Archive for the 'Inter-discipline' Category

Tractor Man

Published by Neil McGuire on May 17, 2012 in Design, Inter-discipline, Media, Music, Performance, Political, Society and Theatre. 0 Comments

In There Is Business Like Show Business* on Radio 4, Will Young (yes, I know, bear with me) examines the intriguing world of Industrial Musicals — lavish and complex musical theatre devised in the post-war years by corporations to play as informative, entertaining and supposedly morale-boosting features within trade-conventions — mainly to private audiences comprising of corporation staff. It cites examples such as ‘Tractor Man’ — a whole musical devised around the benefits of productivity enhancing Ford Tractors — as examples of a time when corporate budgets (and optimism in the power of consumerism) were at an all-time high, and provides an interesting insight into a very different way of thinking about brands, design and marketing — one which manages to be simultaneously sinister, nieve, and endearing, in a nostalgic kind of way.

I was interested in this as lately I’ve been reading a bit about Fordism and Post-Fordism — the influence of mechanisation on our way of thinking about the world, and the subsequent paradigm shift to a more ‘flexible’, ‘knowledge’ based economy. If you’re interested in exploring this more, this book is a good starting point (in an art and design context). I’ve also really got into this dictionary of ‘Critical Theory’ lately**, and have found it to be a handy route in to a lot of the phrases, terms and people that crop up in articles, discussions etc, but which I know nothing about. There’s a clear and easy to understand definition of Fordism and Post-Fordism in that.

* Available to listen again till Saturday.

** Realise that for the ‘haters’ out there, it’s going to be difficult to decide whether to ‘disrespect’ me for promoting a Will Young radio-show, or touting a dictionary of Critical Theory.

*** The clip used to illustrate this post is not really from the ‘golden era’ of Industrial Musicals – its from a slightly later period, and therefore lacks the production values (and budget) of some of its predecessors. But it was one of the few clips I could track down online. It was made by Allied Chemicals, and this ‘number’ is ‘The Great American Consumer’, from Seein’ the Light, 1978.

The British Council Film Archive

Published by Neil McGuire on May 14, 2012 in Archives, Design, Film and Inter-discipline. 1 Comment

The British Councils Design, Fashion and Architecture blog, Back of the Envelope, carries a good link to an archive of British Films produced in the 30′s and 40′s promoting British Industry. More on ‘Industrial Entertainment’ later.

Undercurrents

Published by Neil McGuire on April 29, 2012 in Critical Studies, Design, Inter-discipline, Literature, Magazines/Editorial, Media, Print, Printing, Publications and Theory. 0 Comments

Undercurrents is a collection of current 4th years dissertations, edited and compiled by Christopher MacInnes with layout and cover design by Seb Howell (vis-com-des person). All profits go back into future productions.

About the Art Lending Library

Published by Neil McGuire on April 19, 2012 in Alumni, Art, Digital, Inter-discipline and Web. 0 Comments

More about the Art Lending Library, via a site/system/identity designed by VIS-COM-DES people Sebastian Gorton Kalvik and Sophie Dyer. Includes an interesting set of educational events.

Photography: Colin Gray

Last (this year) and 10th

Published by Neil McGuire on April 18, 2012 in Events, Inter-discipline and Talks. 0 Comments

GSA Pecha Kucha X is on Wednesday 25th April, 6 ish, Students Union, and Vis Com are representing, on a number of levels.

Feat. Edwin Pickstone, Tassy Thompson, Malcolm Murdoch, Michael Dougal, Craig Mulholland, Ian McIlroy, Lauren Currie and Ainsley Roddick (the Duchy), plus more t.b.c.

But it moves: the new aesthetic, and beauty in a digital age

Published by Neil McGuire on April 9, 2012 in Design, Digital, Inter-discipline, Technology and Web. 2 Comments

But it moves: the New Aesthetic & emergent virtual taste, on metaLAB at Harvard, is an interesting window on a very contemporary debate. A quick excerpt (quoting bruce sterling) frames the discussion thus;

[T]he New Aesthetic is a gaudy, network-assembled heap. It’s made of digitized jackstraws that were swept up by a generational sensibility. The products of a “collective intelligence” rarely make much coherent sense.

It was grand work to find and assemble this New Aesthetic wunderkammer, but a heap of eye-catching curiosities don’t constitute a compelling worldview. Look at all of them: Information visualization. Satellite views. Parametric architecture. Surveillance cameras. Digital image processing. Data-mashed video frames. Glitches and corruption artifacts. Voxelated 3D pixels in real-world geometries. Dazzle camou. Augments. Render ghosts. And, last and least, nostalgic retro 8bit graphics from the 1980s.

These are the forms of imagery that Bridle’s collaborators have thrown over his transom. There’s lots, they’re all cool, and most are rather interesting, and some are even profound, but they don’t march together.

