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<li><a href="">Special Issues</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<div id="content"><h1 id="title">Title</h1>
<div id="content"><h1 id="title" &lt?water bodies&gt </h1>
<h3 id="thesis-description">Thesis Description</h3>
<p>This is where your thesis goes</p>
</div>

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</nav>
<div id="content"><h1 id="title">Title</h1>
<h3 id="grad-project-description">Grad project Description</h3>
<p>This is where your grad project goes</p>
<p>BackPlaces is a web-based anthology that explores intimate and
emotional spaces on the internet. It consists of four pages, each
embodying an archetype. The sunrise, the nosebleed, the star, and the
hand.</p>
<p>These pages trace a thread of online emotions: of shared grief,
collective processing through writing, youthful excitement, and finally,
of being on or off the internet. They present stories in the formats in
which they were originally told, allowing you to imagine yourself as one
of these pages, wearing your own clothing as a costume and reenacting
the play of your first kiss.</p>
<p>This project tenderly pays tribute to the rawest emotions found
online. It seeks to diversify the conversation by reminding us that the
internet is a reflection of the people and feelings that inhabit it. The
web is an artifice—a house built by others where we live and communicate
together. If we all left, the internet might cease to exist.</p>
<p>However, the internet can be a harsh landscape where sensitive
individuals find refuge in backplaces, rooms where they can be more than
their physical selves allow. Here, they meet, whisper secrets, share
laughter and pain, and grow together until they move on. These stories
reflect these moments, drawn from the collective knowledge of people
I’ve loved online. Their words have been woven into stories to protect
and celebrate them. Some were social media comments, some were friends
sharing cake, some were emails, and some were conversations.</p>
</div>
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---
title: Project
author: Stephen
author: Ada
---
# Title
### Grad project Description
This is where your grad project goes
Hi.\
I made this play for you. It is a question, for us to hold together.
Is all intimacy about bodies? What is it about our bodies that makes intimacy? What happens when our bodies distance intimacy from us? This small anthology of poems and short stories lives with these questions---about having a body without intimacy and intimacy without a body.This project is also a homage to everyone who has come before and alongside me, sharing their vulnerability and emotions on the Internet. I called the places where these things happen backplaces. They are small, tender online rooms where people experiencing societally uncomfortable pain can find relief, ease, and transcendence.
I made three backplaces for you to see, click, and feel: Solar Sibling, Hermit Fantasy, and Good Pie. Each of these is the result of its own unique performance or project. Some of the stories I will share carry memories of pain---both physical and emotional. As you sit in the audience, know I am with you, holding your hand through each scene. If the performance feels overwhelming at any point, you have my full permission to step out, take a break, or leave. This is not choreographed, and I care deeply for you.
Solar Sibling is an online performance of shared loss and the complex pain that siblings can sometimes bring. This project uses comments people left on TikTok poetry. I extracted the emotions from these comments, mixed them with my own, and crafted them into poems. It is an ongoing performance, ending only when your own feelings are secretly whispered to me.
Hermit Fantasy is a short story about a bot who wants to be a hermit. Inspired by an email response from a survey I conducted about receiving emotional support on the Internet, this story explores the contradiction of being online while wanting to disconnect. It is a web play inviting you to navigate both of these feelings.
Good Pie is a great big play of pies, a performance that took a year to bring together. It had three phases. First, as my friends left, I baked each of them a goodbye pie. Then I hosted two performances. In the first, I asked participants to eat cake, sitting facing or away from each other and sharing their stories about cake and the Internet. In the second I predicted participants' future lives on the Internet using felted archetypes and received stories from their Internet past in return. This website is a reflection of all these experiences. Each Good Pie has a filling that tells a story, merging the bodily with the digital and making a mess of it all.
I love you and hope you see what I saw in these stories.
Safe dreams now. I will talk to you soon.

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---
# Title
# Talking Documents
###
Talking Documents are performative bureaucratic text inspections using auto-ethnographical means that intend to create temporal public interventions through performative readings.
While I had this inherent concern about borders and bureaucratic structures in relation to migration, I decided to start zooming in and explore my own bureaucratic surroundings through my personal lens. As a student, I was eager to understand and dig into the educational institutions’ bureaucratic mechanisms being driven by smaller-scale bureaucratic struggles and peers’ narratives, stories and experiences. My starting point were concerns and a need to explore potential bureaucratic dramaturgies within the educational institution I am currently part as a student. However, unexpected emergencies placed centrally my personal bureaucratic struggles that were being unfolded in parallel with the making period. Accordingly, this project was dynamically being reshaped due to the material constraints of the bureaucratic timeline. I utilized the paperwork interface of my smaller-scale story in order to unravel and foreground questions related to the role of bureaucracy as less material border and as a mechanism of regulation that reflects narratives, ideologies, policies of the state.
The scenario
Central element of this project is a seven-act scenario that construct my personal paperwork story, unraveling the actual struggles of my communication with the government due my recent eviction on the 31st of January 2024. The body of the text of the “theatrical” script is sourced from the original documents, email threads as well as recordings of the conversations with the municipality of Rotterdam that I documented and archived throughout this period. I preserved the sequence of the given sentences and by discarding the graphic design of the initial forms, I structured and repurposed the text into a playable scenario. I perceive the document as a unit and the primary interface of the bureaucratic network. The embedded performativity of “real” bureaucratic rituals establishes and empowers (bureaucratic) institutions through repetitive acts. The transformation of the materiality of a document into a scenario to be enacted collectively in public attempts to examine these artifacts and highlight the shrouded performative elements of these processes.
The public readings of the scenario
I see the collective readings of these scenarios as a way of instant publishing and as a communal tool of inspecting bureaucratic bordering infrastructures. How can these re-enactments be situated in different institutional contexts and examine their structures? I am particularly interested in the site-specificity of these “acts”. I organized a series of performative readings of my own bureaucratic literature in different spaces and contexts, pubic and semi-public, like Leeszaal, WDKA, Art Meets Radical Openness Festival in Linz, the City Hall of Rotterdam where I invited people to perform the play together, like a theater.
The marginal voices of potential applicants are embodying and enacting a role. “The speech does not only describe but brings things into existence”(Austin, 1975). My intention was to stretch the limits of dramaturgical speech through vocalizing a document and turn individual administrative cases into public ones. How do the inscribed words in the documents are not descriptive but on the contrary “are instrumentalized in getting things done”(Butler,1997). Words as active agents. Bodies as low-tech “human microphones”. A group of people performs the bureaucratic scenario in chorus, out loud, in the corridor of the school’s building, in the main hall, at the square right across, outside of the municipality building.
I documented and recorded these public acts and I re-created the collectively vocalised and transformed scenario. This audio piece is a constellation of different recordings and soundscapes of these public moments that I edited and collaged into a single story that could constitute a vocal archive.
I am inviting past and future applicants, traumatized students, injured bearers, bureaucratic border crossers, stressed expired document holders to share, vocalize, read out loud, amplify, (un)name, dismantle the injurious words of these artifacts.
[images]
[Leeszaal West Rotterdam - 7th of November 2023 – People queuing to receive their documents]
[WDKA- Winjhaven Building- 5th of February 2024- reading of act0 “” and act1 “”]
[Art Meets Radical Openness Festival – Linz, Austria - 11th of May 2024 - Reading act 2”” and act3 “” in the tent] x2
[City Hall Rotterdam- 30th of May 2024 - Reading of act 5 “” and act 6 “”] x2
[XML at XPUB studio - January 2024 - Passport Reading Session]
[BOOKLET 1]
[BOOKLET 2]
### Grad project Description
This is where your grad project goes

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<DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../style.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css">
</head>
<body>
<!-- Nav bar -->
<nav>
<ul>
<li><a href="index.html">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="">About</a></li>
<li><a href="">Graduates</a></li>
<li><a href="">Special Issues</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<div id="content"><p>Hello. We’re four students of Experimental Publishing (XPUB). We made
this catalogue for you, we made it for ourselves. It’s all the work we
made from 2022 to 2024, during our Master’s programme at the Piet Zwart
Institute in Rotterdam. This book contains our theses and graduation
projects. Following the projects, you will find the documentation of
three Special Issues that were published during our first year of XPUB.
(could this be clearer?)</p>
<p>In Do you ever dream about work?, Stephen Kerr talks with graphic
designers about their work and how they feel about it. His thesis ?
documents these discussions and puts them in context of the spiritual
traditions of modernism.</p>
<p>Talking Documents, made by Aglaia Petta, are performative
bureaucratic text inspections that intend to create temporal public
interventions through performative readings. The graduation project
holds hands with the written text Performing the Bureaucratic
Border(line)s which attempts to unleash intuitively a conversation
concerning the entangled relation between material injurious borders and
bureaucracy.</p>
<p>Ada made like a thing called Backplaces. Before that she wrote about
it in a text called <?water bodies>. Its about people on the
internet.</p>
<p>Wink, is a web platform made by Irmak Susan Erta?, a creative writing
and reading toolkit that enables children to make their own stories or
read the stories they want from the existing library. The text Fair
Leads expands on the concepts of interactive fiction using knot theory
practices.</p>
<p>Paragraph about common ground. performance, storytelling, words,
memory feeling, loss, reflection, Intimacy, experience, narrative and
memory, the public and the private. Memory (for example, and other
themes), how it appears in the four projects. The written and spoken
word as materials and actions that exist in society, technology, people.
We care about this because (whatever goes here is important). The
personal element in each project.</p>
<p>XPUB is the Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Experimental
Publishing of the Piet Zwart Institute. XPUB focuses on the acts of
making things public and creating publics in the age of post-digital
networks. XPUB’s interests in publishing are therefore twofold: first,
publishing as the inquiry and participation into the technological
frameworks, political context and cultural processes through which
things are made public; and second, how these are, or can be, used to
create publics.</p>
<p>Experimental Publishing is some experiences or feelings of being in
xpub for two years.</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>

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Hello. We're four students of Experimental Publishing (XPUB). We made this catalogue for you, we made it for ourselves. It's all the work we made from 2022 to 2024, during our Master's programme at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. This book contains our theses and graduation projects. Following the projects, you will find the documentation of three Special Issues that were published during our first year of XPUB.
(could this be clearer?)
In Do you ever dream about work?, Stephen Kerr talks with graphic designers about their work and how they feel about it. His thesis ? documents these discussions and puts them in context of the spiritual traditions of modernism.
Talking Documents, made by Aglaia Petta, are performative bureaucratic text inspections that intend to create temporal public interventions through performative readings. The graduation project holds hands with the written text Performing the Bureaucratic Border(line)s which attempts to unleash intuitively a conversation concerning the entangled relation between material injurious borders and bureaucracy.
Ada made like a thing called Backplaces. Before that she wrote about it in a text called <?water bodies>. Its about people on the internet.
Wink, is a web platform made by Irmak Susan Erta?, a creative writing and reading toolkit that enables children to make their own stories or read the stories they want from the existing library. The text Fair Leads expands on the concepts of interactive fiction using knot theory practices.
Paragraph about common ground. performance, storytelling, words, memory feeling, loss, reflection, Intimacy, experience, narrative and memory, the public and the private. Memory (for example, and other themes), how it appears in the four projects. The written and spoken word as materials and actions that exist in society, technology, people. We care about this because (whatever goes here is important). The personal element in each project.
XPUB is the Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Experimental Publishing of the Piet Zwart Institute. XPUB focuses on the acts of making things public and creating publics in the age of post-digital networks.
XPUB’s interests in publishing are therefore twofold: first, publishing as the inquiry and participation into the technological frameworks, political context and cultural processes through which things are made public; and second, how these are, or can be, used to create publics.
Experimental Publishing is some experiences or feelings of being in xpub for two years.

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SINTRO
specialissue19
specialissue20
specialissue21

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<li><a href="">Special Issues</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<div id="content"><h1 id="special-issue-19">Special Issue 19</h1>
<h3 id="what-was-the-special-issue">What was the special issue</h3>
<p>Description about si19 goes here</p>
<figure>
<img src="imagename.png" alt="Image Caption" />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Image Caption</figcaption>
</figure>
<div class="full-image">
<figure>
<img src="imagename2.png" alt="Image Caption 2" />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Image Caption 2</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p>Another thing that came out of our first two sessions was the <em>One
Sentence Ritual</em>. Each week for six weeks in a row, we wrote down a
ritual of our own and took turns performing the ritual from the list.
Coffee fortune-telling, hard drive purifications, collective eating,
sound meditations, and talking to worry dolls made us reflect on the
content of the week and our lives.</p>
<p>:::::</p>
<div id="content"><h1 id="garden-leeszaal-special-issue-xix">Garden Leeszaal: Special
Issue XIX</h1>
<p>Public libraries are more than just access points to knowledge. They
are social sites where readers cross over while reading together,
annotating, organising and structuring. A book could be bound at the
spine, or an electronic file gathered together with digital binding. A
library could be an accumulated stack of printed books, a modular
collection of software packages, a method of distributing e-books, a
writing machine.</p>
<p>In the Special Issue 19, How do we library that? or alternatively
Garden Leeszaal, we started re-considering the word “library” as a verb;
actions that sustains the production, collection and distribution of
texts. A dive into the understanding structure of libraries as systems
of producing knowledge and unpacking classification as a process that
(un)names, distinguishes, excludes, displaces, organizes life. From the
library to the section to the shelf to the book to the page to the text.
The zooming in and zooming out process. The library as a plain text.</p>
<p>Like community gardens, libraries are about tenderness and
approachability. However, does every book and each person feel welcome
in these spaces? Publications are empty leaves if there is no one to
read them. Libraries are soulless storage rooms if there is no one to
visit them. People give meaning to libraries and publications alike.
People are the reason for their existence. People tend to cultivate
plants. Audiences tend to foster content. The public tends to enrich the
context. Libraries as complex social infrastructures.</p>
<p>The release of the Special Issue 19 was a momentary snapshot of the
current state of a library seen through the metaphor of gardening;
pruning, gleaning, growing, grafting and harvesting. Garden Leeszaal is
an open conversation; a collective writing tool, a cooperative collage
and an archive. We asked everyone to think of the library as a garden.
For us, being a gardener means caring; caring for the people and books
that form this space.</p>
<p>During the collective moment in Leeszaal people started diving into
recycle bins, grab books, tear pages apart, drawing, pen plotting,
weaving words together, cutting words, removing words, overwriting,
printing, scanning. It was magical having an object in the end. A whole
book made by all of us in that evening. Stations, machines, a cloud of
cards, a sleeve that warms up THE BOOK.</p>
<p><img src="imagename.png"
alt="Bobi’s station - Name of the Station and Description" /> <img
src="imagename.png"
alt="Irmak’s and Aglaia’s station - Name of the Station and Description" />
<img src="imagename.png"
alt="Stephen’s station name- Name of the Station and Description" />
<img src="imagename.png"
alt="Ada’s Station - Name of the Station and Description" /> <img
src="imagename.png"
alt="Cara’s station name- Name of the Station and Description" /> <img
src="imagename.png" alt="Book recycle bins description" /> <img
src="imagename.png"
alt="Cloud of gards with instructions to be performed into the books" />
<img src="imagename.png" alt="inside page of the final book" /> <img
src="imagename.png" alt="Photo of the book - cover and sleeve" /></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>

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---
# Special Issue 19
# Garden Leeszaal: Special Issue XIX
### Garden Leeszaal
Public libraries are more than just access points to knowledge. They are social sites where readers cross over while reading together, annotating, organising and structuring. A book could be bound at the spine, or an electronic file gathered together with digital binding. A library could be an accumulated stack of printed books, a modular collection of software packages, a method of distributing e-books, a writing machine.
