

it becomes distorted to show the elements of one entity transforming

Shelley’s poem. The photo on the left is of a rose garden. On the left

into another.

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Our future.

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you are growing in the universe

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as the universe is growing in you

It ends with the phrase “you are growing in the universe as the universe is growing in you” as a final send-off.

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to keep you

up at night

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WRITTEN INSIDE US IS THE BIRTH OF THE STARS, THE MOVEMENT

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OF THE HEAVENLY BODIES ACROSS THE SKY, EVEN THE ORIGIN OF DAYS THEMSELVES

The focal point of this issue is time, ans the way we perceive and interact with such an intangible concept. This is another quote from

Neil Shubin’s “The Universe Within”.

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The moon is one of the original time pieces. Its cycle of changes is, to us, a constant.

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be traced to the ways we parse

the moments of our lives.

Humans are a timekeeping species.

Much of our history can

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Comparing the phases of the moon to the growth of a flower. Both are things that happen over long spans of time, but have stayed consistent for as

long as we’ve known them to be true.

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The impact on our lives

When necessities of shelter, hunting, and

is as straightfoward as it

survival were highly dependent on days and seasons, humans used timepieces derived from the sun, moon, and stars.

is profound, the length of days and of months, like the workings of the seasons, derive from the

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Our need to keep time has itself evolved; an ever- increasing necessity

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the demands of our society.

relationship between the Earth and Moon. Every clock and calendar, like the cells of our bodies, holds artifacts of a cata-

The concept of moments parsed into seconds would have been as alien to our cave dwelling ancestors as seeing a jet plane.

clysm that took place over 4.5 billion years ago.

More passages from Shubin’s book, discussing how our relationship with the

Shubin also goes on to emphasize that our bodies are time pieces, simply

passing of time has changed as the needs of our society have changed.

because they exist.

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to fragment time corresponds to

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any moment could be the one we’ve been waiting for

the big bang

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the first life

During the past 13.7 billion years or so, the universe came about in the big bang, and our planet congealed from matter in space.

In the eons since, Earth has circled the sun while mountains, seas, and whole continents have come and gone.

the reading of this page

A linear version of the well known Cosmic Calendar. If time has passed since the big bang until right now, who is to say this moment is not the

one we’ve all been waiting for?

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The passing of a minute, compared to the occurrence of a cosmic collision which happened when minutes did not exist.

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Mountains are not eternal, but rather ephemeral features on the Earth’s landscape over the eons of geologic time. You could erode away Mount Everest 50 times since the origin of the planet.

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Even the mountains Even thewill mountains leave us.will leave us.

Everything is temporary.

Mountains, something seen as one of the most permanent things on this planet, are not as unchanging as one may think. Everything is temporary.

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The process in which the human body decomposes starts just minutes after death. When the heart stops beating, we experience algor mortis, or the “death chill,” when the temperature of the body falls about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit an hour until it reaches room temperature. Almost immediately, the blood becomes more acidic as carbon dioxide builds up. This causes cells to split open, emptying enzymes into the tissues, which then begin to digest themselves from within.

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from my rotting from my rotting body flowers body shall flowers shall grow and i am grow and i am in them andin them and that is eternity that is eternity

An account of what happens to your body as it decomposes. A reminder that what makes up your body will go back to where it came from. You will

Calcium makes your muscles contract.

We’ve all heard of rigor mortis, in which a dead body becomes stiff and hard to

move. Rigor mortis generally sets in about three to four hours after death, peaks at 12 hours, and dissipates after 48 hours. It happens because there are pumps in the membranes of our muscle cells that regulate calcium. When the pumps stop working in death, calcium floods the cells, causing the muscles to contract and stiffen.

Your organs will digest themselves. Putrefaction follows rigor mortis. This phase is delayed by the embalming process, but eventually the body will succumb. Enzymes in the pancreas make the organ begin to digest itself. Microbes will tag-team these enzymes, turning the body green from the belly onwards. As Caroline Williams writes, “the main beneficiaries are among the 100 trillion bacteria that have spent their lives living in harmony with us in our guts.” As this bacterium breaks us down, it releases putrescine and cadaverine, which are the compounds which make the human body smell in death.

In the end, we all return to the Earth. In the end, we all turn to dust and ash.

return to the Earth, just as you came from it.

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You turn white — and purple. Gravity makes its mark on the human body in the first moments after death. While the rest of your body turns deathly pale, heavy red blood cells move to the parts of your body that are closest to the ground. This happens because circulation has stopped. The results are purple splotches over your lower parts known as livor mortis. In fact, it is by studying the markings of livor mortis that the coroner can tell exactly what time you died.

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The tides align with the ever changing moon, and are another marker of the passage of time.

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you are growing in the universe

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as the universe is growing in you

This issue sends you off the same way. “You are growing in the universe as the universe is growing in you.”

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To Keep You Up At Night / To Quell Your Worried Mind is a project pursued at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, with the help and guidance of Gunta Kaza and Amy Jorgensen. Two beacons of light in a long, dark, muddy tunnel. Without their encouragement, these ideas would have never seen the light of day.

I would also like to thank my peers for their patience and willingness drop everything and help me whenever I asked, especially Maria Lobo, Beth Almeida, Rosa Jiyoon Hyun, Jay Borrelli, and Sean Morse. Thank you. I owe all y’all a burrito.

To Quell Your Worried Mind

To Keep You Up At Night

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This book is set in ITC Souvenir, Akkurat Regular, and Akkurat Mono.

Designed and written by Sebastian Kineke.

Spring 2015

you are growing in the universe

as the universe is growing in you