Visual Communication Blog

“The Wilderness Downtown” is not a phrase that you’d readily use to describe Kenton Lane in Newcastle, the street where I grew up – the most exciting thing that happened there being an occasional crash at the traffic lights. However it is given a different slant in this video for the latest Arcade Fire release which brings to the mainstream a lot of experiments using interactive media, geo-locative data and re-interpretations of the pop-video format. As an aside, we are told that this is the year of ‘geo-location‘ and the death of the ‘web‘ (as distinct from the internet). Beware false prophets*? Endism anyone**?

*or possibly opportunists using the well trodden “x is dead” tactic.

** “At the center of their argument is the observation that popular thinking about technology today is ruled by a kind of relentless “endism,” which forecasts the death of everything from mass media to the nation-state, government to politics, universities to regions, even distance itself.”

The Wellcome Trust are undertaking a project to digitise the works of James Watson and Francis Crick, two cambridge scientists who discovered the double-helical structure of DNA. An audio slideshow can be accessed here.

Silent Witnesses: Graphic Novels Without Words
Curated by Darren Diss

Venue: Danes Terrace, Lincoln
29 May 2010 to 30 Aug 2010
Admission price: free

This exhibition brings together the work of internationally recognised artists and illustrators from around the world working in Graphic Novel form. Spanning publications from the early twentieth century to the present day, the works contained in the exhibition are distinct in that all use the capacity of images alone to communicate narrative, functioning entirely without the use of text.

The exhibition celebrates the book form and in particular the Graphic Novel as an increasingly popular medium for artists and explores its enduring appeal to readers of all ages. By focussing on works without text it examines the underlying structure and mechanics of developing a Graphic Novel, exposing it as a unique art form. It looks at the Novel in the true sense, as an extended sequence conveying a narrative. The show includes preparation and working drawings, writings, flat plans, sketch books and character studies and associated works alongside complete book-works to reveal the various developmental stages in creating a Graphic Novel.

The exhibition combines works from a wide range of cultural contexts, from modern popular Graphic Novels, with scratchboard images by Eric Drooker produced for his novel ‘Flood’, to woodcuts by Frans Masereel for his his 1925 work ‘Die Stadt’, to original drawings by Sara Varon for her well loved books, ‘Sweater Weather’, ‘Robo and Hund’ and ‘Chicken and Cat’. Also in the show will be a large scale flat-print version of ‘A-Z’ by Lars Arrhenius, a novel produced on the iconic A-Z map of London. Shown in print form it allows the viewer to scan the intersecting narratives sewn through the map in a single image, creating ever new readings.

Works for the exhibition have been loaned to The Collection from the British Museum, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Klinspor Museum, Offenbach, Scott Eder Gallery, New York, and from the exhibiting artists.

The show’s curator, Darren Diss, is an established illustrator and Senior Lecturer in Illustration at The University of Lincoln. He has a specialist academic research interest in Textless Narratives.

Talks from last years OFFSET festival now online. This years festival here: http://iloveoffset.com/

Happening in Glasgow, Poster Club are a multi-disciplinary group interested in the form of the poster, and art, design, illustration and graphics.

GSA’s second most prolific bloggers have launched a great new blog with the distinct theme of the Treasures of GSA Library, to highlight the special and rare book collections.

BBC 4 Produced an excellent documentary on the Political Satire maps of Fred Rose here.

The Foundation for Children’s Welfare Stamps in the Netherlands promoted their stamps with this animation from Paul Postma. The theme of the animation is ‘Let Children Learn’ and comes from the foundation’s belief that every child has the right to education. The animation focuses on learning through play to solve problems.

Music: ‘Brother John’ by Clutchy Hopkins & Lord Kenjamin
Sound: Jasper Boeke
Animation: Paul Postma

Arika have their nice brochures available online. They also have an interesting festival coming up next week. (Some of which outlined below by David Kerr).

Image by Jez Burrows: http://www.jezburrows.com

Talk at 4pm next tuesday (4th may) from sarah tripp and david kerr – both really interesting practitioners, operating across design, film, illustration and art. This is the last talk of the year, be good to see as many of you there as possible. (image: Sarah Tripp)

Glasgow School of Art Library Blog highlights The Het Geheugen van Nederland (The Memory of the Netherlands) — a dutch website that contains an extensive collection of illustrations, photographs, texts, film and audio fragments, all of Dutch making, including an impressive archive of work by Wim Crouwel.

Happy Birthday to Ronald Searle illustrator!

Vis Com alumni and illustrator Emily Chappell has an exhibition entitled ‘he sleeps with the fishes’ opening at the Tron Glasgow on Monday 1st March.