In this Special Issue 19, How do we library that? or alternatively Garden Leeszaal. we started re-considering the word "library" as a verb; actions that sustains the production, collection and distribution of texts. A dive into the understanding structure of libraries as systems of producing knowledge and unpacking classification as a process that (un)names, distinguishes, excludes, displaces, organizes life. From the library to the section to the shelf to the book to the page to the text. The zooming in and zooming out process. The library as a plain text.
In the Special Issue 19, How do we library that? or alternatively Garden Leeszaal, we started re-considering the word "library" as a verb; actions that sustains the production, collection and distribution of texts. A dive into the understanding structure of libraries as systems of producing knowledge and unpacking classification as a process that (un)names, distinguishes, excludes, displaces, organizes life. From the library to the section to the shelf to the book to the page to the text. The zooming in and zooming out process. The library as a plain text.
Like community gardens, libraries are about tenderness and approachability. However, does every book and each person feel welcome in these spaces? Publications are empty leaves if there is no one to read them. Libraries are soulless storage rooms if there is no one to visit them. People give meaning to libraries and publications alike. People are the reason for their existence. People tend to cultivate plants. Audiences tend to foster content. The public tends to enrich the context.
Libraries as complex social infrastructures.
The release of the Special Issue 19 was a momentary snapshot of the current state of a library seen through the metaphor of gardening; pruning, gleaning, growing, grafting and harvesting. Garden Leeszaal is an open conversation; a collective writing tool, a cooperative collage and an archive. We asked everyone to think of the library as a garden. For us, being a gardener means caring; caring for the people and books that form this space.
During the collective moment in Leeszaal people started diving into recycle bins, grab books, tear pages apart, drawing, pen plotting, weaving words together, cutting words, removing words, overwriting, printing, scanning. It was magical having an object in the end. A whole book made by all of us in the evening. Stations, machines, a cloud of cards, a sleeve that warms up THE BOOK.
During the collective moment in Leeszaal people started diving into recycle bins, grab books, tear pages apart, drawing, pen plotting, weaving words together, cutting words, removing words, overwriting, printing, scanning. It was magical having an object in the end. A whole book made by all of us in that evening. Stations, machines, a cloud of cards, a sleeve that warms up THE BOOK.
![Bobi's station - Name of the Station and Description](imagename.png)
![Irmak's and Aglaia's station - Name of the Station and Description](imagename.png)

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Special Issues are publications thrice released by first-year XPUB Master's students. Each edition focuses on a specific theme or issue. The themes tie to external events and collaborations. Students and staff work together to explore these themes, rethinking what a publication can be. Each edition culminates in a celebratory release party.The structure, tools, and workflows are reset every trimester. This reset allows roles to rotate among participants and fosters an adapting learning environment. It provides a space to experiment beyond traditional collaborative methods.
Our inaugural Special Issue was number 19, in collaboration with Simon Browne. Garden Leeszaal was a snapshot of Leeszaal Library through the metaphor of gardening. During the release, we invited participants to engage with the library's discarded books. We pruned, gleaned, and grafted the books using pens, pen-plotters, scissors, and glue. Then we harvested a book of our collective work. Garden Leeszaal was an open dialogue. It was a tool for collective writing, a group-made collage, and an archive. For us, being a gardener meant caring for the people and books that formed the library.
The following Special Issue was number 20, assisted by Lìdia Pereira and Artemis Gryllaki. Console was 20 hand-made wooden boxes. It was an oracle and an emotional first aid kit to help you help yourself. It invites you to delve into its contents to discover healing methods. Console offers refuge for dreams, memories, and worries. It guides you to face the past. You will then meet your fortune and gain a new view through rituals and practices. It prompts everyday questions with magical answers, asking: Are you ready to play?
Our last special issue was number 21. TTY was guided by kubernētēs Martino Morandi and weekly guest collaborators. We started with a Model 33 Teletype machine, the bridge between typewriters and computer interfaces. Through guest contributions, we explored the intersection of historical and contemporary computing. The Special Issue evolved into an ever-changing "Exquisite Corpse Network" chasing weekly publications. Along the way, we created gestures, concrete vinyl poetry, phone stories, and much more.

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---
title: Project
title: What do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and what does "graphic design" even mean?!????!!1!?
author: Stephen
---
# Title
# What do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and what does "graphic design" even mean?!????!!1!?
An investigation into the practices and ideologies of graphic design in 2023–24 though practice-led artistic research and ethnographic methods. I held graphic design in my hands using ethnography, toolmaking and performance as research methods. I examined how a designer spends their time in everyday life, this designer, me, as well as you, what are we doing? What are our worldviews, belief systems, mythologies and ideologies?
*What do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and what does "graphic design" even mean?!????!!1!?* is an assessment of what the term "graphic design" means to its practitioners today. Through experimental ethnographic research methods and the development of reflexive tools, the project highlights and questions the boundaries that exist around this apparent category. The research focuses on my own practices as well as other people and groups that identify with "graphic designer" as a label. The research was both conducted by and shared with interested parties in the form of the tools themselves, as well as a series of performances. There is no strict distinction between the research and its publication. The tools were released in an iterative cycle throughout the process of the project, and the research is conducted through the performative use and development of these tools.
This research is carried out in three intersecting methods: experimental ethnographic research, reflexive tools, and performative research. Keylogging, performance of personal work habits, interviews about the manual work of "immaterial labourers", and dream analysis are combined in order to uncover less obvious and less discussed aspects of what a designer is and does in their daily life, as entry points to their worldviews, belief systems, mythologies or ideologies. The methods were developed in an iterative process that reflected on findings from the previous prototypes. The research took into account its own publication as part of one process.
1. Experimental ethnographic research methods: I documented my own practices as a graphic designer for nine months. Sometimes based on technical observations of my interaction with my tools, primarily my laptop computer and the software on it. I conducted interviews with designers. I recorded the interviews. I had prompts to open the discussion such as reading material and weird tools to try with them. I will carry out auto-ethnographic research using experimental methods such as mouse tracking and unusual annotation methods. I shared the results of this research as a series of interactive publications (tools) with a small but selected audience of people who are involved in these processes and who would benefit from it.
2. Reflexive tools: Software and hardware tools that explore the boundaries of "graphic design" as a category. For example at the boundaries between graphic design and other disciplines. At the boundaries between work and play, or between design and art. These tools malfunction in order to explore what it even means to be working. The tools aim to highlight what a graphic designer does by interacting with their user in ways that the designers standard tools do not (for example an interface to connect musical instruments to the designers workflow), or conversely by amplifying how the designer usually interacts with their tools (for example a keylogger to celebrate and focus on the use of the keyboard). The tools are digital in nature and involve software and hardware interventions into the graphic designers work.
3. Performative research: I see all the methods above as having a performative element. For example the ethnographic-slash-performative act of answering my emails on a large screen in front of an audience, research which was carried out as part of this project at Leeszaal, Rotterdam West on November 7th 2023. By showing directly the work practices of graphic designers to an audience, or their interaction with the tools mentioned above, I am publishing through performance the daily activities of designers and my aim is to show these practices without the conventional lenses they are seen through. To be contrasted for example with how graphic design is presented on behance.net or in a bookshop, this performative approach will highlight the mythologies and practices of the graphic designer.
I made this to explore why designers make design, based on Clifford Geertz's ideas of why humans make culture: "to affirm it, defend it, celebrate it, justify it and just plain bask in it" (Geertz, 1973). This exploration will also involve less constructive actions like participating, dissociating, questioning, protesting, destroying and disregarding. There is a disconnect between the narratives about "graphic design" and the effects it is known to have on its audiences, practitioners, and society in more general terms. I am attempting to "loosen the object" of graphic design (Berlant, 2022), to make the definition less defined and maybe more useful or easier to engage with. This shit could be better. Its urgent for the people being exploited by it, to break the inequalities it serves to maintain, to expose what it hides, to improve things that are definitely working but not in a good way. Design can hide and reproduce inequalities in its output and also dominate workers in its practices. This research starts primarily from the bodies and actions of the practitioners so will primarily engage with the effects on and by these bodies.
![The result of a tool that connects musical instruments to a pen plotter, using an arduino module. I created this tool to cross the boundary of "graphic design" as a discipline separate from music.](imagename.png)
![A performative tool that measures the laziness of the designer as they work and graphs it on a pen plotter. The less the designer uses the mouse, the longer a line the pen plotter will draw.](imagename.png)
![A performative autoethnographic research of graphic design practices, in this case answering emails using Google's Gmail service. Leeszaal, Rotterdam West, November 7th 2023](imagename.png)
![Collective performative dream re-enactment at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, Netherlands. February 5th 2024. ](imagename.png)
![Collective performative dream re-enactment at Art Meets Radical Openness, Linz, Austria. March 11th 2024. ](imagename.png)
![Keyboard of things designers have said.](imagename.png)
![keylogging research, recording the buttons a graphic designer presses while working](imagename.png)
![do you ever dream about work? online research](imagename.png)
### Grad project Description
This is where your grad project goes

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<h1>⊞</h1>
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<h3>empty title</h3>
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<br>Stephen Kerr<br>
<br>&#8862;<br>
<br>Thesis submitted to the Department of Experimental Publishing, Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the final examination for the degree of Master of Arts in Fine Art &amp; &#8862;: Experimental Publishing.<br>
<br>Adviser: Marloes de Valk<br>Second Reader: Joseph Knierzinger<br>Word count: 7828 words<br>
<h4>To de-sign design, I will assign a sign: ⊞</h4>
<br>This symbol represents design in this writing in an attempt to avoid the assumed meaning of the word and examine it as something unknown, to mystify it, to examine its structure. The label ⊞ is a functional part of a belief system involving order, structure, and rationality and I want to break it. Removing the label is part of loosening the object, making it avilable to transition (Berlant, 2022).<br>
<figure>
<img src="./images/orange.jpg" style="margin-top: 95mm; width: 40mm;"/>
<figcaption>The Cadaster of Orange, <br>unknown &#8862;er, c. 100 CE.</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="./images/Niggli-Grid-systems-in-graphic-design-7.jpg" style="margin-top: 95mm"/>
<figcaption>Grid Systems in Graphic &#8862;, Josef Muller-Brockmann, 1981.</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="./images/albuni2.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Shams al-Ma'arif, Ahmad al-Buni Almalki, circa 1200.</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure style="margin-top: 95mm;">
<img src="./images/Simple_carthesian_coordinate_system.svg"/>
<figcaption>Cartesian Geometry, Rene Descartes, 1637.</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="./images/art-josef-albers-study-for-homage-to-the-square-69.1917.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Homage to the Square, Josef Albers, 1954.</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure style="width: 40mm;">
<img src="./images/TheoVAnDoesburgCounterCompositionVI.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Counter Composition VI, <br>Theo Van Doesburg, 1925. </figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="./images/po-valley2.png" style="margin-top: 95mm;"/>
<figcaption>The Po Valley, The Roman Empire, 268 BCE.</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure style="margin-left: 20mm; height: 40mm;">
<img src="./images/pietzwart.jpg"/>
<figcaption style="margin-left: 21.5mm;">Monogram, Piet Zwart, c. 1968.</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3>empty title</h3>
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<h4>Introduction</h4>
<br>This document is a collection of fragments exploring beliefs about labour in the creative industries, in particular graphic &#8862;. Each fragment focusses on the social, cultural, political, spiritual or religious aspects of these beliefs through an ethnographic lens. They record, celebrate and question the meaning that &#8862;ers give to their actions and how those meanings affect the world they live in. And it&#x27;s about how &#8862;ers feel when we live with these beliefs: we feel a bit funny and I want to talk about it.&nbsp;<br>
<br>I use various modes of address and different lenses to further fragment the definition of &#8862;. The origin of the word thesis is to set or to put, but I am trying to show you something liquid that can&#x27;t be placed but shimmers and disappears through the sand. I document some &#8862; activities, in my own work and the work and writings of others who identify with the label of &#8862;er. The writing dissolves and reintegrates definitions of &#8862; from different voices to show the multiplicity of beliefs from practitioners, and to explore what it means to acknowledge these beliefs beside eachother: the tensions and harmonies, some lineages and some breaks. What is going on here in this thing we call &#8862;?&nbsp;<br>
<br>This is a collection of stories about living life with particular working conditions, located at certain points in social, economic and cultural webs. In my practice-based research I gather and tell these stories through (auto)ethnographic methods: documenting how &#8862;er&#x27;s work, conducting interviews, improvising communal performances and exploratory tool-making. This document collates and reflects on this research.&nbsp;<br>
<br>
<h4>What is a ⊞er?</h4>
<br>
<ol start="1" class="number">
<li>
<em>A &#8862;er is a person who wakes up at 5am but refuses to open their eyes. There are birds talking outside, it&#x27;s probably getting bright already. Something is wrong, not sure what. They finally open their eyes and there&#x27;s the ceiling again. When the light comes in sideways over the curtains this early you can see all the little ripples and imperfections in it. Nothing. Ribcage. Stomach. The front of the &#8862;er&#x27;s legs ache. It would be better to sleep again. Have to pay taxes again next week. A &#8862;er is someone who wonders if that invoice will come through I need to follow up on it. The birds are so loud.&nbsp;</em>