Culture Hack Scotland 2012

Published by Neil McGuire on April 4, 2012 in Design, Digital, Inter-discipline, Technology and Web. 0 Comments

Sorry – a bit slow off the mark to blog Culture Hack Scotland 2012. However if you consider yourself handy with code there are still developers tickets available, and if don’t, but you’re interested in getting involved and learning some basic building blocks to get started with using data, there are also ‘cultural track’ tickets still available. Follows on, as you’d imagine, from Culture Hack Scotland 2011

Networks Without a Cause

Published by Neil McGuire on April 1, 2012 in Design, Digital, Inter-discipline, Technology and Web. 3 Comments

Networks Without a Cause, A Critique of Social Media is one of the latest books to make its way to my bookshelf. By clicking that link above you can see the author, Geert Lovink, talk about a number of the key themes in the book.

For me, the ideas around ‘weak-links’ and their exploitation are most interesting, but also rather enjoy the general disregard for and dissection of the all too pervasive hype around social media/networks. (Think that possibly takes the prize for worst sentence ever constructed on the vis com blog, but you know what I mean).

Exhibitionist

Published by Neil McGuire on February 11, 2012 in Archives, Design, Events, Exhibitions, Illustration and Inter-discipline. 3 Comments

Pictured: Brave New Alps, Fortezza Open Archive, from Reading Forms blog

Congratulations to everyone who did such a great job with the Work in Progress exhibition. On a similar topic we were recently alerted to this Reading Forms Blog, ‘Exhibiting Graphic Design Exhibitions‘. It’s interesting to compare a range of different contexts for exhibiting design, and while there is no written narrative, it’s a really useful visual resource to reference, and seems to be fairly regularly updated.

(Thanks to Matt from GoodPress for the link)

Alternative Art Schools and Plenary Discussions

Published by David Kerr on February 2, 2012 in Communication, Critical Studies, Design, Education, Inter-discipline and Society. 0 Comments

A really interesting article on the AN Blog by Pippa Koserek exploring the relationship between recent occupations in art schools across the UK and various alternative art school models going back to the sixties.

Got me thinking about a great book about the use of plenary discussions during an occupation of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (Filozofski fakultet) at the University of Zagreb.

Another relevent resource is  the Carrot Workers Collective’s website. They recently organised an event at the now homeless Bank of Ideas.

7:84

Published by Neil McGuire on January 27, 2012 in Art, Critical Studies, Design, Imagination, Inter-discipline, Media, Theory and Writing. 0 Comments

The arrow and the frame on Click Opera manages to touch on a whole range of topics relevant to current projects; Banking, currency, wild knowledge, art archive, not to mention an interesting reflection on Google adwords. And not only does it contain some very interesting thoughts in the continued thread of good and useful arguments against ternary or binary thinking, but it is also awash with great hyperlinks.

While on the topic, big thanks to Anja and Chris for their currency workshop earlier in the week. There are some pictures below, and a link to Anja and Chris’s bookmarks on the topic here.

Occupy Design?

Published by Neil McGuire on January 21, 2012 in Cities, Creativity, Design, Events, Fabricating/Making, Hacking, Inter-discipline, Political, Society and Technology. 0 Comments

Folk might be interested in this forthcoming event: I personally have some questions about the idea of ‘occupy design’ but undoubtedly the event will be a melting pot of ideas and proposals and one which could lead to some interesting outcomes.

‘This Space Is Not For Hire’ will take place at the Bank of Ideas, an occupied former bank near Liverpool Street Station.

Running across the afternoons of Saturday the 28 and Sunday 29 January 2012, will be a range of talks on topics such as: radical forms of communication and design activism; the precariousness of design employment; and exposing and reflecting upon the ways design is used to give a friendly veneer to the worst kinds of Corporate behaviour.

via Eye blog » Higher ground. Occupy Design is an opportunity to change design, and design for change..

So Long SOPA

Published by Neil McGuire on January 19, 2012 in Design, Digital, Inter-discipline, Political, Society, Technology and Web. 0 Comments

Obama Says So Long to SOPA, the Controversial Internet Piracy Legislation, as reported by Forbes, and here by the BBC. The question still remains though; in what form might this ‘type’ of legislation next re-appear?

Here’s Clay Shirky talking about the topic at TED. To read more, try Lawrence Lessig, or this piece on copyleft, as a starting point.

