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Monthly Archive for April, 2009
When I arrived in Santiago, the capital of Chile, I wasn´t aware of it having a distinctive visual culture, so was fascinated to discover a thriving stencil graffiti scene on it’s streets over the few days I spent there. To see the full set of images check out the Santiago Stencil Graffiti set on Flickr.
Few buildings in this sprawling city are untouched by graffiti in all its different forms, but by far the most interesting are the examples of stencil graffiti.
The subject-matter of the graffiti is generally political slogans and images with anti-american, anti-capitalist and animal rights themes. Alongside this, there are portraits, images of cartoon-characters and other less-defined subjects.
The stencil graffiti community in Chile has an interesting blog (in spanish but with good images) and a book was released recently called Santiago Stencil, which I believe can be bought using the contact section of the website.
As I tirelessly slave over the first print-on-demand second year book (it’ll be ready very very soon I promise! – via LULU books, link to follow) a bit of mindless web-browsing/task-avoidance lands me at this, which looks like a very interesting conference, hosted by the Piet Zwart Institute.
How print might change in relation to digital advances (and how those advances might be shaped by our cultural attachment to the ‘book’ – think ‘e-readers’…) is surely one of the most pressing issues of contemporary graphic communication. Ok, that’s a bit melodramatic, but seriously…
From Dominic at LuckyMe:
We need final submissions of work ( animation or still imagery ) by Wednesday at 12pm so that we can compile our favourites into an exhibition format for the Hinterland festival.
Please upload work via sendspace.com with the receivers address as info@thisisluckyme.com
And as the ‘description’ enter Hinterland and your name. Easy.
We will come into the department around midday on Wednesday to leave your named tickets aside, with the 15 two-day tickets spread evenly amongst the entrants.
Okay, Thank you for reaching out. And feel free to call or mail me for clarification on anything.
Details of this terms pro-practise talks, all in Second Year Studio, all welcome:
Tuesday 5th May, 4pm
Emlyn Firth + Louise Chappell
Friday 8th May, 4pm (still to be finalised)
Berlin Haushoch
Friday 15th May, 3:30pm (please note random meaningless change of time)
Kieran McCann + Tom Jenkins
Saw a lecture by Mark Owens on Thursday, who is Life of The Mind studio. The best thing he has done, I think and I’m sure he cares, is the Forms of Enquiry book. I would really recommend it, although I’ve had trouble finding another copy. Maybe Sam will let you read his. Bring white gloves.
CollectedVisuals.com is a showcase of international artists&designers. What I like about it is that it evolves as a Blog presenting a new Talent almost every two days and also gives you a random selection of artists profiles on the sidebar.
It’s worth having a browse through all the different categories: eg art, film/animation, advertising, book design, typography, illustration, architecture, photography…
…and Cryptic Nights. Details of upcoming ‘Cryptic Night’ Events via that link, the next one being Advanced Beauty by Universal Everything (bit vague as to whether Matt Pyke will be there) and a Q&A with Tom Schofield aka knox om pax.
The Journal of Urban Typography is exactly what it says it is. Only about 4 months too late for the Location Typography project. Also another chance for me to shamelessly url-drop Sam’s Found Type website and The Buchstabenmuseum (Germanys ‘Museum of Letters’)
Following up our recent post on the ‘Scotland with Style’ Brand for Glasgow, this Wolff Olins opinion piece states their ideas about what makes a great Place-Brand. In amongst it there seem to be some valid points, (and undoubtedly this is a million miles ahead of what Glasgow is doing), but as always with this kind of stuff, it’s pushing at the borders of credibility, and has a tendency to become lost in a world of brand induced double-speak.
The ‘Day of Rememberance for Truth and Justice’ is a public holiday in Argentina which takes place each year on the 24th of March. It commemorates the victims of the ‘Dirty War’; a period of state-sponsored violence by the military government which ruled the country from 1976 to 1983 and who were responsible for the illegal arrest, torture and execution of an estimated 30,000 Argentinian citizens. These victims have come to be known as the ‘disappeared’.
This period of Argentina’s history continues to be an open wound in the psyche of the country with trials of the leaders of the military government ongoing and questions on the fate of lost relatives still unanswered.
Last month, on the public holiday, demonstrations took place in towns throughout the country and I spent the day at one in a small town called Bariloche. These are some photos of the powerful visual symbols associated with remembering the disappeared.