</li>
<li>
<em>The role of the &#8862;er is to count back from five to two and realise that was only three hours same as yesterday. They use &#8862; thinking to never get back to sleep. They need excellent time management skills to make this short moment feel like an eternity, several times a week. &#8862;ers have an acute spatial awareness and an eye for detail: although the ceiling seems miles away they focus on each tiny ripple for hours. A &#8862;er is someone who will work the whole waking day today, but it&#x27;s better than last week when there was no work. &#8862;ers look at their phone and see their alarm is going to go off in ten minutes, so they switch it off and get up.</em>
</ol>
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<h3>empty title</h3>
<br>The precarity of working in the creative industries, in particular as a freelancer or within a small studio, induces anxiety. There is a belief that the &#8862;er as freelancer is empowered by their autonomy, but in fact the &#8862;er as worker is trapped by it. &#8862; is work and this work is believed to be inherently good. Work in our society is understood as &#8220;an individual moral practice and collective ethical obligation&#8221; which shapes the worker&#x27;s identity in positive ways (Weeks, 2011). The &#8862;er believes they are a skilled or talented worker, someone who possesses spatial awareness, time management skills, and the capacity to carry out work effectively and efficiently.&nbsp;<br>
<br>&#8862;ers are entangled in the Protestant religious underpinnings of the European work ethic (Pater, 2022). &#8862; is seen as a vocation which expresses and creates the &#8862;er&#x27;s identity, and the process or its results make a valuable contribution to society. People understand the world and interact with it smoothly, thanks to the work of &#8862;ers. &#8862;ers pick the right materials to save the planet and increase efficiency and whatever else it is people find important. But the &#8862;er becomes anxious despite meeting these goals and becoming this person. In reality, the &#8862;er is a bot, the &#8862;er is software. Value is extracted from their time, creativity and expertise which makes them stressed. &#8862;ers are a creative cloud, a service to be tapped into, a cpu being run too hot. There is something to be learnt from the revelation that being replaced by machines proves we were being treated as machines all along.&nbsp;<br>
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<h4>Geestelijk</h4>
<br>There was a belief that &#8862; could be a crystal goblet (Warde, 1913), something unbiased, clear and, in more recent versions of the theory, serving the context it fits within. But the foundations of this belief in functionality and rationality dont seem to come themselves from something functional or rational.&nbsp;<br>
<br>De Stijl members, such as Piet Mondriaan and Theo van Doesburg (Figure 6), in their 1917 manifesto described a &#8220;new consciousness of the age [&#8230;] directed towards the universal&#8221;. There was a drive towards universal standardisation or pureness of culture from the rich white men. Purity is a concept that turns up a lot in Mondriaan&#x27;s writings, eg <em>Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art </em>(1917). They claimed a shared spirit was driving this universalisation. A later paragraph of the manifesto is translated into english as:<br>
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<ul class="indent">
<li>&#8220;The artists of to-day have been driven the whole world over by the same consciousness and therefore have taken part from an intellectual point of view in this war against the domination of individual despotism. They therefore sympathize with all who work for the formation of an international unity in Life, Art, Culture, either intellectually or materially.&#8221;</li>
</ul>In this translation it appears the authors believed in an emerging consciousness of the age, something collective which would bring an international unity. The members of De Stijl were neither aligning themselves with the capitalists or socialists but believed in an inner connection between those who were joined in the spiritual body of the new world (De Stijl, Manifesto III, 1921). The word intellectual, or geestelijk in the original Dutch, can also be translated as &#8220;spiritual, mental, ecclesiastical, clerical, sacred, ghostly, pneumatic&#8221;. The choice to translate as intellectual seems to be the most rational interpretation of this sentence, an effort to make the theories of De Stijl appear more materialist without the spiritual element. Compare with this translation:<br>
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<ul class="indent">
<li>&#8220;The artists of today, all over the world, impelled by one and the same consciousness, have taken part on the spiritual plane in the world war against the domination of individualism, of arbitrariness. They therefore sympathise with all who are fighting spiritually or materially for the formation of an international unity in life, art and culture.&#8221;</li>
</ul>In this translation it is clearer that the members of De Stijl saw a link between the effects of what they made materially and their attempts to be fighting spiritually against the domination of individualism. I care about this story because of how it contextualises contemporary &#8862; practice. Is contemporary &#8862; practice still involved in this spiritual battle? Did the new consciousness of 1917 survive the past century, did it procreate? Can aesthetics have generational trauma? William Morris, Constructivism, De Stijl, Bauhaus, International Style, International Typographic Style, Swiss Style, then what happened. Modernist artists had spiritual beliefs, and again I care about these people from a hundred years ago because of the effect they have on the present.&nbsp;<br>
<br>Imagine I could trace this thought from Mondriaan all the way to myself, wow, cool thesis. Swiss style became corporate identity &#8862; and encouraged minimalism in &#8862;. 21st century Flat &#8862;, such as Metro &#8862; language from Microsoft and Material &#8862; (Google, 2014), claim direct descendance from the International Typographic Style and that pretty much brings us up to date. I wonder about the use of the word Material in Google&#x27;s &#8862; strategy, I wonder about the ghostly absence of the geestelijk fight of De Stijl. Is Google&#x27;s choice of name another example, as with the subtle change in the translation above, that the spiritual element is no longer as important a part of the &#8862;er&#x27;s worldview as it was a hundred years ago?&nbsp;<br>
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<h4>Excerpt from an interview with Conor Clarke, 1st December 2023</h4>
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<em>Conor Clarke is a Director of &#8862; Factory, independent Irish &#8862; agency based in Dublin. His work has featured in international publications such as Who&#8217;s Who in Graphic &#8862;</em>,<em> Graphis, Novum Gebrauchsgrafik, and the New York Art Directors Club Annual. He was the recipient of the Catherine Donnelly Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to &#8862; in Ireland and is the Course Director of &#8862; West, an international summer &#8862; school located in the beautiful village of Letterfrack on the West Coast of Ireland</em>. (&#8862;west.eu, 2023)<br>
<h3>empty title</h3>
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<ul class="bullet conor">
<li>SK: What do you think is the best shape?</li>
<li>CC: Oh yeah, good god. square.</li>
<li>SK: Square? how come?</li>
<li>CC: Dunno, it just, it just seems resolved. I don&#x27;t like spheres. Circles I sometimes like.</li>
<li>SK: Yeah, squares, do you use grids?</li>
<li>CC: Sometimes. Not always.</li>
<li>SK: Once you have grids squares make sense. But you like squares maybe because you like logos?</li>
<li>CC: If I&#x27;m in an art gallery and I see, you know Joseph Albers (Figure 5) or something I just kind of feel, I just like, or Malevich i just like that stuff. If I see a Kandinsky and all those squiggles and circles it just, that just kind of upsets me a little bit.</li>
<li>SK: That&#x27;s a bit chaotic?</li>
<li>CC: Yeah. And even if I&#x27;m looking at Vermeer I can see some kind of square structure and logic, for some reason that always appeals to me.</li>
<li>SK: Things are a bit organised when there&#x27;s squares around?</li>
<li>CC: Yeah. And really great artists who don&#x27;t work that way I look at their stuff and think well that&#x27;s just beyond me.</li>
<li>SK: Its something else?</li>
<li>CC: Yeah. so yeah.</li>
<li>SK: At least you didn&#x27;t say triangle.</li>
<li>CC: Oh good god. Good god no.</ul>
<ul class="indent">
</ul>
<h4>Maths and grids</h4>
<br>Why not choose a spiral or a circle if you dream of &#8862;ers as shamans? Why the grid of squares? There are strong links beween &#8862; and mathematics, Josef Muller-Brockmann&#x27;s <em>Grid Systems</em> (Figure 2) for example or Karl Gerstner&#x27;s <em>&#8862;ing Programmes </em>(1964). I read these &#8862; theorists as you might comparatively read religious texts. What were or are the beliefs of the authors and their audiences?<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>
<ul class="indent">
<li>&#8220;To describe the problem is part of the solution. This implies: not to make creative decisions as prompted by feeling but by intellectual criteria. The more exact and complete these criteria are, the more creative the work becomes.&#8221;</li>
<li>(Gerstner, 1964)</li>
<h3>empty title</h3>
<li>&#8220;This is the expression of a professional ethos: the &#8862;er&#x27;s work should have the clearly intelligible, objective, functional and aesthetic quality of mathematical thinking.&#8221;</li>
<li>(Muller-Brockman, 1981)</li><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
</ul>These texts present a worldview where &#8862; can be mathematical, objective or problem-solving. In Muller-Brockman&#x27;s text the focus is on the formal qualities of the &#8862; in particular the use of grids and typographic systems. Gerstner&#x27;s focus is more on the effect of the &#8862;, and the ability of &#8862; to solve a problem. Rationality and creativity are presented as proportional to eachother. He makes space for the intellectual by pushing aside feelings.&nbsp;<br>
<br>The graphic &#8862;er is presented as a functional actor in society who makes the world better. Gerstner seems to be implying that creative &#8862; comes from following the intellect and some rational cause and effect process. I find it interesting that &#8862; claims this rational basis in the same historical period when science and mathematics, its supposed foundations, became much less rational and predictable, for example in chaos theory. It makes me think that the rationality serves some other purpose.<br>
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<h4>The ⊞ grid and the written word </h4>
<br>Why do &#8862;ers believe in using a grid to present the written word, and where did this belief come from and how did it develop? It can be materially traced back to Guthenberg and metal type but that&#x27;s boring. Magic squares have been used in astrology books and grimoires throughout history (Figure 3). French poet St&#233;phane Mallarm&#233; is sometimes quoted as a precursor to modernist typography (Muller-Brockmann, 1981). Why did Steve McCaffrey include the manifesto of De Stijl with <em>CARNIVAL</em> (1973)? De Stijl is best known for its painters and architects, and theories from both of these fields affected later &#8862; theories. But they also were poets and had literary theories similar to the german expressionists. Man&#x27;s attempt to find oneness with the whole of creation through a cosmic hybris.&nbsp;<br>
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<ul class="indent">
<li>&#8220;An artists&#8217; book featuring a series of typewriter concrete poems printed on perforated pages meant to be torn out and arranged into a square of four. Complete with instructions, a reproduction of a de Stijl manifesto from 1920, an errata slip, and publisher&#8217;s promotional postcard.&#8221;</li>
<li>Description of Steve McCaffrey&#x27;s <em>CARNIVAL</em> <br>(The Idea of the Book, 2024)</li>
</ul>
<h3>empty title</h3>
<br>The developments of the written word and its relationship to form in the 20th century is very much a part of the history of &#8862;. I care about this story because it affects contemporary practitioners. I believe there is something magical in graphic composition and the layout of typography, something that can&#x27;t be grasped in the words alone. They&#x27;re non-canonical for &#8862;ers but how have people who put words on pages like Mallarm&#233; and McCaffrey influenced my beliefs about the written word? What makes one thing fit in the category of art, another &#8862; and yet another concrete&nbsp;poetry?<br>
<br>
<h4>Mystically assigning or finding meanings in ⊞</h4>
<br>This autoethnographic annotation attempts to really miss as many cultural and technical cues as possible. It&#x27;s watching the &#8862;er, me, and being totally mystified by their behaviour.&nbsp;<br>
<h3>empty title</h3>
<br>
<ol start="1" class="number">
<li>
<em>A rhythm exists and I wonder why. There is music and there are voices, and my fingers press the keys and the colours of the screen flicker and morph. There appears to be a life or energy flowing somewhere between these things and I am curious about it.</em>
</li>
<li>
<em>The screen shimmers between different symbols, letters, images. The colours are symbolic. White means the ground, although sometimes it switches to white symbols on a dark ground. They are full of meaning and relationship. I press two buttons to the left of the keyboard and the screen answers with a flicker.</em>
</li>
<li>
<em>I count out loud to 40. It symbolises both the number of pages to be made and the enormity of the task. It represents a period in the desert, long but with an end in sight. What is the relationship of the desert to the stars? If the screen can flicker from a dark to a light ground, is it possible for the sky to also switch from day to night?</em>
</li>
<li>
<em>I have taken three of the forty steps.</em>
</li>
<li>
<em>I have taken seven of the forty steps.</em>
</li>
<li>
<em>&#8862; is a series of movements and reconfigurations. It is a creative act and one of elision. I use the keyboard to communicate my will to the machine with commands such as &#8220;Ctrl+C&#8221; and &#8220;Ctrl+V&#8221;. I firstly inform the computer that I wish to control it. Each letter has a deep and layered meaning. CVCVCVCVCVCVCVCVCV. &#8220;Alt+Tab&#8221; asks the screen to flicker. The computer must match my multithreading. It must be prepared to follow my changing demands in our shared focus. FAVCV. F is to seek, but it is optimistically labelled to find. I enter the incorrect combination of symbols (&#8220;samle&#8221;) the incantation is useless and I will not find what I seek. I try again &#8220;sample&#8221; and the computer gives me what I desire. Why does the machine demand perfection? Why does it value perfection in me, what is it trying to teach me? Why wont it leave me alone?</em>
</li>
<li>
<em>I have taken eleven of the forty steps. I will rest.</em>
</ol>
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<h4>What does ⊞ do? What is the ⊞er trying to do by pressing all these buttons and making the screen vibrate?</h4>
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<ul class="indent">
<li>
<em>&#8220;</em>&#8862; only generates longing&#8221;</li>
<li>(Van Der Velden, 2006)</li>
</ul>I wasn&#x27;t trying to generate longing, I was trying to make an annual report. It was a corporate job I was working on, a nice one to have because it&#x27;s fairly well paid and not too complicated. A bit boring and kinda repetitive, but you can just put your headphones on and get stuck into it. I was pretty happy with the results in the end, but for sure not the type of work you&#x27;re supposed to be proud of as a &#8862;er.<br>
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<ul class="indent">
<li>
<em>&#8220;</em>I found myself way over my head with, believe it or not, a catalogue and price list for bathroom equipment. Nothing I&#8217;ve done since has seemed as difficult.&#8221;</li>
<li>Michael Bierut (creativechair.org, 2018)</li>
</ul>And of course Piet Zwart&#x27;s (Figure 8) famous electrical cable catalogues. &#8862; is just work, chill. Is a &#8862;er a user or a server? Maybe &#8862; is an example of our general belief in this dichotomy not quite making sense or fitting reality. The &#8862;er is working for whom? Themselves? Their clients?<br>
<h3>empty title</h3>
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<ul class="indent">
<li>
<em>&#8220;</em>attempts to undo the privileged position of the agentive subject can help us understand the strange status of repetitive and quasi-robotic labour in today&#x27;s digital age.&#8221;</li>