“It is clear that copyright is being misdirected from its original intention to that of meeting the needs of corporations desperate to safeguard existing profits and create new markets artificially.” From: Copyleft and copyright / Eye 55

Graphic Scotland

Published by David Kerr on January 11, 2012 in Drawing, Illustration, Inter-discipline, Literature and Networks. 0 Comments

Graphic Scotland is an independent Community Interest Company aiming to bring together Scottish-based writers, artists and publishers in international collaborations to create diverse and innovative new graphic fiction.

http://www.graphicscotland.co.uk/

The Serving Library Media Archive

Published by Neil McGuire on January 5, 2012 in Archives, Critical Studies, Design, Digital, Inter-discipline, Magazines/Editorial, Media, Music, Publications, Research, Resources, Theory, Web and Writing. 0 Comments

“You are sat in a pitch-black room. Your head is gently buzzed with whisky. Out of the darkness you hear a recording of my voice.”

Some interesting podcasts, via The Serving Library.

Derrida of the Digital Age

Published by Neil McGuire on December 28, 2011 in Design, Digital, Inter-discipline, Interaction, Media, Political, Society, Technology, Theory, Web and Writing. 1 Comment

Friedrich Kittler has been described by some as the Derrida of the Digital Age – the first philosopher to truly explore and understand our emergent relationship with digital technology. Friedrich Kittlers computer wars is a podcast on the Guardian website which explores this legacy.

Another writer on the ‘digital’ who might be worth looking into is Vilém Flusser, who wrote about networks, but also photography and the ‘technical image’.

Thanks to Gordon Hush for the initial link.

Martin Boyce and the Design Research Unit, (unbeknown to him).

Published by Neil McGuire on December 1, 2011 in Archives, Art, Brand, Design, Events, Exhibitions, Identity, Inter-discipline, Product Design, Research and Technology. 0 Comments

BRbadge

“The machine is accepted as the essentially modern vehicle of form. Our designs will therefore be essentially designs for mass production, but at the same time we hope to rescue mass production from the ugliness and aesthetic emptiness which has so far characterized the greater part of its output”. —Design Research Unit, 1943

Another post-talk train ride, another blog write up. Again, seizing on the time allowed by this journey, I’m going to try to condense an interesting talk from Martin Boyce, and an interesting peruse around the Design Research Unit exhibition, currently at the Cooper Gallery in Dundee, into a succinct and coherent blog post.

The talk for me raised some pertinent issues which were hinted at in an earlier post covering an interview with Metahaven, where the politics of aesthetics raised their head, and the point was made about how the politics of a design piece can fade over time, (or at least not be directly replicated in a different place and time). Boyce’s work heavily references, and in some cases perhaps directly appropriates, design forms of various types. And he talked eloquently about about how by processing and representing these forms in a contemporary art context, their meaning is changed, “distorted by the process of recollection”.

While it might be possible to question this appropriation of accepted ‘well’ designed objects – is it primarily for their forms and aesthetic value? – he pre-empted this by talking of his lack of ‘academic’ insight into his work, and interest in “wild knowledge”. He talked about following his eye and instinct, and this reminded me of an idea of Brian Eno‘s, where he talked about the “intellect catching up with the instinct”. I think there’s probably a studio project in this, and the same could be said for his approach to his typographic pieces. It was interesting to hear how these pieces came into being and how they then went out into the world, with seemingly little reference to typographic history or conventions which we perhaps get a little fixated by.

The Design Research Unit exhibition which this talk ran alongside was a concise and functional display of some of the projects undertaken by that design organisation between 1942 and 1972. Again, the key thing it raised for me was that the politics of the time, while implicit in the work, often get overlooked by designers who seem fixated with this orderly way of working in terms of stewarding design and identity today. It’s difficult to put my finger on, but I’m fascinated by why the template laid down by this early move into corporate compliance is so resilient. Maybe it connects to ideas about why a particular way of looking at design, productivity and manufacturing, (and I guess by all this we mean the free market economy in its many facets), achieved such traction in the post-war years. Definitely a subject for further thinking, and a very good exhibition, well worth a visit.

guidelines

N.b. Apologies for the use of ‘Boyce’ during this post. ‘Martin’ seems overly familiar, while ‘Boyce’ sounds a bit pompous. Rock and a hard place.

Tense

Published by Neil McGuire on November 13, 2011 in Design, Digital, Education, Events, Inter-discipline, Talks and Typography. 2 Comments

Making use of the intermittent wifi on the train back to Glasgow, and in order to avoid this becoming one of those jobs that gets left and left until its so out of date it’s obsolete, thought i’d try to sum up the Critical Tension conference with a single sentence (containing perhaps a thought, an idea, a hyperlink, or some wild conjecture*), per speaker. There will be lengthier reviews and discussions else where on the web, notably the Eye blog. If anyone wants to ask anything about anything, would be only too happy to chat further.

Day 1:
Jonathan Barnbrook
The critical role of typefaces
Typefaces should reflect the tools used to make them, and can embody meaning through their form(s).

Tom Farrand
Are you Good for Nothing?
Tom set up Good for Nothing, and thinks we should be making stuff, not breaking stuff.