These paintings are of white shawls which is the icon of ‘The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’, an association of the mothers of the disappeared who gather once a week in central Buenos Aires to protest. White shawls are worn by members of the group and symbolise the blankets of their lost children.
These photocopied images and descriptions of the disappeared are a sinister reminder of the age and background of the people involved. They were typically young, politically-liberal people, many of whom were students.
This shows a colonial-era statue covered by a canvas of colourful hand-prints which seemed to have an anti-authoritarian message.
Finally, a bloodstained Argentine flag perfectly captured the strength of emotion at the event.
For more on this topic check out the Oscar-winning film ‘The Official Story’ or this Wikipedia article.
http://www.industrialdesignserved.com/Gallery/FINN_alcantara-extraordinary-everyday-travel/165878
not sure if this fits more into textiles than visual communication, also not sure how I feel about a bookcover with ‘electronic beam grafting treatment’- sounds too much like a beauty treatment. but interesting all the same!
The ‘Detours’ series continues with a talk by Polly Staple at Glasgow Trades Hall. Thurs 23rd April. 7pm. Free.
This article on the Guardian crystalizes the recent developments in ‘citizen photography/film’ and more importantly reveals the effect that the visual image can have in revealing the ‘truth’ of matters contested by the government and police. The submission of a film (and more tellingly its rapid and wide distribution on the web) seemingly showing the assault by Police officers on Ian Tomlinson, a City of London Newspaper vendor, expedited the following change of story;
Wednesday April 1
Ian Tomlinson, 47, a newspaper vendor, collapses and dies at the G20 protests. In a statement that night, the Metropolitan police says that medics were temporarily impeded from helping him as “a number of missiles – believed to be bottles – were being thrown at them”…
Monday April 6
The IPCC confirms Tomlinson had contact with police. It continues to “manage” an investigation conducted by City police, some of whose officers were pictured at the site of Tomlinson’s alleged assaults.
Tuesday April 7
At 2am, the Guardian receives video footage that clearly shows Tomlinson was hit with a baton and pushed to the floor by a riot officer. That afternoon, it publishes the footage on its website and hands a dossier of evidence to the IPCC.
Wednesday April 8
The IPCC reverses its decision to allow City police to investigate the death.
Thursday April 9
The Met suspends the officer shown in the footage; 48 hours on, he has still not been questioned by the IPCC.
Difficulties regarding the relationship between photography/film and the ‘truth’ are well documented, but it would be interesting to see whether the original position of the police would have changed had they not been confronted with such open, widespread and easily distributable visual documentation of some aspects of those events.
A parallel can be seen in the recent refusal of english villagers to allow the google streetview car into their village, citing invasion of privacy. The reality is that our ‘privacy’ is invaded in far more pervasive ways on a daily basis, it just so happens that Streetview is a particularly visual medium and therefore has an immediacy and a potency that data and words alone can probably never achieve. More on that here and more on the citizen cameraman here and here
‘This happened’ talks are another good addition to the long list of design resources becoming available online. At this rate, you’ll be able to do a DIY Masters
In an emergency, you can even download a PDF poster to stick in your window, should you need assistance.
Sent to us from Angry Artworks:
101 Damnations: CALL FOR ARTWORK – angry artworks is looking for submissions from artists / visual creators for an exhibition / publication in 2010.
101 Damnations will be a collection of detourned / re-appropriated / subverted imagery based on logos, graphics and slogans which attacks, belittles, challenges, identifies, mocks, questions, satirises and generally scorns capitalism and neoliberal globalisation in its various forms – from greedy corporations, polluting industries and war profiteering enterprises to sweatshop encouraging companies, union busting businesses and media manipulating multinationals… etc! Although this project is about a visual /reaction/ to the forces of capitalism it is also a /resource/ for those trying to understand it and fight it – so it is hoped each image (or group of images) will have an accompanying weblink to a resource – e.g. an organisation, a solidarity campaign, reading materials, documentation of previous struggles or current direct actions…
Further info on the website.
A leak of some of the new features on new iPhone software are appearing. This includes using the accelerometer even more in games and also being able to interact with games and live video from a webcam on the phone. Also talk of a digital compass included. in the software 3 update should come out in June or thereabouts along with new iPhones. iPhone 3G will run the new software but obviously might not be abel to use some features that rely on hardware. The strange cards are 3d barcodes. They hold a lot more data more concisely and are popular in Japan as a graphic device.
…were also interested in the typographers guide to the galaxy and the most recent edition of eye magazine which is a supersonic type-special, and comes highly recommended (by me).
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