<li>(Hu, 2022)</li>
</ul>This quote relates to freelancing generally in some way, and deconstructing the work or worker. Are workers things? Yeah, kinda. &#8862;ers don&#x27;t have super powers, contrary to some beliefs within the industry. For example on what&#8862;cando.com it is suggested that we should &#8220;re&#8862; everything!&#8221;. Let&#x27;s actually not do that. &#8862;ers are mostly just humans working on computers like so many other bots. &#8862;ers try to create clarity, to assign meaning and understand: &#8220;Confusion and clutter are failures of &#8862;, not attributes of information&#8221; (Tufte, 1990, p.53). What if the sounds of my fingers and my keyboard are not noise but music: we are quasi-robots and maybe its good to listen to our little Taylorist finger tappings and see what else is being said.<br>
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<h4>Excerpt from an interview with the members of Distinctive Repetition on 1st December 2023.</h4>
<br>Distinctive Repetition is an award-winning graphic &#8862; studio based in Dublin, Ireland. Principal &#8862;er and Institute of Creative Advertising and &#8862; past-president, Rossi McAuley, is joined in this interview by &#8862;ers Jenny Leahy and Ben Nagle. This interview was carried out around a table with the interviewer in the bottom right corner (&#9714;) and the three members of the studio in the other three seats.<br>
<br>
<ul class="bullet">
<li>&#9714;: whats your favourite colour?</li>
<li>&#9712;: red.</li>
<li>&#9714;: red.</li>
<li>&#9713;: really? thats it? are you fucking kidding me?</li>
<li>&#9712;: do i fill it in?</li>
<li>&#9715;: they&#x27;re warm up questions obviously they&#x27;re to get you comfortable answering questions.</li>
<li>&#9715;: yellow</li>
<li>&#9714;: if the seat of your consciousness was in your hands, like all of your feelings and your thoughts and your desires and your emotions come through your hands, can you describe to me the day that you&#x27;ve had so far please?</li>
<li>&#9715;: jelly that&#x27;s not quite solid</li>
<li>&#9715;: not quite solidified in the fridge yet</li>
<li>&#9715;: and its just oozing through my fingers</li>
<li class="no-indent">(redacted sentence)</li>
<li>&#9715;: that&#x27;s what today has been like but its my brain thats oozing out of me</li>
<li>&#9714;: yes. that&#x27;s a good answer. ok will we keep going in a circle?</li>
<li>&#9713;: whatever you like bro.</li>
<li>&#9714;: do you ever dream about work?</li>
<li>&#9713;: all the time.</li>
<li>&#9714;: would you care to share one of those dreams?</li>
<li>&#9713;: they&#x27;re always angst-ridden, never, they&#x27;re never eh, they&#x27;re never positive solution-solved things, we&#x27;ve always like lists and lists and lists of things to do they&#x27;re never resolved they&#x27;re always like shit we&#x27;ve, its, its always problematic, and its all the time.</li>
<li>&#9715;: weren&#x27;t you taking grids out of drawers in a dream recently?</li>
<li>&#9713;: yeah yeah.</li>
<li class="no-indent">(obscured)</li>
<li>&#9714;: why were you taking grids out of drawers?</li>
<li>&#9713;: emm recently I had a dream where I was giving out to &#9715; about not having things done, this &#9715;, participant two, about not having things done, and i was opening up drawers in my office and I was like, just use this grid and the drawers were full of grids and I was giving them to her and saying just fucking use those grids for fucks sake why don&#x27;t we use those grids.</li>
<li class="no-indent">(section redacted by request of interviewees)</ul>
<ul class="indent">
</ul>
<h4>About the interview</h4>
<br>Before meeting them in person, I mailed a small booklet to the interviewees entitled <em>Enthusiasm </em>to give context to the conversation. The word enthusiasm originally meant inspiration or possession by a god. The booklet recounted three mystical dreams Ren&#233; Descartes had which he credited as a moment of inspiration or enthusiasm that influenced his later work on rationalism, and related to his work on geometry and grids (Figure 4). As well as the content of the dreams, the booklet described their relevance:<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>
<ul class="indent">
<li>&#8220;404 years ago on the night of the 10th November 1619, three dreams were dreamt. A 23-year old man is &#8220;filled with enthusiasm&#8221; and enters a feverish sleep in Ulm, Germany. In this process of enthusiasm and dreamwork, he discovers the foundations of a wonderful science. <em>The Method of Properly Guiding the Reason in the Search of Truth in the Sciences </em>will be suppressed by the churches, both Calvinist and Catholic. They are a threat to the world view, and a threat to religion. The cartesian grid uses measurements to estabish relationships. Cartesian geometry has let us fly spaceships and zone and divide land. Some things have happened. Some good things, some bad things. The link is broken or breaking or should be broken. It&#x27;s rotting. Maybe there&#x27;s a better way we can interpret these dreams now.&#8221;<ul class="indent">
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</li>
</ul>Descartes felt that interpreting his dreams was an appropriate method to develop a rational theory of skepticism, which led to some of the philosophical foundations of modern scientific and mathematical theories. The booklet also drew parallels with Martin Luther&#x27;s scrupulous doubt, &#8220;Only God and certain madmen have no doubts!&#8221;. Like Descartes, Luther&#x27;s new theories helped to give the basis for the structure of thought for the following centuries. These stories were presented together to direct the focus of the conversation towards belief, rationalism and grids. The fact that rationalism is a belief system, as pervasive as it may be, and suggestively hinting through its <span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px">relationship with grids that there is a relationship with &#8862;.</span><br>
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<li>&#9715;: jelly that&#x27;s not quite solid, not quite solidified in the fridge yet and its just oozing through my fingers</ul>
<ul class="indent">
</ul>They seem so sad it hurts to hear them talk about the oozing. Are you supposed to put jelly in the fridge, it just needs time to settle right? My nana used to put the jelly in the freezer. There&#x27;s an instability in how they talk in the interview for sure, or more a desire for stability. Was it ever stable? Do you really want it to be? Its gooey and not the way it should be but its still jelly and thats fun and its probably delicious. Their hands are there as something that is for grasping and jelly is there as something that can&#x27;t be grasped. Is it terrifying, are they resigned to it?&nbsp;<br>
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<ul class="bullet">
<li>&#9713;: they&#x27;re always angst-ridden, never, they&#x27;re never eh, they&#x27;re never positive solution-solved things, we&#x27;ve always like lists and lists and lists of things to do they&#x27;re never resolved they&#x27;re always like shit we&#x27;ve, its, its always problematic, and its all the time.</ul>
I can&#x27;t explain the angst they are feeling but I can describe it because I&#x27;ve felt it too. It feels like I&#x27;m having a heart attack. It feels like I&#x27;m about to black out. It got to a stage where I couldn&#x27;t talk to other people without being completely frozen jelly. It is the feeling of lists and lists and lists. It&#x27;s the feeling of never resolved, all the time. We believe we are busy and under pressure and struggling to survive. That makes us anxious and stressed.<br>
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</ul>The grids are not being used, the grids are useless. Drawers full of them, all useless. Whats the point of sitting here in this studio. They dont fit, they dont make sense, they&#x27;re trying to order something that can&#x27;t be ordered. Or possibly shouldnt be ordered, the ordering is misplaced and there is a human urge to stop, just&nbsp;stop.<br>
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<h4>Modern work</h4>
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<li>&#8220;A cause becomes unmodern at the moment when our feelings revolt, and as soon as we feel ourselves becoming ridiculous&#8221;</li>
<li>Adolf Loos, <em>On Thrift,</em> 1924 (Loos, 2019)</li>
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<br>Adolf Loos was a modernist architect whose writings such as <em>Ornament and Crime</em> in 1910 influenced modernist ideals of functionalism and minimalism. He rejected ornament and favoured the use of good materials which showed &#8220;God&#x27;s own wonder&#8221;. I wonder what is the relation of Loos&#x27; ideas to Max Weber&#x27;s <em>The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism</em> (Weber, 1905) that was published five years earlier. Work as a duty which benefits the individual and society as a whole, do &#8862;ers still believe this today? I like taking Loos&#x27; quote out of context here, instead in the context of the feelings of the interviewees, revolting the supposedly modern cause they are working with.&nbsp;<br>
<br>But also Loos was found guilty of pedophelia and it feels kind of aggressive to include his voice here at all. This is part of the point of what I&#x27;m getting at: there&#x27;s this tradition of &#8862; and so many parts of it make me uncomfortable or really disgusted and I don&#x27;t know what to do with all that. I just wanted to go to art school and draw circles and maybe thats the problem and sure simple materials are pretty, but yeah jelly is exactly what it feels like, you&#x27;re right.<br>
<br>Graphic &#8862; is often performed by paid professionals in what is known as the creative industry: as a profession and an activity, &#8862; is considered to be creative. There are some positive preconceptions about the creative industry and what it does, but I see it as an assimilation of cultural activity into a neoliberal economic framework. Creativity in this context is used to reproduce the status quo and and grow capital (Mould, 2018). But maybe we can profit from examining the margins created by this terminology: &#8862; is less functional than it seems. People in creative jobs are stressed and this is reflected in their dreams. Workers have rights and those rights are systemically undermined. Being self employed or part of an independent studio brings anxiety and challenges. Some &#8862;ers try to structure the world around them and like things to be neat and tidy, which makes us uncomfortable existing in precarious work conditions.<br>
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<h4>The Roman grid</h4>
<br>The Roman grid was a land measurement method used in the Roman colonies for example in the Po Valley (Figure 7). With a surveying tool called the groma, the colonisers would divide the land from north to south and east to west, resulting in a square grid of roads and land. At Orange, France, a cadaster has been found which shows the division of land in a geometric way, helping the colonisers to privatise the land and allocate it to roman veterans (Figure 1). The name groma, as well as referring to the surveying tool, describes the central point of the grid, the origin. Is making grids just a way to control and colonise? Do all grids have origins? In Descartes&#x27; use of the grid there was also an attempt to order and structure chaos:<br>
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<li>&#8220;the grid allowed an embrace of complexity: curved lines that could be described by mathematical formulas, and thereby were not a sign of chaos but an expression of the divine mathematical order assumed to be underlying nature.&#8221;</li>
<li>Descartes was Here, Clemens Driessen, 2020</li>
</ul>A part of the belief systems of &#8862;ers is that the world is chaotic and their role is to order it or even simplify it. This belief may be inherited from a wider cultural belief of the same general drive: to order and simplify. Humans try to make sense of the world. &#8862;ers make sense of &#8862; briefs and structure them into something understandable to an audience or target market.&nbsp;<br>
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</ul>Is there an answer to this question, do they know the answer to this question? I get the impression they have a gut feeling about the answer but are afraid of it.<br>
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<h4>An analysis of a joke about ⊞ in the early 21st century</h4>
<br>When reviewing the AIGA Next conference in Denver Colorado, 2008, &#8862; critic Adrian Shaughnessy tells a joke:<br>
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<li>&#8220;The venue was shared with a beer festival, but it was easy to tell the &#8862;ers from the beer fans. The beer fans were more serious.&#8221;</li>
<li>(Shaughnessy, 2013)</li>
</ul>This joke is funny because in the setup where it is easy to tell them apart, the reader should assume the beer fans are drunk and therefore raucous, misbehaving or maybe just having a lot of fun. But then he unexpectedly suggests that they were in fact more serious than the &#8862;ers. This gives the reader a problem to address: is he claiming the &#8862;ers were even more outrageous than what we assumed of the beer fans, or the beer fans were in fact taking their own conference seriously? As both seem unbelievable the true funniness of the joke hits home in it&#x27;s implied meaning: &#8862;ers are boring as fuck.<br>
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<h4>An annotation of my practices as a graphic ⊞er on a typical working day, 23rd October 2023</h4>
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<ol start="1" class="number">
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<em>I read an email</em>
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<em>and</em>
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<em>Alt tab alt tab alt tab alt tab alt tab alt tab alt tab ctrl c ctrl v ctrl c ctrl v ctrl c ctrl v ctrl c ctrl v ctrl v ctrl v ctrl v ctrl v ctrl v ctrl v</em>
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<br>&#8862;ers interact with the computer through keyboard and mouse usage. Compared to other computer users, my interaction involves lots of pressing of function keys, something common with other technical computer users and not so much with other creative workers. What is creative in the repetitive and low level operation of a computer? Is a pianist creative? What&#x27;s the difference, I think they are being creative in different ways. &#8862;ers and other specialists like video editors or photo colourists are using a computer as a tool, the musician is performing on an instrument. Maybe this distinction doesn&#x27;t have to be so clear though. I am questioning this here because I think there is some fairly complicated belief system about artists and their tools that has had an effect on &#8862;ers. &#8862; gives itself a history of conflict and harmony between artisans and industrialisation, for example in Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius claiming William Morris as a precursor (Bayer, 1975).&nbsp;<br>
<br>I think it is important to show that &#8862;ers are workers with tools, their repetitive tasks are a form of labour as are their creative processes. In the annotation opposite my aim is to mystify the manual and digital labour, rather than demystify the creative ideation part.&nbsp;<br>
<br>Following this annotation I made a digital tool to record all keystrokes on my computer. Then I printed them out with a pen plotter to celebrate the labour that had taken place. It took several hours to plot the keylogging data from just a few minutes of the &#8862;er&#x27;s labour.&nbsp;<br>
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<h4>LibreOffice</h4>
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<em>I have no idea what any of this structuring does. And I don&#x27;t care. But I would like to remove the page title from the export. It is in another tab called User Interface. I also select only page 1 to save to PDF. Now I run into a software issue in this workflow: the best software for the next part of the job is Adobe Acrobat Pro. How aggressively do I want to remove this software from my workflow? Not aggressively enough I guess because here I am still using it. I don&#x27;t know any other software that really gives me details of how a document will print or lets me edit PDFs on such a useful level.</em>
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<em>For example the title still exported (it always does, is this a LibreOffice bug or just I don&#x27;t know what to do with the new software yet?). It takes two seconds to remove in edit mode in Acrobat. I also delete the page number, I don&#x27;t even know how to turn that off from LibreOffice. The print dialogue in Acrobat is also so powerful, its so easy to print actual size which is important to me. It is structured and reliable.&nbsp;</em>
