It's Nice That invited me this week to write an article for their feature 'Weekly Discussion'. Saying 'I, Me, Mine: do we specialise too soon?' Go, read and tweet your thoughts. It's live until next Monday, I think.
Somehow the point I'm attempting to make is evidenced (albeit from then, not now) in the work of Max Bill. Each of these projects is borne of intimacy with material, use and unfettered thinking. The result is a work which often synthesises two previously discreet functions or habitual forms.
Bill's applied, tactile understanding of the behaviour and limitations of process and materials in no way hampered his ability to think laterally.
An invitation card by Duncan Hamilton for an exhibition by Sarah Crowner of Dexter Sinister. Under his working name, The Uses of Literacy, he designs, publishes, workshops and lectures. Explore the non-hierarchical index for his span of interests and actions. In terms of independent publishing, his use of the Riso and Ricoh digital duplicators, is very interesting. A build-up of solid and halftone colour with overprinting, passing the card back through the machine with changes of colour cartridge (see sequence here), arrived at the result which cites Max Bill's classic cover design for Johannes Itten's Die Farbe (via Reference Library).
Archiving 'Everything' pictures for next run of the 'Fiction' project. That is, pictures of more than one moment in time. Or more than one space. Or more than one viewpoint. Composite moments. A good question to ask oneself for depicting narrative, to offset the moment of choice strategy. This is Vancouver-based Lucas Soi's Adventures in Babysitting (2007). Click for a nice big look.
For this project you will have to deal with trying to communicate the difficult subject of black holes. Animation, as a form of education, is made simple here through the use of building blocks. The way they show how a structure fails and collapses, in the early parts, means that the viewer gains a simple understanding before the animation develops and grows in a more fantastical way.
This second Sesame Street animation, 'changing shapes', has a constant, in the form of the shape, that is then surrounded and affected by a more imaginative narrative, keeping a good balance between information and entertainment.
Technique. Here are some ways of creating moving image pieces without being hindered by a lack of 3D computer skills. This is by RBG6, making the most of simple mechanics.
'Sally' by Roul Wouters: a simple use of a box, marbles, and a camera becomes hypnotic viewing.
'My Paper Mind' by Javen Ivey: an animation technique called stratastencil based on an early method know as strata-cut which was pioneered by Oskar Fischinger in the 1920s and later on in the 1990s used by David Daniels to create 'Buzz Box'. You can see Javen Ivery's process here.
Sometimes the limitations of what you can achieve can be used to your advantage. The animation 'Jubliee Line', a collaboration between Shelley Fox and Tim Hope contains short film clips that are looped and repeated. Rather than being perfectly made to blend into their environment, the square edges to the footage are made visible and add to the aesthetic feel of the piece.
An alternative to the 'case-bound, multi-sectioned binding' you've made in the workshop is a simple, classic Japanese binding (via). It works especially well with a landscape-format and with thin paper-stock.
The 'stab' technique to make holes in the book is traditional but we've found it works well to clamp the book between two pieces of mdf cut to the book size, then pin-drill in the workshop using the pillar drill.
Two spreads from Bruno Munari's 'Character Building' chapter in Design as Art (1966). He says, "the graphic designer works without set limits and without rejecting any possible technique. His (sic) experiments in the visual lead him to try out all possible combinations and methods in order to arrive at the precise image he needs for the job in hand and no other".
The argument for and against consistent 'style' versus a kind of imagery led by the 'concept' goes on. It's a criticism levelled against illustration- a lack of rigour or appropriateness- or style over content. Interesting here that Munari refers to the Graphic Designer; hard to tell but he may be trying to distance himself from the notion of an unthinking illustrator. For me the arguments, in their polarity, are fruitless. Anybody making imagery has to have a rhythm and a language. Inevitably the work, however applied, will be also somewhat self-referential. Without this the results can lack idiosyncrasy, locality and become corporate. Munari's imagemaking, even if it did follow the ethos described above, still has his hand on it all. A certain set of spatial, linear characteristics. Variety with identity is possible. There are a lot of crude distinctions also made between hand-drawn versus digital. Why is one at the expense of another? Is it not possible for someone to arrange objects in a space, or draw a line on paper, or assemble an image on-screen without having to nail their colours to one mast or another, or have to project a kind of obvious stylistic consistency for lazy eyes? Surely a practice can incorporate all of these with integrity.
Excerpt from The Mascot by Ladislas Starewicz (1933). See the full animation, the array of characters and a full scope of the live action and stop-motion at the very useful Fantastic Animation.
Marks are limited by the implement and the ground. Pictographic: a synthesis of the figurative windmill with the idea of a windmill. Thingliness.
Oscar Schlemmer's Slatdance (via Multimedialab) synonymous with its environment or what it does, what it uses, what it represents.
Evan Holloway's Pas Des Deux (2005) (represented by The Approach gallery).
Bjork, by Jean-Paul Goude with Bernhard Willhelm (via Tira la Pirinola).
Classic Grace Jones, again by Jean-Paul Goude.
Herb Lubalin. Advanced understanding of Character, ornament, vernacular, form and counterform.
Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (via Palantir).
Les Xipéhuz (1887) written by J.H. Rosny (aîné) "are silicon-based, geometric-shaped alien beings, most in cone shape, nearly all cylindrical, but some tall and thin and others short and squat, some in cone shape and some rectangular slabs. Their shapes and colors can change, but they generally remain cylindrical and bluish green. They communicate by flashing lines in various shapes across their sides. They can kill by focusing rays from the “stars” at their base. They have individual personalities and are at least somewhat comprehensible by humans, but their purpose for coming to Earth, besides an apparent drive for expansion, is unknown, as is their culture and much else about them. They are truly alien, and only slightly comprehensible".
Alfred Jarry Ubu Roi(1888). Theatre of the Absurd. "The central character is notorious for his infantile engagement with his world," wrote Jane Taylor. "Ubu inhabits a domain of greedy self-gratification." Jarry's metaphor for the modern man, he is an antihero- fat, ugly, vulgar, gluttonous, grandiose, dishonest, stupid, jejune, voracious, cruel, cowardly and evil."
An exquisite, one-eyed goblin character from The Goblin Spider, a Japanese fairy tale of 1899, printed from woodblock with characteristic colour gradient backgrounds. The translated version by Lafcadio Hearn. See the complete book at the New York Public Library's site.
Black Bess (1866), published by E. Harrison of London. Note the poor registration of the colour printing which has become an affectation, an effect, an option in our time.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), Charles Dickens' last and unfinished novel, published in monthly instalments by Chapman & Hall of London.
An advertisment for a Spring Heeled Jack Penny Dreadful of 1886. The South East London Folklore Society give a comprehensive history of Jack.