Phil Baines
Thinking and making happen in the same place
Illuminating talk on recent tensions at CSM, the relocation of the print workshop, and parallels in the arts and crafts movement, with interesting references from W R Lethaby. (Image below)

Paul Rennie
‘Britain can make it’ (1947) – signposts to the future
Looking back to look forward, what do the great exhibitions and investments of the post war years tell us about the relative roles of design and architecture in Britain, in the 50′s and now, and how Britain presented itself to the rest of the world. (Image below)

Alan Kitching
The Wrington Suite: the show must go on
Warm and humorous talk, reaffirming the role and integrity of making in any type of design practise, with some good jokes, but I can’t remember any of them.

Gerry Leonidas
The emergence of meta-typography
An interesting rangy talk on a number of forward-looking subjects, from micro-payments to the ongoing appreciation of objects, to how we think about and teach typography at art school. (Image below)

Timo Arnall (BERG)
Unfortunately couldn’t make it.

Plenary
moderated by Emily King
There were questions.

Day 2
Vaughan Oliver
Visual Pressures (30 years in 60 minutes)
Informal and informative in equal measure, Vaughan Oliver reviewed the work of his studio and collaborators, which threw up some interesting questions about whether concerns in design today might be considerably more retro / introspective than they were 20 years ago. (Image below)

Derek Yates
Camberwell
An overview of the formative years of a new foundation degree at Camberwell and how this course interacts with ‘industry’.

Lucienne Roberts and Rebecca Wright
GraphicDesign&: Inward / Outward
A talk about creating projects that were united by being about graphic design and another subject, I wondered if this might be a bit laboured (in the sense that isn’t all, or most, graphic design about something other than the subject itself), though the presentation was good, and we found out about the Bliss classification system.

12.30–1.00
Zoë Bather
Studio8
Detailed overview of the design work of Studio8

Educational plenary
moderated by Phil Baines
There were more questions.

Marina Willer and Ije Nwokorie
Wolff Olins
Problematic presentation on the new modus operandi of one of Britain’s most prominent design/brand agencies, which seemed to embody many of the contradictions and problems at the heart of brand and identity design today, i.e: ‘staff are expected to do stuff and then ask forgiveness if it goes wrong, rather than ask permission’ — that kind of thing.

Amelia Gregory
Bringing a magazine to life: tales from the frontline of print and online production
Quickfire presentation from the founder of Amelia’s Magazine, on the role of social media in creating and sustaining a printed publication.

Steven Watson
Is anybody there? The importance of authorship in independent magazines
A jaunty overview of the work of Stack (and partially the Church of London too, who produce Think Quarterly, the highly specced Google journal), and an insight into making a magazine in 48 hours.

Plenary
moderated by Phil Baines
There were even more questions, plus the best question of the day, from Paul Finn; “Art Schools are becoming more like corporations, while corporations are becoming (or want to become) more like Art School. Discuss”

Pub.
That’s where we all went.

Thanks.
To all speakers, organisers, and St Bride’s itself.

* Apologies to anyone who feels misrepresented by this. Will happily receive amendments, and should point out that these are my opinions and might not be shared by others.

** Apologies for the awful pictures, except ***

*** Apologies to Eye for ‘borrowing’ their picture at the start of this article, by way of evidence.

A Compendium of Joy

Published by Neil McGuire on November 6, 2011 in Art, Design, Digital, Events, Exhibitions, Illustration, Inter-discipline, Interaction and Technology. 0 Comments

On Thursday 10th November, A Compendium of Joy, (at ReFound, which is in turn at the New Glasgow Society), opens. Curated by Vis Com people Oona Brown and Jessica Copsey, with an introductory address by Professor Sam Bellacosa no-less. There’s a poster for this in the Ref if you need more info, or a more visual interpretation of what’s happening. I’m being critically tense (dense?) later this week so will miss it, but between this and the Good Press opening, I think that makes for a pretty good Glasgow night out. If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, or hold the gift of time travel, you could also try to squeeze in ‘This Happened‘ at Inspace in Edinburgh.

Image: Jonnet Middleton, Speaking at This Happened

Extreme Writing

Published by Neil McGuire on November 4, 2011 in Books, Communication, Design, Digital, Inter-discipline, Publications, Technology, Theory and Web. 1 Comment

“New Art/Science Affinities” is a new publication focusing on artists working right now at the intersection of art, science and technology. Co-published by The Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University and the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, this 190-page book was written and designed in one week by four authors Andrea Grover, Régine Debatty, Claire Evans and Pablo Garcia and two designers Thumb in a collaborative authoring process known as a “book sprint” derived from “code sprinting” for open source projects.

You can download the book for free, by following that ‘via’ link, there, down below.

via CreativeApplications.Net.