</ol>Like many other &#8862;ers, I was trained to only use Adobe products. I try to switch to open source alternatives because I believe in using software developed and maintained by a community rather than a private company, and as a worker believe I should be in control of my tools. In this annotation, I was trying to &#8862; and export a single page document in LibreOffice, an open source desktop publishing software. The documentation reflects on my frustrations and struggles to switch to a workflow that relies less on proprietary software for print &#8862;.&nbsp;<br>
<br>Proprietary software from big mean tech corporations is based on a model of society and economy where a few people own things and everybody else has a hard time. I believe the internet gives an opportunity for knowledge (including software code) to be shared. I like the idea of modifying my tools, this is easier technically and legally with open source software. I would prefer my tools to be developed by me and my peers. These are some of my beliefs as a &#8862;er about my work and my tools. They&#x27;re a bit idealistic but also optimistic in a good way.<br>
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<em>my god im trying to use scribus to prepare a booklet</em><br>
<em>im going crazy</em><br>
<em>im going crazy</em>
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<li>Correspondance with kamo, 2024</ul>Transitioning to open source software sucks. I spent years learning other tools and its like starting all over again. There is a dual commitment in my beliefs about how my tools should be built and my desire to get things done in a reasonable amount of time. My action of fumbling with open source programs reflects my belief that they are worthwhile, and my action of still using Adobe Acrobat Pro reflects my belief that there are better things to do with my time than restarting software when it crashes again. Some parts of graphic &#8862; have become so entangled in capitalist ways of working, it can be immobilising to try to act without engaging with the icky parts. Our dependencies on ecosystems of tools and workflows are not enforced, but it can be difficult to exist outside them, or more specifically, beside them.<br>
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</ol>It&#x27;s so obviously not true. The conflict of wanting to change my workflow with wanting to complete my work tasks efficiently doesn&#x27;t keep me up at night, but it is important to me and other &#8862;ers. Open source &#8862; software is unreliable and unstandardised, it takes longer to do things and then when they are nearly done the program crashes and I&#x27;ve lost all my work. The standards of open source software have not been widely embraced by the &#8862; community. To fit into a workflow with peers you have to use Adobe products. Even web &#8862;ers who engage with open standards can find the need to work with proprietary software, because these tools are deeply integrated into the workflows of their peers. Can you send me that in a normal file format please, I can&#x27;t open it.&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;<br>
<h4>Work Sans</h4>
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<em>The font is Work Sans SemiBold and it is set in 10pt, colour &quot;automatic&quot;. I think even if it wasn&#x27;t automatic I would make it black, because I want to print it clearly and cheaply. I use Work Sans because I am trying to switch to using Open Font Licence and open source fonts more generally. Previously I would have used Helvetica Now or some other proprietary font. There is a visual difference between these fonts too which is also relevant buuuuut this description is getting very detailed maybe not right now.</em>
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<br>Similarly to the software changes, this documentation of my practice sees me choosing open source fonts. I&#x27;m really ambivalent about this. I do like the idea of being able to modify a font when needed, but I have done so regardless of whether the font licence allows it. I&#x27;m more comfortable ethically with a font being open source. Buying fonts is expensive for freelancers and small studios, and open source fonts are more commonly free of charge. Many &#8862;ers pirate fonts rather than buy them, or are locked into a font subscription. In Adobe software, Adobe subscription fonts don&#x27;t load unless a connection to the creative cloud is verified.<br>
<br>For my work, fonts are also a tool, one that I need to practice with and one that needs to be suitable for the job. So changing font is a little like a ceramicist changing clay. Work Sans is good for online use because Google Fonts serves it as a web font for free, the open source font I want to use is served most reliably by a large corporation I have issues with. This balancing act of practical considerations and idealistic beliefs is kind of ironic and reminds me again that my values can be inconsistent and to me a bit funny.&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;<br>The use of fonts as tools is full of tensions from &#8862;ers&#x27; belief systems. Like many &#8862;ers, I want to use open source fonts. I also want to use fonts that will load quickly from a content delivery network for web projects. I also want fonts to be cheap and well made and I am interested in fonts that are free. The internet is full of illegal and pirated copies of fonts that are not supposed to be free of charge. I sometimes receive or am asked to send font files outside of their licence. I dont have a huge amount of respect for some of these licences. But at the same time font &#8862;ers are my friends and colleagues, I have &#8862;ed fonts. What does a &#8862;er&#x27;s actual use of fonts say about their beliefs around copyright? Do &#8862;ers believe in intellectual property? What value do &#8862;ers, specifically typographers, see in their work and that of their close peers, the font &#8862;ers, and how does copyright relate to these values?<br>
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<h4>Follow up questions for Conor</h4>
<br>Hey Conor, hope you&#x27;re keeping well these days? I&#x27;ve been going through the interview from back in December and was wondering if you would mind me including this piece in my thesis:<br>
<br>I guess the thesis has become a lot about &#8862;ers and the beliefs they have about their work, and its effect on the world around them. I was really interested in your answer to this question because I think it shows something a lot of other &#8862;ers including me feel too; some desire to structure the world around us, to have things be resolved, organised, fitting together. And not just a desire but maybe even a belief that this is really what our job is for? Maybe I&#x27;m reading too much into it, but to me this maybe hints at part of the reason we&#x27;re am drawn to a field like graphic &#8862;? Curious to know what you think.<br>
<br>And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>
<br>Thanks,<br>Stephen<br>
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<h4>Follow up questions for ◱</h4>
<br>Yo &#9713;, hope all&#x27;s good with you these days?&nbsp;<br>
<br>I&#x27;ve been piecing together the interviews from December and I&#x27;d love to include this section about your dream if that&#x27;s alright with you? It seems to get at something I feel as well: this system that we&#x27;ve built up and these drawers full of grids, sometimes there&#x27;s an angst or unresolved feeling that they&#x27;re not going to work, they dont fit as an answer to the problem.&nbsp;<br>
<br>For me I think it might be something to do with order and chaos if that doesn&#x27;t seem too much of a stretch, I&#x27;ve this need to structure things and fit them in a form, and the dream seems to get at that fear that it&#x27;s not going to work. The grid is solid but reality turns out to be jelly at best, but very often custard and little bits of tinned strawberry and soggy sponge.&nbsp;<br>
<br>I assumed the dream is about the pressure or anxiety of running a studio? I wonder for you, do you see it more relating to the work itself or the management around that, or are these things that you consider separate from eachother? I&#x27;m curious to know if you think of it the same way, or maybe it&#x27;s something else to you and I&#x27;m projecting :)<br>
<br>And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.<br>
<br>Thanks, <br>Stephen<br>
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<h4>Follow up questions for ◳</h4>
<br>Hey &#9715;, hope youre good!&nbsp;<br>
<br>I&#x27;m thinking of putting this section of the interview we did back in december in my thesis. Is that ok with you? I want to include it because I think it really captures some emotions that &#8862;ers feel quite often, some stress or anxiety or an attempt to grab onto something more stable. But I also find it really interesting that you were talking about jelly slipping through your hands, any idea why you didn&#x27;t say sand or mud or gold but jelly? To me it seems like a fun and cute material to pick, even though its a bit lumpy and maybe even kinda gross sometimes.&nbsp;<br>
<br>I&#x27;ve been really interested in foods made of gelatin recently and there&#x27;s something so mesmerising about them even though they&#x27;re never the most appetising, and for sure unnatural or over-processed. Maybe you just said it off hand, but it makes sense to me as well about being a &#8862;er in some way? Something enjoyable and lovable about the jelly despite its weird unnatural wiggliness. Really interested to know if you have any thoughts or maybe you meant something completely different.<br>
<br>And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>
<br>Thanks,<br>Stephen<br>
<h4>Conclusion</h4>
<br>The title of this document, &#8862;, was borrowed from the mathematical theory of free probability where it symbolises free additive convolution, a way of relating terms that is more nuanced than traditional ideas of cause and effect. In the fragmented look at &#8862; in this document, which we&#x27;ve reached the end of now, I hope to have done something similar: a convoluted addition, freely placing things together to be held for a moment.&nbsp;<br>
<br>&#8862; involves a wide range of activities; typing, drawing grids, communicating with other specialists, quoting, drinking coffee, working out of office hours, having panic attacks, arguing, building myths, personal expression, keyboard shortcuts, dreaming, rubbing paper and exhaling, tilting your head and looking at the screen. We have examined when and how these actions happen, and more importantly, why they do, according to the &#8862;ers carrying them out.&nbsp;<br>
<br>These stories were gathered through various modes of describing, listening and understanding. It is important that these are different from conventional ways to frame the discipline, as I think a shift in viewpoint is needed. So not &#8220;&#8862;er as Author&#8221; (Rock, 1996), &#8220;&#8862;er as salesperson&#8221; (Pater, 2021) but instead &#8862;er &#8220;sitting at the machine, thinking&#8221; (Brodine, 1990) or &#8220;&#8862;er without qualities&#8221; (Lorusso, 2023). The fragments have been situated and subjective rather than objective, they have been outside of categories because the categories are broken anyway.&nbsp;<br>
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<h4>Conclusion</h4>
<br>Last night I dreamt I was standing on a hill in the Swiss Alps and you were there and all of our friends and the hill was covered in little fields but not like a grid like lots of different shapes and sizes and the sky opened in two and a ring of light so bright it nearly blinded me came out of my chest and yours and they all merged into eachother and everyone opened their mouths to sing and the air was filled with so many sounds and one &#8862;er walked up to me and smiled and said&nbsp;<br>
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<ul class="indent" style="margin-left:10mm"><li>&#8220;I&#x27;m just trying to touch it gently and acknowledge it&#8221;&nbsp;</li></ul>
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<ul class="indent" style="margin-left:45mm"><li>&#8220;live the gap between where you are and where you could be&#8221;&nbsp;</li></ul>
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<br>and then I was them and you were me and we laughed and fell over and the hill turned into a bright pink jelly ocean the whole sky was this sort of green-blue and we all surfed wobbly waves and some people&#x27;s surfboards were Quiksilver and some they had built themselves from a git repository but the sun was a walnut and it was definitely moving but I couldnt tell was it rising or setting but it didn&#x27;t matter to us the surf was great and everything smelled like magnolias.<br>
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<br>Acknowledgements</h4>
<br>Thanks to Ada, Aglaia, Ben, Chae, Conor, Irmak, Jenny, Joseph, kamo, Leslie, Manetta, Marloes, Michael, Rossi.<br>
<h2>Bibliography</h2>
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<br>Berlant, L. (2022) <em>On the Inconvenience of Other People</em>, Durham: Duke University Press.<br>
<br>Brodine, K. (1990) <em>Woman Sitting at the Machine, Thinking: Poems</em>. Seattle: Red Letter Press.<br>
<br>creativechair (2018) &#8216;Michael Bierut&#8217; [Interview], <em>Creative Chair</em>. Available at: creativechair.org&#x2F;michael-bierut (Accessed: 15 April 2024).<br>
<br>
<em>Design West</em> (2024) <em>Design West</em>. Available at: designwest.eu (Accessed: 16 April 2024).<br>
<br>Driessen, C. P. G. (2020). Descartes was here; In Search of the Origin of Cartesian Space&#8217;. In R. Koolhaas (Ed.), <em>Countryside, A Report </em>(pp. 274-297)<br>&nbsp;<br>Gates, B (2004) <em>Remarks by Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corporation</em> [speech transcript] University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign February 24, 2004 Available at: web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;<br>20040607040830&#x2F;<a href="https&#x3a;&#x2F;&#x2F;www&#x2e;microsoft&#x2e;com&#x2F;billgates&#x2F;speeches&#x2F;2004&#x2F;02&#x2d;24UnivIllinois&#x2e;asp" rel="noreferrer noopener">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.microsoft.com&#x2F;billgates&#x2F;speeches&#x2F;2004&#x2F;02-24UnivIllinois.asp</a> (Accessed: 13 April 2024)<br>
<br>Gerstner, K. and Keller, D. (1964) <em>Designing Programmes</em>. Teufen (AR): Niggli.&nbsp;<br>
<br>Google (2014) <em>Introduction</em>, <em>Material Design</em>. Available at: m1.material.io (Accessed: 16 April 2024).&nbsp;<br>
<br>Hu, T.-H. (2024) <em>Digital Lethargy: Dispatches from an age of disconnection</em>. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.&nbsp;<br>
<br>The Idea of the Book (2024) <em>CARNIVAL: the first panel 1967&#8211;70 </em>[book description] Available at: theideaofthe<br>book.com&#x2F;pages&#x2F;books&#x2F;529&#x2F;steve-mccaffery&#x2F;carnival-the-first-panel-1967-70 (Accessed: 13 April 2024)<br>
<br>Loos, A. (2019) <em>Ornament and Crime</em>. London: Penguin.&nbsp;<br>
<br>Lorusso, S. (2023) <em>What Design Can&#8217;t Do: Essays on design and disillusion</em>. Eindhoven: Set Margins.&nbsp;<br>
<br>Mondriaan , P. et al., (1917) &#8216;Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art&#8217;, <em>De Stijl</em>, Nov.<br>
<br>Mould, O. (2018) <em>Against Creativity</em>. London: Verso.<br>
<br>M&#252;ller-Brockmann, J. (1981) <em>Grid systems in graphic </em>&#8862;. Stuttgart: Hatje.&nbsp;<br>
<br>Pater, R. (2021) <em>Caps Lock</em>. Amsterdam: Valiz.<br>
<br>Rock, M., (1996) <em>The &#8862;er as Author. </em>Available at: 2x4.org&#x2F;ideas&#x2F;1996&#x2F;&#8862;er-as-author (Accessed: 16 April 2024).&nbsp;<br>
<br>Shaughnessy, A. (2005) <em>How to Be a Graphic &#8862;er, without Losing Your Soul. </em>Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press.<br>
<br>Shaughnessy, A. (2013) <em>Scratching the Surface</em>. London: Unit Editions.<br>
<br>Tufte, E (1991) <em>The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. </em>Cheshire: Graphics Press.<br>
<br>Van der Velden, D., (2006) &#8216;Research &amp; Destroy: A Plea for &#8862; as Research&#8217;,&nbsp;<em>Metropolis M 2</em>, April&#x2F;May 2006.<br>
<br>Van Doesburg, T. et al. (1917) &#8216;Manifesto I&#8217;, <em>De Stijl</em>, Nov.<br>
<br><span style="letter-spacing: -0.1px">Van Doesburg, T. et al. (1921) &#8216;Manifesto III&#8217;, <em>De Stijl</em>, Aug.</span><br>
<br>Warde, B. (1913) &#8216;Printing Should be Invisible&#8217;<em> The Crystal Goblet, Sixteen Essays on Typography,</em> London: The Sylvan Press.<br>
<br>Weber, M., (1905) &quot;The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism&quot;, <em>Archiv f&#252;r Sozialwissenschaften</em> 20, no. 1 (1904), pp. 1&#8211;54; 21, no. 1 (1905), pp. 1&#8211;110.<br>
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<br>Written manically and edited in vexation in Etherpad. Composed excitedly using paged.js. Typeset confidently in Work Sans by Wei Huang. Digitally printed nervously at Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam on Schoellershammer 75gsm and Clairefontaine Maya 270gsm.
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Copyright held reluctantly by Stephen Kerr, 2024 under the SIXX Licence, a free, copyleft license for rituals, games, books and consolations in any medium, both software and hardware. For the purposes of this paper, licensing is understood as a responsibility towards an audience, towards each other and towards other people who might want to contribute to, use or amplify any work. The precise terms can be found at issue.xpub.nl/20/license
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If you like this colophon you should really read the rest of the thesis, its written specifically for you.<br>
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<li><a href="">Special Issues</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<div id="content"><h1 id="title">Title</h1>
<h3 id="thesis-description">Thesis Description</h3>
<p>This is where your thesis goes</p>
<div id="content"><h1 id="section">⊞</h1>
<h3 id="empty-title">empty title</h3>
<p>Stephen Kerr</p>
<p>⊞</p>
<p>Thesis submitted to the Department of Experimental Publishing, Piet
Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the final examination for the degree of Master of Arts
in Fine Art &amp; ⊞: Experimental Publishing.</p>
<p>Adviser: Marloes de Valk<br />
Second Reader: Joseph Knierzinger<br />
Word count: 7828 words</p>
<h4 id="to-de-sign-design-i-will-assign-a-sign">To de-sign design, I
will assign a sign: ⊞</h4>
<p>This symbol represents design in this writing in an attempt to avoid
the assumed meaning of the word and examine it as something unknown, to
mystify it, to examine its structure. The label ⊞ is a functional part
of a belief system involving order, structure, and rationality and I
want to break it. Removing the label is part of loosening the object,
making it avilable to transition (Berlant, 2022).</p>
<figure>
<img src="./images/orange.jpg" style="margin-top: 95mm; width: 40mm;" alt="The Cadaster of Orange, unknown ⊞er, c. 100 CE." />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">
The Cadaster of Orange,<br /> unknown ⊞er, c. 100 CE.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="./images/Niggli-Grid-systems-in-graphic-design-7.jpg" style="margin-top: 95mm" alt="Grid Systems in Graphic ⊞, Josef Muller-Brockmann, 1981." />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">
Grid Systems in Graphic ⊞, Josef Muller-Brockmann, 1981.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="./images/albuni2.jpg"
alt="Shams al-Ma’arif, Ahmad al-Buni Almalki, circa 1200." />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Shams al-Ma’arif, Ahmad al-Buni Almalki,
circa 1200.</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="./images/Simple_carthesian_coordinate_system.svg"
alt="Cartesian Geometry, Rene Descartes, 1637." />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Cartesian Geometry, Rene Descartes,
1637.</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img
src="./images/art-josef-albers-study-for-homage-to-the-square-69.1917.jpg"
alt="Homage to the Square, Josef Albers, 1954." />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Homage to the Square, Josef Albers,
1954.</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="./images/TheoVAnDoesburgCounterCompositionVI.jpg"
alt="Counter Composition VI, Theo Van Doesburg, 1925." />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Counter Composition VI,<br />
Theo Van Doesburg, 1925.</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="./images/po-valley2.png" style="margin-top: 95mm;" alt="The Po Valley, The Roman Empire, 268 BCE." />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">
The Po Valley, The Roman Empire, 268 BCE.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<img src="./images/pietzwart.jpg"
alt="Monogram, Piet Zwart, c. 1968." />
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Monogram, Piet Zwart,
c. 1968.</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3 id="empty-title-1">empty title</h3>
<h4 id="introduction">Introduction</h4>
<p>This document is a collection of fragments exploring beliefs about
labour in the creative industries, in particular graphic ⊞. Each
fragment focusses on the social, cultural, political, spiritual or
religious aspects of these beliefs through an ethnographic lens. They
record, celebrate and question the meaning that ⊞ers give to their
actions and how those meanings affect the world they live in. And it’s
about how ⊞ers feel when we live with these beliefs: we feel a bit funny
and I want to talk about it. </p>
<p>I use various modes of address and different lenses to further
fragment the definition of ⊞. The origin of the word thesis is to set or
to put, but I am trying to show you something liquid that can’t be
placed but shimmers and disappears through the sand. I document some ⊞
activities, in my own work and the work and writings of others who
identify with the label of ⊞er. The writing dissolves and reintegrates
definitions of ⊞ from different voices to show the multiplicity of
beliefs from practitioners, and to explore what it means to acknowledge
these beliefs beside eachother: the tensions and harmonies, some
lineages and some breaks. What is going on here in this thing we call
⊞? </p>
<p>This is a collection of stories about living life with particular
working conditions, located at certain points in social, economic and
cultural webs. In my practice-based research I gather and tell these
stories through (auto)ethnographic methods: documenting how ⊞er’s work,
conducting interviews, improvising communal performances and exploratory
tool-making. This document collates and reflects on this research. </p>
<h4 id="what-is-a-er">What is a ⊞er?</h4>
<ol type="1">
<li><em>A ⊞er is a person who wakes up at 5am but refuses to open their
eyes. There are birds talking outside, it’s probably getting bright
already. Something is wrong, not sure what. They finally open their eyes
and there’s the ceiling again. When the light comes in sideways over the
curtains this early you can see all the little ripples and imperfections
in it. Nothing. Ribcage. Stomach. The front of the ⊞er’s legs ache. It
would be better to sleep again. Have to pay taxes again next week. A ⊞er
is someone who wonders if that invoice will come through I need to
follow up on it. The birds are so loud. </em></li>
<li><em>The role of the ⊞er is to count back from five to two and
realise that was only three hours same as yesterday. They use ⊞ thinking
to never get back to sleep. They need excellent time management skills
to make this short moment feel like an eternity, several times a week.
⊞ers have an acute spatial awareness and an eye for detail: although the
ceiling seems miles away they focus on each tiny ripple for hours. A ⊞er
is someone who will work the whole waking day today, but it’s better
than last week when there was no work. ⊞ers look at their phone and see
their alarm is going to go off in ten minutes, so they switch it off and
get up.</em></li>
</ol>
<h3 id="empty-title-2">empty title</h3>
<p>The precarity of working in the creative industries, in particular as
a freelancer or within a small studio, induces anxiety. There is a
belief that the ⊞er as freelancer is empowered by their autonomy, but in
fact the ⊞er as worker is trapped by it. ⊞ is work and this work is
believed to be inherently good. Work in our society is understood as “an
individual moral practice and collective ethical obligation” which
shapes the worker’s identity in positive ways (Weeks, 2011). The ⊞er
believes they are a skilled or talented worker, someone who possesses
spatial awareness, time management skills, and the capacity to carry out
work effectively and efficiently. </p>
<p>⊞ers are entangled in the Protestant religious underpinnings of the
European work ethic (Pater, 2022). ⊞ is seen as a vocation which
expresses and creates the ⊞er’s identity, and the process or its results
make a valuable contribution to society. People understand the world and
interact with it smoothly, thanks to the work of ⊞ers. ⊞ers pick the
right materials to save the planet and increase efficiency and whatever
else it is people find important. But the ⊞er becomes anxious despite
meeting these goals and becoming this person. In reality, the ⊞er is a
bot, the ⊞er is software. Value is extracted from their time, creativity
and expertise which makes them stressed. ⊞ers are a creative cloud, a
service to be tapped into, a cpu being run too hot. There is something
to be learnt from the revelation that being replaced by machines proves
we were being treated as machines all along. </p>
<h4 id="geestelijk">Geestelijk</h4>
<p>There was a belief that ⊞ could be a crystal goblet (Warde, 1913),
something unbiased, clear and, in more recent versions of the theory,
serving the context it fits within. But the foundations of this belief
in functionality and rationality dont seem to come themselves from
something functional or rational. </p>
<p>De Stijl members, such as Piet Mondriaan and Theo van Doesburg
(Figure 6), in their 1917 manifesto described a “new consciousness of
the age […] directed towards the universal”. There was a drive towards
universal standardisation or pureness of culture from the rich white
men. Purity is a concept that turns up a lot in Mondriaan’s writings, eg
<em>Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art</em> (1917). They claimed a shared
spirit was driving this universalisation. A later paragraph of the
manifesto is translated into english as:</p>
<ul>
<li>“The artists of to-day have been driven the whole world over by the
same consciousness and therefore have taken part from an intellectual
point of view in this war against the domination of individual
despotism. They therefore sympathize with all who work for the formation
of an international unity in Life, Art, Culture, either intellectually
or materially.”</li>
</ul>
<p>In this translation it appears the authors believed in an emerging
consciousness of the age, something collective which would bring an
international unity. The members of De Stijl were neither aligning
themselves with the capitalists or socialists but believed in an inner
connection between those who were joined in the spiritual body of the
new world (De Stijl, Manifesto III, 1921). The word intellectual, or
geestelijk in the original Dutch, can also be translated as “spiritual,
mental, ecclesiastical, clerical, sacred, ghostly, pneumatic”. The
choice to translate as intellectual seems to be the most rational
interpretation of this sentence, an effort to make the theories of De
Stijl appear more materialist without the spiritual element. Compare
with this translation:</p>
<ul>
<li>“The artists of today, all over the world, impelled by one and the
same consciousness, have taken part on the spiritual plane in the world
war against the domination of individualism, of arbitrariness. They
therefore sympathise with all who are fighting spiritually or materially
for the formation of an international unity in life, art and
culture.”</li>
</ul>
<p>In this translation it is clearer that the members of De Stijl saw a
link between the effects of what they made materially and their attempts
to be fighting spiritually against the domination of individualism. I
care about this story because of how it contextualises contemporary ⊞
practice. Is contemporary ⊞ practice still involved in this spiritual
battle? Did the new consciousness of 1917 survive the past century, did
it procreate? Can aesthetics have generational trauma? William Morris,
Constructivism, De Stijl, Bauhaus, International Style, International
Typographic Style, Swiss Style, then what happened. Modernist artists
had spiritual beliefs, and again I care about these people from a
hundred years ago because of the effect they have on the present. </p>
<p>Imagine I could trace this thought from Mondriaan all the way to
myself, wow, cool thesis. Swiss style became corporate identity ⊞ and
encouraged minimalism in ⊞. 21st century Flat ⊞, such as Metro ⊞
language from Microsoft and Material ⊞ (Google, 2014), claim direct
descendance from the International Typographic Style and that pretty
much brings us up to date. I wonder about the use of the word Material
in Google’s ⊞ strategy, I wonder about the ghostly absence of the
geestelijk fight of De Stijl. Is Google’s choice of name another
example, as with the subtle change in the translation above, that the
spiritual element is no longer as important a part of the ⊞er’s
worldview as it was a hundred years ago? </p>
<h4
id="excerpt-from-an-interview-with-conor-clarke-1st-december-2023">Excerpt
from an interview with Conor Clarke, 1st December 2023</h4>
<p><em>Conor Clarke is a Director of ⊞ Factory, independent Irish ⊞
agency based in Dublin. His work has featured in international
publications such as Who’s Who in Graphic ⊞</em>, <em>Graphis, Novum
Gebrauchsgrafik, and the New York Art Directors Club Annual. He was the
recipient of the Catherine Donnelly Lifetime Achievement Award for his
contribution to ⊞ in Ireland and is the Course Director of ⊞ West, an
international summer ⊞ school located in the beautiful village of
Letterfrack on the West Coast of Ireland</em>. (⊞west.eu, 2023)</p>
<h3 id="empty-title-3">empty title</h3>
<ul>
<li>SK: What do you think is the best shape?</li>
<li>CC: Oh yeah, good god. square.</li>
<li>SK: Square? how come?</li>
<li>CC: Dunno, it just, it just seems resolved. I don’t like spheres.
Circles I sometimes like.</li>
<li>SK: Yeah, squares, do you use grids?</li>
<li>CC: Sometimes. Not always.</li>
<li>SK: Once you have grids squares make sense. But you like squares
maybe because you like logos?</li>
<li>CC: If I’m in an art gallery and I see, you know Joseph Albers
(Figure 5) or something I just kind of feel, I just like, or Malevich i
just like that stuff. If I see a Kandinsky and all those squiggles and
circles it just, that just kind of upsets me a little bit.</li>
<li>SK: That’s a bit chaotic?</li>
<li>CC: Yeah. And even if I’m looking at Vermeer I can see some kind of
square structure and logic, for some reason that always appeals to
me.</li>
<li>SK: Things are a bit organised when there’s squares around?</li>
<li>CC: Yeah. And really great artists who don’t work that way I look at
their stuff and think well that’s just beyond me.</li>
<li>SK: Its something else?</li>
<li>CC: Yeah. so yeah.</li>
<li>SK: At least you didn’t say triangle.</li>
<li>CC: Oh good god. Good god no.</li>
</ul>
<!-- -->
<h4 id="maths-and-grids">Maths and grids</h4>
<p>Why not choose a spiral or a circle if you dream of ⊞ers as shamans?
Why the grid of squares? There are strong links beween ⊞ and
mathematics, Josef Muller-Brockmann’s <em>Grid Systems</em> (Figure 2)
for example or Karl Gerstner’s <em>⊞ing Programmes</em> (1964). I read
these ⊞ theorists as you might comparatively read religious texts. What
were or are the beliefs of the authors and their audiences?<br />
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<ul>
<li>“To describe the problem is part of the solution. This implies: not
to make creative decisions as prompted by feeling but by intellectual
criteria. The more exact and complete these criteria are, the more
creative the work becomes.”</li>
<li>(Gerstner, 1964)</li>
<li>“This is the expression of a professional ethos: the ⊞er’s work
should have the clearly intelligible, objective, functional and
aesthetic quality of mathematical thinking.”</li>
<li>(Muller-Brockman, 1981)</li>
</ul>
<p>These texts present a worldview where ⊞ can be mathematical,
objective or problem-solving. In Muller-Brockman’s text the focus is on
the formal qualities of the ⊞ in particular the use of grids and
typographic systems. Gerstner’s focus is more on the effect of the ⊞,
and the ability of ⊞ to solve a problem. Rationality and creativity are
presented as proportional to eachother. He makes space for the
intellectual by pushing aside feelings. </p>
<p>The graphic ⊞er is presented as a functional actor in society who
makes the world better. Gerstner seems to be implying that creative ⊞
comes from following the intellect and some rational cause and effect
process. I find it interesting that ⊞ claims this rational basis in the
same historical period when science and mathematics, its supposed
foundations, became much less rational and predictable, for example in
chaos theory. It makes me think that the rationality serves some other
purpose.</p>
<h4 id="the-grid-and-the-written-word">The ⊞ grid and the written
word</h4>
<p>Why do ⊞ers believe in using a grid to present the written word, and
where did this belief come from and how did it develop? It can be
materially traced back to Guthenberg and metal type but that’s boring.
Magic squares have been used in astrology books and grimoires throughout
history (Figure 3). French poet Stéphane Mallarmé is sometimes quoted as
a precursor to modernist typography (Muller-Brockmann, 1981). Why did
Steve McCaffrey include the manifesto of De Stijl with <em>CARNIVAL</em>
(1973)? De Stijl is best known for its painters and architects, and
theories from both of these fields affected later ⊞ theories. But they
also were poets and had literary theories similar to the german
expressionists. Man’s attempt to find oneness with the whole of creation
through a cosmic hybris. </p>
<ul>
<li>“An artists’ book featuring a series of typewriter concrete poems
printed on perforated pages meant to be torn out and arranged into a
square of four. Complete with instructions, a reproduction of a de Stijl
manifesto from 1920, an errata slip, and publisher’s promotional
postcard.”</li>
<li>Description of Steve McCaffrey’s <em>CARNIVAL</em><br />
(The Idea of the Book, 2024)</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="empty-title-4">empty title</h3>
<p>The developments of the written word and its relationship to form in
the 20th century is very much a part of the history of ⊞. I care about
this story because it affects contemporary practitioners. I believe
there is something magical in graphic composition and the layout of
typography, something that can’t be grasped in the words alone. They’re
non-canonical for ⊞ers but how have people who put words on pages like
Mallarmé and McCaffrey influenced my beliefs about the written word?
What makes one thing fit in the category of art, another ⊞ and yet
another concrete poetry?</p>
<h4 id="mystically-assigning-or-finding-meanings-in">Mystically
assigning or finding meanings in ⊞</h4>
<p>This autoethnographic annotation attempts to really miss as many
cultural and technical cues as possible. It’s watching the ⊞er, me, and
being totally mystified by their behaviour. </p>
<h3 id="empty-title-5">empty title</h3>
<ol type="1">
<li><em>A rhythm exists and I wonder why. There is music and there are
voices, and my fingers press the keys and the colours of the screen
flicker and morph. There appears to be a life or energy flowing
somewhere between these things and I am curious about it.</em></li>
<li><em>The screen shimmers between different symbols, letters, images.
The colours are symbolic. White means the ground, although sometimes it
switches to white symbols on a dark ground. They are full of meaning and
relationship. I press two buttons to the left of the keyboard and the
screen answers with a flicker.</em></li>
<li><em>I count out loud to 40. It symbolises both the number of pages
to be made and the enormity of the task. It represents a period in the
desert, long but with an end in sight. What is the relationship of the
desert to the stars? If the screen can flicker from a dark to a light
ground, is it possible for the sky to also switch from day to
night?</em></li>
<li><em>I have taken three of the forty steps.</em></li>
<li><em>I have taken seven of the forty steps.</em></li>
<li><em>⊞ is a series of movements and reconfigurations. It is a
creative act and one of elision. I use the keyboard to communicate my
will to the machine with commands such as “Ctrl+C” and “Ctrl+V”. I
firstly inform the computer that I wish to control it. Each letter has a
deep and layered meaning. CVCVCVCVCVCVCVCVCV. “Alt+Tab” asks the screen
to flicker. The computer must match my multithreading. It must be
prepared to follow my changing demands in our shared focus. FAVCV. F is
to seek, but it is optimistically labelled to find. I enter the
incorrect combination of symbols (“samle”) the incantation is useless
and I will not find what I seek. I try again “sample” and the computer
gives me what I desire. Why does the machine demand perfection? Why does
it value perfection in me, what is it trying to teach me? Why wont it
leave me alone?</em></li>
<li><em>I have taken eleven of the forty steps. I will rest.</em></li>
</ol>
<h4
id="what-does-do-what-is-the-er-trying-to-do-by-pressing-all-these-buttons-and-making-the-screen-vibrate">What
does ⊞ do? What is the ⊞er trying to do by pressing all these buttons
and making the screen vibrate?</h4>
<ul>
<li><em>“</em>⊞ only generates longing”</li>
<li>(Van Der Velden, 2006)</li>
</ul>
<p>I wasn’t trying to generate longing, I was trying to make an annual
report. It was a corporate job I was working on, a nice one to have
because it’s fairly well paid and not too complicated. A bit boring and
kinda repetitive, but you can just put your headphones on and get stuck
into it. I was pretty happy with the results in the end, but for sure
not the type of work you’re supposed to be proud of as a ⊞er.</p>
<ul>
<li><em>“</em>I found myself way over my head with, believe it or not, a
catalogue and price list for bathroom equipment. Nothing I’ve done since
has seemed as difficult.”</li>
<li>Michael Bierut (creativechair.org, 2018)</li>
</ul>
<p>And of course Piet Zwart’s (Figure 8) famous electrical cable
catalogues. ⊞ is just work, chill. Is a ⊞er a user or a server? Maybe ⊞
is an example of our general belief in this dichotomy not quite making
sense or fitting reality. The ⊞er is working for whom? Themselves? Their
clients?</p>
<h3 id="empty-title-6">empty title</h3>
<ul>
<li><em>“</em>attempts to undo the privileged position of the agentive
subject can help us understand the strange status of repetitive and
quasi-robotic labour in today’s digital age.”</li>
<li>(Hu, 2022)</li>
</ul>
<p>This quote relates to freelancing generally in some way, and
deconstructing the work or worker. Are workers things? Yeah, kinda. ⊞ers
don’t have super powers, contrary to some beliefs within the industry.
For example on what⊞cando.com it is suggested that we should “re⊞
everything!”. Let’s actually not do that. ⊞ers are mostly just humans
working on computers like so many other bots. ⊞ers try to create
clarity, to assign meaning and understand: “Confusion and clutter are
failures of ⊞, not attributes of information” (Tufte, 1990, p.53). What
if the sounds of my fingers and my keyboard are not noise but music: we
are quasi-robots and maybe its good to listen to our little Taylorist
finger tappings and see what else is being said.</p>
<h4
id="excerpt-from-an-interview-with-the-members-of-distinctive-repetition-on-1st-december-2023.">Excerpt
from an interview with the members of Distinctive Repetition on 1st
December 2023.</h4>
<p>Distinctive Repetition is an award-winning graphic ⊞ studio based in
Dublin, Ireland. Principal ⊞er and Institute of Creative Advertising and
⊞ past-president, Rossi McAuley, is joined in this interview by ⊞ers
Jenny Leahy and Ben Nagle. This interview was carried out around a table
with the interviewer in the bottom right corner (◲) and the three
members of the studio in the other three seats.</p>
<ul>
<li>◲: whats your favourite colour?</li>
<li>◰: red.</li>
<li>◲: red.</li>
<li>◱: really? thats it? are you fucking kidding me?</li>
<li>◰: do i fill it in?</li>
<li>◳: they’re warm up questions obviously they’re to get you
comfortable answering questions.</li>
<li>◳: yellow</li>
<li>◲: if the seat of your consciousness was in your hands, like all of
your feelings and your thoughts and your desires and your emotions come
through your hands, can you describe to me the day that you’ve had so
far please?</li>
<li>◳: jelly that’s not quite solid</li>
<li>◳: not quite solidified in the fridge yet</li>
<li>◳: and its just oozing through my fingers</li>
<li>(redacted sentence)</li>
<li>◳: that’s what today has been like but its my brain thats oozing out
of me</li>
<li>◲: yes. that’s a good answer. ok will we keep going in a
circle?</li>
<li>◱: whatever you like bro.</li>
<li>◲: do you ever dream about work?</li>
<li>◱: all the time.</li>
<li>◲: would you care to share one of those dreams?</li>
<li>◱: they’re always angst-ridden, never, they’re never eh, they’re
never positive solution-solved things, we’ve always like lists and lists
and lists of things to do they’re never resolved they’re always like
shit we’ve, its, its always problematic, and its all the time.</li>
<li>◳: weren’t you taking grids out of drawers in a dream recently?</li>
<li>◱: yeah yeah.</li>
<li>(obscured)</li>
<li>◲: why were you taking grids out of drawers?</li>
<li>◱: emm recently I had a dream where I was giving out to ◳ about not
having things done, this ◳, participant two, about not having things
done, and i was opening up drawers in my office and I was like, just use
this grid and the drawers were full of grids and I was giving them to
her and saying just fucking use those grids for fucks sake why don’t we
use those grids.</li>
<li>(section redacted by request of interviewees)</li>
</ul>
<!-- -->
<h4 id="about-the-interview">About the interview</h4>
<p>Before meeting them in person, I mailed a small booklet to the
interviewees entitled <em>Enthusiasm</em> to give context to the
conversation. The word enthusiasm originally meant inspiration or
possession by a god. The booklet recounted three mystical dreams René
Descartes had which he credited as a moment of inspiration or enthusiasm
that influenced his later work on rationalism, and related to his work
on geometry and grids (Figure 4). As well as the content of the dreams,
the booklet described their relevance:<br />
    </p>
<ul>
<li>“404 years ago on the night of the 10th November 1619, three dreams
were dreamt. A 23-year old man is “filled with enthusiasm” and enters a
feverish sleep in Ulm, Germany. In this process of enthusiasm and
dreamwork, he discovers the foundations of a wonderful science. <em>The
Method of Properly Guiding the Reason in the Search of Truth in the
Sciences</em> will be suppressed by the churches, both Calvinist and
Catholic. They are a threat to the world view, and a threat to religion.
The cartesian grid uses measurements to estabish relationships.
Cartesian geometry has let us fly spaceships and zone and divide land.
Some things have happened. Some good things, some bad things. The link
is broken or breaking or should be broken. It’s rotting. Maybe there’s a
better way we can interpret these dreams now.”</li>
</ul>
<p>Descartes felt that interpreting his dreams was an appropriate method
to develop a rational theory of skepticism, which led to some of the
philosophical foundations of modern scientific and mathematical
theories. The booklet also drew parallels with Martin Luther’s
scrupulous doubt, “Only God and certain madmen have no doubts!”. Like
Descartes, Luther’s new theories helped to give the basis for the
structure of thought for the following centuries. These stories were
presented together to direct the focus of the conversation towards
belief, rationalism and grids. The fact that rationalism is a belief
system, as pervasive as it may be, and suggestively hinting through its
<span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px">relationship with grids that there
is a relationship with ⊞.</span></p>
<ul>
<li>◳: jelly that’s not quite solid, not quite solidified in the fridge
yet and its just oozing through my fingers</li>
</ul>
<!-- -->
<p>They seem so sad it hurts to hear them talk about the oozing. Are you
supposed to put jelly in the fridge, it just needs time to settle right?
My nana used to put the jelly in the freezer. There’s an instability in
how they talk in the interview for sure, or more a desire for stability.
Was it ever stable? Do you really want it to be? Its gooey and not the
way it should be but its still jelly and thats fun and its probably
delicious. Their hands are there as something that is for grasping and
jelly is there as something that can’t be grasped. Is it terrifying, are
they resigned to it? </p>
<ul>
<li>◱: they’re always angst-ridden, never, they’re never eh, they’re
never positive solution-solved things, we’ve always like lists and lists
and lists of things to do they’re never resolved they’re always like
shit we’ve, its, its always problematic, and its all the time.</li>
</ul>
<p>I can’t explain the angst they are feeling but I can describe it
because I’ve felt it too. It feels like I’m having a heart attack. It
feels like I’m about to black out. It got to a stage where I couldn’t
talk to other people without being completely frozen jelly. It is the
feeling of lists and lists and lists. It’s the feeling of never
resolved, all the time. We believe we are busy and under pressure and
struggling to survive. That makes us anxious and stressed.</p>
<ul>
<li>◱: just fucking use those grids</li>
</ul>
<!-- -->
<p>The grids are not being used, the grids are useless. Drawers full of
them, all useless. Whats the point of sitting here in this studio. They
dont fit, they dont make sense, they’re trying to order something that
can’t be ordered. Or possibly shouldnt be ordered, the ordering is
misplaced and there is a human urge to stop, just stop.</p>
<h4 id="modern-work">Modern work</h4>
<ul>
<li>“A cause becomes unmodern at the moment when our feelings revolt,
and as soon as we feel ourselves becoming ridiculous”</li>
<li>Adolf Loos, <em>On Thrift,</em> 1924 (Loos, 2019)</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="empty-title-7">empty title</h3>
<p>Adolf Loos was a modernist architect whose writings such as
<em>Ornament and Crime</em> in 1910 influenced modernist ideals of
functionalism and minimalism. He rejected ornament and favoured the use
of good materials which showed “God’s own wonder”. I wonder what is the
relation of Loos’ ideas to Max Weber’s <em>The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism</em> (Weber, 1905) that was published five years
earlier. Work as a duty which benefits the individual and society as a
whole, do ⊞ers still believe this today? I like taking Loos’ quote out
of context here, instead in the context of the feelings of the
interviewees, revolting the supposedly modern cause they are working
with. </p>
<p>But also Loos was found guilty of pedophelia and it feels kind of
aggressive to include his voice here at all. This is part of the point
of what I’m getting at: there’s this tradition of ⊞ and so many parts of
it make me uncomfortable or really disgusted and I don’t know what to do
with all that. I just wanted to go to art school and draw circles and
maybe thats the problem and sure simple materials are pretty, but yeah
jelly is exactly what it feels like, you’re right.</p>
<p>Graphic ⊞ is often performed by paid professionals in what is known
as the creative industry: as a profession and an activity, ⊞ is
considered to be creative. There are some positive preconceptions about
the creative industry and what it does, but I see it as an assimilation
of cultural activity into a neoliberal economic framework. Creativity in
this context is used to reproduce the status quo and and grow capital
(Mould, 2018). But maybe we can profit from examining the margins
created by this terminology: ⊞ is less functional than it seems. People
in creative jobs are stressed and this is reflected in their dreams.
Workers have rights and those rights are systemically undermined. Being
self employed or part of an independent studio brings anxiety and
challenges. Some ⊞ers try to structure the world around them and like
things to be neat and tidy, which makes us uncomfortable existing in
precarious work conditions.</p>
<h4 id="the-roman-grid">The Roman grid</h4>
<p>The Roman grid was a land measurement method used in the Roman
colonies for example in the Po Valley (Figure 7). With a surveying tool
called the groma, the colonisers would divide the land from north to
south and east to west, resulting in a square grid of roads and land. At
Orange, France, a cadaster has been found which shows the division of
land in a geometric way, helping the colonisers to privatise the land
and allocate it to roman veterans (Figure 1). The name groma, as well as
referring to the surveying tool, describes the central point of the
grid, the origin. Is making grids just a way to control and colonise? Do
all grids have origins? In Descartes’ use of the grid there was also an
attempt to order and structure chaos:</p>
<ul>
<li>“the grid allowed an embrace of complexity: curved lines that could
be described by mathematical formulas, and thereby were not a sign of
chaos but an expression of the divine mathematical order assumed to be
underlying nature.”</li>
<li>Descartes was Here, Clemens Driessen, 2020</li>
</ul>
<p>A part of the belief systems of ⊞ers is that the world is chaotic and
their role is to order it or even simplify it. This belief may be
inherited from a wider cultural belief of the same general drive: to
order and simplify. Humans try to make sense of the world. ⊞ers make
sense of ⊞ briefs and structure them into something understandable to an
audience or target market. </p>
<h3 id="empty-title-8">empty title</h3>
<ul>
<li>◱: for fucks sake why don’t we use those grids</li>
</ul>
<!-- -->
<p>Is there an answer to this question, do they know the answer to this
question? I get the impression they have a gut feeling about the answer
but are afraid of it.</p>
<h4 id="an-analysis-of-a-joke-about-in-the-early-21st-century">An
analysis of a joke about ⊞ in the early 21st century</h4>
<p>When reviewing the AIGA Next conference in Denver Colorado, 2008, ⊞
critic Adrian Shaughnessy tells a joke:</p>
<ul>
<li>“The venue was shared with a beer festival, but it was easy to tell
the ⊞ers from the beer fans. The beer fans were more serious.”</li>
<li>(Shaughnessy, 2013)</li>
</ul>
<p>This joke is funny because in the setup where it is easy to tell them
apart, the reader should assume the beer fans are drunk and therefore
raucous, misbehaving or maybe just having a lot of fun. But then he
unexpectedly suggests that they were in fact more serious than the ⊞ers.
This gives the reader a problem to address: is he claiming the ⊞ers were
even more outrageous than what we assumed of the beer fans, or the beer
fans were in fact taking their own conference seriously? As both seem
unbelievable the true funniness of the joke hits home in it’s implied
meaning: ⊞ers are boring as fuck.</p>
<h3 id="empty-title-9">empty title</h3>
<h4
id="an-annotation-of-my-practices-as-a-graphic-er-on-a-typical-working-day-23rd-october-2023">An
annotation of my practices as a graphic ⊞er on a typical working day,
23rd October 2023</h4>
<ol type="1">
<li><em>I read an email</em></li>
<li><em>and</em></li>
<li><em>I type</em></li>
<li><em>Alt tab alt tab alt tab alt tab alt tab alt tab alt tab ctrl c
ctrl v ctrl c ctrl v ctrl c ctrl v ctrl c ctrl v ctrl v ctrl v ctrl v
ctrl v ctrl v ctrl v</em></li>
</ol>
<h3 id="empty-title-10">empty title</h3>
<p>⊞ers interact with the computer through keyboard and mouse usage.
Compared to other computer users, my interaction involves lots of
pressing of function keys, something common with other technical
computer users and not so much with other creative workers. What is
creative in the repetitive and low level operation of a computer? Is a
pianist creative? What’s the difference, I think they are being creative
in different ways. ⊞ers and other specialists like video editors or
photo colourists are using a computer as a tool, the musician is
performing on an instrument. Maybe this distinction doesn’t have to be
so clear though. I am questioning this here because I think there is
some fairly complicated belief system about artists and their tools that
has had an effect on ⊞ers. ⊞ gives itself a history of conflict and
harmony between artisans and industrialisation, for example in Bauhaus
founder Walter Gropius claiming William Morris as a precursor (Bayer,
1975). </p>
<p>I think it is important to show that ⊞ers are workers with tools,
their repetitive tasks are a form of labour as are their creative
processes. In the annotation opposite my aim is to mystify the manual
and digital labour, rather than demystify the creative ideation
part. </p>
<p>Following this annotation I made a digital tool to record all
keystrokes on my computer. Then I printed them out with a pen plotter to
celebrate the labour that had taken place. It took several hours to plot
the keylogging data from just a few minutes of the ⊞er’s labour. </p>
<h4 id="libreoffice">LibreOffice</h4>
<ol type="1">
<li><em>I have no idea what any of this structuring does. And I don’t
care. But I would like to remove the page title from the export. It is
in another tab called User Interface. I also select only page 1 to save
to PDF. Now I run into a software issue in this workflow: the best
software for the next part of the job is Adobe Acrobat Pro. How
aggressively do I want to remove this software from my workflow? Not
aggressively enough I guess because here I am still using it. I don’t
know any other software that really gives me details of how a document
will print or lets me edit PDFs on such a useful level.</em></li>
<li><em>For example the title still exported (it always does, is this a
LibreOffice bug or just I don’t know what to do with the new software
yet?). It takes two seconds to remove in edit mode in Acrobat. I also
delete the page number, I don’t even know how to turn that off from
LibreOffice. The print dialogue in Acrobat is also so powerful, its so
easy to print actual size which is important to me. It is structured and
reliable. </em></li>
</ol>
<p>Like many other ⊞ers, I was trained to only use Adobe products. I try
to switch to open source alternatives because I believe in using
software developed and maintained by a community rather than a private
company, and as a worker believe I should be in control of my tools. In
this annotation, I was trying to ⊞ and export a single page document in
LibreOffice, an open source desktop publishing software. The
documentation reflects on my frustrations and struggles to switch to a
workflow that relies less on proprietary software for print ⊞. </p>
<p>Proprietary software from big mean tech corporations is based on a
model of society and economy where a few people own things and everybody
else has a hard time. I believe the internet gives an opportunity for
knowledge (including software code) to be shared. I like the idea of
modifying my tools, this is easier technically and legally with open
source software. I would prefer my tools to be developed by me and my
peers. These are some of my beliefs as a ⊞er about my work and my tools.
They’re a bit idealistic but also optimistic in a good way.</p>
<ul>
<li><em>my god im trying to use scribus to prepare a booklet</em><br />
<em>im going crazy</em><br />
<em>im going crazy</em></li>
<li>Correspondance with kamo, 2024</li>
</ul>
<p>Transitioning to open source software sucks. I spent years learning
other tools and its like starting all over again. There is a dual
commitment in my beliefs about how my tools should be built and my
desire to get things done in a reasonable amount of time. My action of
fumbling with open source programs reflects my belief that they are
worthwhile, and my action of still using Adobe Acrobat Pro reflects my
belief that there are better things to do with my time than restarting
software when it crashes again. Some parts of graphic ⊞ have become so
entangled in capitalist ways of working, it can be immobilising to try
to act without engaging with the icky parts. Our dependencies on
ecosystems of tools and workflows are not enforced, but it can be
difficult to exist outside them, or more specifically, beside them.</p>
<ol type="1">
<li><em>“And I don’t care.” </em></li>
</ol>
<p>It’s so obviously not true. The conflict of wanting to change my
workflow with wanting to complete my work tasks efficiently doesn’t keep
me up at night, but it is important to me and other ⊞ers. Open source ⊞
software is unreliable and unstandardised, it takes longer to do things
and then when they are nearly done the program crashes and I’ve lost all
my work. The standards of open source software have not been widely
embraced by the ⊞ community. To fit into a workflow with peers you have
to use Adobe products. Even web ⊞ers who engage with open standards can
find the need to work with proprietary software, because these tools are
deeply integrated into the workflows of their peers. Can you send me
that in a normal file format please, I can’t open it. <br />
 </p>
<h4 id="work-sans">Work Sans</h4>
<ol type="1">
<li><em>The font is Work Sans SemiBold and it is set in 10pt, colour
“automatic”. I think even if it wasn’t automatic I would make it black,
because I want to print it clearly and cheaply. I use Work Sans because
I am trying to switch to using Open Font Licence and open source fonts
more generally. Previously I would have used Helvetica Now or some other
proprietary font. There is a visual difference between these fonts too
which is also relevant buuuuut this description is getting very detailed
maybe not right now.</em></li>
</ol>
<h3 id="empty-title-11">empty title</h3>
<p>Similarly to the software changes, this documentation of my practice
sees me choosing open source fonts. I’m really ambivalent about this. I
do like the idea of being able to modify a font when needed, but I have
done so regardless of whether the font licence allows it. I’m more
comfortable ethically with a font being open source. Buying fonts is
expensive for freelancers and small studios, and open source fonts are
more commonly free of charge. Many ⊞ers pirate fonts rather than buy
them, or are locked into a font subscription. In Adobe software, Adobe
subscription fonts don’t load unless a connection to the creative cloud
is verified.</p>
<p>For my work, fonts are also a tool, one that I need to practice with
and one that needs to be suitable for the job. So changing font is a
little like a ceramicist changing clay. Work Sans is good for online use
because Google Fonts serves it as a web font for free, the open source
font I want to use is served most reliably by a large corporation I have
issues with. This balancing act of practical considerations and
idealistic beliefs is kind of ironic and reminds me again that my values
can be inconsistent and to me a bit funny. <br />
 <br />
The use of fonts as tools is full of tensions from ⊞ers’ belief systems.
Like many ⊞ers, I want to use open source fonts. I also want to use
fonts that will load quickly from a content delivery network for web
projects. I also want fonts to be cheap and well made and I am
interested in fonts that are free. The internet is full of illegal and
pirated copies of fonts that are not supposed to be free of charge. I
sometimes receive or am asked to send font files outside of their
licence. I dont have a huge amount of respect for some of these
licences. But at the same time font ⊞ers are my friends and colleagues,
I have ⊞ed fonts. What does a ⊞er’s actual use of fonts say about their
beliefs around copyright? Do ⊞ers believe in intellectual property? What
value do ⊞ers, specifically typographers, see in their work and that of
their close peers, the font ⊞ers, and how does copyright relate to these
values?</p>
<h3 id="empty-title-12">empty title</h3>
<h4 id="follow-up-questions-for-conor">Follow up questions for
Conor</h4>
<p>Hey Conor, hope you’re keeping well these days? I’ve been going
through the interview from back in December and was wondering if you
would mind me including this piece in my thesis:</p>
<p>I guess the thesis has become a lot about ⊞ers and the beliefs they
have about their work, and its effect on the world around them. I was
really interested in your answer to this question because I think it
shows something a lot of other ⊞ers including me feel too; some desire
to structure the world around us, to have things be resolved, organised,
fitting together. And not just a desire but maybe even a belief that
this is really what our job is for? Maybe I’m reading too much into it,
but to me this maybe hints at part of the reason we’re am drawn to a
field like graphic ⊞? Curious to know what you think.</p>
<p>And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im
totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.  </p>
<p>Thanks,<br />
Stephen</p>
<h3 id="empty-title-13">empty title</h3>
<h4 id="follow-up-questions-for">Follow up questions for ◱</h4>
<p>Yo ◱, hope all’s good with you these days? </p>
<p>I’ve been piecing together the interviews from December and I’d love
to include this section about your dream if that’s alright with you? It
seems to get at something I feel as well: this system that we’ve built
up and these drawers full of grids, sometimes there’s an angst or
unresolved feeling that they’re not going to work, they dont fit as an
answer to the problem. </p>
<p>For me I think it might be something to do with order and chaos if
that doesn’t seem too much of a stretch, I’ve this need to structure
things and fit them in a form, and the dream seems to get at that fear
that it’s not going to work. The grid is solid but reality turns out to
be jelly at best, but very often custard and little bits of tinned
strawberry and soggy sponge. </p>
<p>I assumed the dream is about the pressure or anxiety of running a
studio? I wonder for you, do you see it more relating to the work itself
or the management around that, or are these things that you consider
separate from eachother? I’m curious to know if you think of it the same
way, or maybe it’s something else to you and I’m projecting :)</p>
<p>And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im
totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.</p>
<p>Thanks,<br />
Stephen</p>
<h3 id="empty-title-14">empty title</h3>
<h4 id="follow-up-questions-for-1">Follow up questions for ◳</h4>
<p>Hey ◳, hope youre good! </p>
<p>I’m thinking of putting this section of the interview we did back in
december in my thesis. Is that ok with you? I want to include it because
I think it really captures some emotions that ⊞ers feel quite often,
some stress or anxiety or an attempt to grab onto something more stable.
But I also find it really interesting that you were talking about jelly
slipping through your hands, any idea why you didn’t say sand or mud or
gold but jelly? To me it seems like a fun and cute material to pick,
even though its a bit lumpy and maybe even kinda gross sometimes. </p>
<p>I’ve been really interested in foods made of gelatin recently and
there’s something so mesmerising about them even though they’re never
the most appetising, and for sure unnatural or over-processed. Maybe you
just said it off hand, but it makes sense to me as well about being a
⊞er in some way? Something enjoyable and lovable about the jelly despite
its weird unnatural wiggliness. Really interested to know if you have
any thoughts or maybe you meant something completely different.</p>
<p>And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im
totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.  </p>
<p>Thanks,<br />
Stephen</p>
<h4 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h4>
<p>The title of this document, ⊞, was borrowed from the mathematical
theory of free probability where it symbolises free additive
convolution, a way of relating terms that is more nuanced than
traditional ideas of cause and effect. In the fragmented look at ⊞ in
this document, which we’ve reached the end of now, I hope to have done
something similar: a convoluted addition, freely placing things together
to be held for a moment. </p>
<p>⊞ involves a wide range of activities; typing, drawing grids,
communicating with other specialists, quoting, drinking coffee, working
out of office hours, having panic attacks, arguing, building myths,
personal expression, keyboard shortcuts, dreaming, rubbing paper and
exhaling, tilting your head and looking at the screen. We have examined
when and how these actions happen, and more importantly, why they do,
according to the ⊞ers carrying them out. </p>
<p>These stories were gathered through various modes of describing,
listening and understanding. It is important that these are different
from conventional ways to frame the discipline, as I think a shift in
viewpoint is needed. So not “⊞er as Author” (Rock, 1996), “⊞er as
salesperson” (Pater, 2021) but instead ⊞er “sitting at the machine,
thinking” (Brodine, 1990) or “⊞er without qualities” (Lorusso, 2023).
The fragments have been situated and subjective rather than objective,
they have been outside of categories because the categories are broken
anyway. </p>
<h3 id="empty-title-15">empty title</h3>
<h4 id="conclusion-1">Conclusion</h4>
<p>Last night I dreamt I was standing on a hill in the Swiss Alps and
you were there and all of our friends and the hill was covered in little
fields but not like a grid like lots of different shapes and sizes and
the sky opened in two and a ring of light so bright it nearly blinded me
came out of my chest and yours and they all merged into eachother and
everyone opened their mouths to sing and the air was filled with so many
sounds and one ⊞er walked up to me and smiled and said </p>
<ul>
<li><p>“I dunno, I’m more confused than ever”</p></li>
<li><p>and they said </p></li>
<li><p>and then you said</p></li>
<li><p>“a funny feeling its a bit weird”</p></li>
<li><p>“I’m just trying to touch it gently and acknowledge it” </p></li>
<li><p>“live the gap between where you are and where you could
be” </p></li>
</ul>
<p>and then I was them and you were me and we laughed and fell over and
the hill turned into a bright pink jelly ocean the whole sky was this
sort of green-blue and we all surfed wobbly waves and some people’s
surfboards were Quiksilver and some they had built themselves from a git
repository but the sun was a walnut and it was definitely moving but I
couldnt tell was it rising or setting but it didn’t matter to us the
surf was great and everything smelled like magnolias.</p>
<h3 id="empty-title-16">empty title</h3>
<h3 id="empty-title-17">empty title</h3>
<h3 id="empty-title-18">empty title</h3>
<h4 id="acknowledgements">Acknowledgements</h4>
<p>Thanks to Ada, Aglaia, Ben, Chae, Conor, Irmak, Jenny, Joseph, kamo,
Leslie, Manetta, Marloes, Michael, Rossi.</p>
<h2 id="bibliography">Bibliography</h2>
<p>Bayer, H. <em>et al.</em> (1975) <em>Bauhaus, 1919-1928</em>. New
York: Museum of Modern Art. </p>
<p>Berlant, L. (2022) <em>On the Inconvenience of Other People</em>,
Durham: Duke University Press.</p>
<p>Brodine, K. (1990) <em>Woman Sitting at the Machine, Thinking:
Poems</em>. Seattle: Red Letter Press.</p>
<p>creativechair (2018) ‘Michael Bierut’ [Interview], <em>Creative
Chair</em>. Available at: creativechair.org/michael-bierut (Accessed: 15
April 2024).</p>
<p><em>Design West</em> (2024) <em>Design West</em>. Available at:
designwest.eu (Accessed: 16 April 2024).</p>
<p>Driessen, C. P. G. (2020). Descartes was here; In Search of the
Origin of Cartesian Space’. In R. Koolhaas (Ed.), <em>Countryside, A
Report</em> (pp. 274-297)<br />
 <br />
Gates, B (2004) <em>Remarks by Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software
Architect, Microsoft Corporation</em> [speech transcript] University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign February 24, 2004 Available at:
web.archive.org/web/<br />
20040607040830/<a
href="https://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2004/02-24UnivIllinois.asp"
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<h4 id="colophon">Colophon</h4>
<p>Written manically and edited in vexation in Etherpad. Composed
excitedly using paged.js. Typeset confidently in Work Sans by Wei Huang.
Digitally printed nervously at Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam on
Schoellershammer 75gsm and Clairefontaine Maya 270gsm.</p>
<p>Copyright held reluctantly by Stephen Kerr, 2024 under the SIXX
Licence, a free, copyleft license for rituals, games, books and
consolations in any medium, both software and hardware. For the purposes
of this paper, licensing is understood as a responsibility towards an
audience, towards each other and towards other people who might want to
contribute to, use or amplify any work. The precise terms can be found
at issue.xpub.nl/20/license</p>
<p>If you like this colophon you should really read the rest of the
thesis, its written specifically for you.</p>
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