From 87934168da5efc21e183b6ba9d66b87cb75aaffc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: suzan Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2024 21:21:05 +0300 Subject: [PATCH] imagesizes --- irmak/index.md | 19 +- print/index.html | 2636 +++++++++++++++++++++++----------------------- 2 files changed, 1309 insertions(+), 1346 deletions(-) diff --git a/irmak/index.md b/irmak/index.md index 2ccda34..990c966 100644 --- a/irmak/index.md +++ b/irmak/index.md @@ -14,27 +14,28 @@ Wink is a prototype for an interactive picture book platform. This platform aims !["From the event at Leeszaal West, experimenting with knots and poetry. How can we see movement in text?"](../irmak/leeszaalknotpoems.jpg) {.image-95} -!["From the event at Leeszaal West. Some of the results of knotting text"](../irmak/knotpoems2.jpg){image-95} +!["From the event at Leeszaal West. Some of the results of knotting text"](../irmak/knotpoems2.jpg){.image-95} Working as a children's literature editor for years, I came to a realisation that picture books were turning into another object that kids read and consume on daily basis. At least this is what I observed in Turkey. Teachers and parents were finding it difficult to find new books constantly or were tired of rereading the same book. As a young person in the publishing sector, I believe there should be more options for children as there is for adults; such as ebooks, audiobooks etc. But moreover a "book" that can be redefined, reread or be interacted with. So I revisited an old story I wrote, translated to English and named it, "Bee Within". -!["Example page from the print version of the picture book."](../irmak/printp22.jpg) {image-95} +!["Example page from the print version of the picture book."](../irmak/printp22.jpg) {.image-95} -!["Example page from the print version of the picture book."](../irmak/printp2.jpg) {image-95} +!["Example page from the print version of the picture book."](../irmak/printp2.jpg) {.image-95} Bee Within, is a story about grief and it is based on my experiences throughout the years. I erased it, rewrote it, edited it, destroyed it multiple times over the past years, simultaneously with new experiences of loss. In the end, I believe the story turned out to be an ode to remembering or might I say an ode to not being able to forget or an ode to the fear of forgetting which I now think is a great and sweet battle between death and life. I think it is an important subject to touch upon, especially for children dealing with trauma in many parts of the world. -!["example page from the picture book"](../irmak/printp1.jpg) {half-image} +!["example page from the picture book"](../irmak/printp1.jpg) {.half-image} -!["example page from the picture book"](../irmak/printp33.jpg) {image-95} +!["example page from the picture book"](../irmak/printp33.jpg) {.image-95} -!["example page from the picture book"](../irmak/printp3.jpg) {image-95} +!["example page from the picture book"](../irmak/printp3.jpg) {.image-95} Over the past two years, experimenting with storytelling techniques, interactivity options and workshops with children and adults, around reading and doing various exercises on Bee Within, I improved the story to be a more playful and interactive one which can be re-read, re-played and eventually re-formed non digitally to be reachable for all children. -!["The twine map of text based story, reachable from Bee Within by clicking to hear more about Gray the tree."](../irmak/twine.png) {half-image} +!["The twine map of text based story, reachable from Bee Within by clicking to hear more about Gray the tree."](../irmak/twine.png) {.half-image} -!["Click game story of the Queen Bee that is reachable within Maya's main storyline."](clickgame.png){half image} +!["Click game story of the Queen Bee that is reachable within Maya's main storyline."](clickgame.png) +{.half image} -!["A small sequence of onclick animation for Bee Within"](../irmak/animationseq.png) {image-95} +!["A small sequence of onclick animation for Bee Within"](../irmak/animationseq.png) {.image-95} diff --git a/print/index.html b/print/index.html index f15f3f7..c5485d7 100644 --- a/print/index.html +++ b/print/index.html @@ -22,42 +22,42 @@ -
  • <?water bodies>
    • +
  • Backplaces
    • -
  • Backplaces
    • +
  • <?water bodies>
    • -
  • Performing the Bureaucratic Border(line)s
    • +
  • Talking Documents
    • -
  • Talking Documents
    • +
  • Performing the Bureaucratic Border(line)s
    • -
  • Fair Leads
    • +
  • Wink!
    • -
  • Wink!
    • +
  • Fair Leads
    • -
  • ⊞
    • +
  • do you ever dream about work?
    • -
  • do you ever dream about work?
    • +
  • ⊞


    • @@ -139,6 +139,117 @@ touched.

    +

    Backplaces

    +

    vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/backplaces

    +

    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 Cake Intimacies. 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 about leaving +and siblings. This project used 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 feelings are secretly whispered to me. When you do, by typing into +the comment box, your feelings are sent to me and the first act closes +as the sun rises.
    +

    +
    + + +
    +
    + + +
    +

    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. As an act it’s a series of +letters, click by click.
    +

    +
    +The first letter. + +
    +
    +The second letter. + +
    +

    Cake Intimacies is a performance that took a year to bring together. +It is a small selection of stories people told me and I held to memory +and rewrote here. The stories come from two performances I hosted. +First, I asked participants to eat cake, sitting facing or away from +each other and sharing their stories about cake and the Internet. The +second performance was hosted at the Art Meets Radical Openness +Festival, as part of the Turning of the Internet workshop. For this +performance, I predicted participants’ future lives on the Internet +using felted archetypes and received stories from their Internet past in +return. Now the stories are here, each of them a cake with a filling +that tells a story, merging the bodily with the digital and making a +mess of it all.
    +

    +
    + + +
    +
    + + +
    +

    The play ends as all plays do. The curtains close, the website stays +but the stories will never sound the same. For the final act, I give you +the stories. It’s one last game, one last joke to ask my question again. +Digital intimacies about the digital, our bodies and the cakes we eat. +For the last act, I ask you to eat digital stories. To eat a comment, to +eat a digital intimacy. Sharing an act of physical intimacy with +yourself and with me, by eating sweets together. Sweets about digital +intimacies that never had a body. There is no moral, no bow to wrap the +story in. A great big mess of transcendence into the digital, of +intimacy and of bodies. The way it always is. Thankfully.
    +

    +
    + + +
    + +
    + + + +

    <?water bodies>

    A narrative exploration of divergent digital intimacies

    @@ -850,118 +961,105 @@ University of Nebraska Press.

    -
    -

    Backplaces

    -

    vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/backplaces

    -

    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 Cake Intimacies. 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 about leaving -and siblings. This project used 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 feelings are secretly whispered to me. When you do, by typing into -the comment box, your feelings are sent to me and the first act closes -as the sun rises.
    -

    +
    +

    Talking Documents

    +

    - - + +
    +

    This project appeared as a need to explore potential bureaucratic +dramaturgies within the educational institution I was part as a student. +I was curious about educational bureaucratic mechanisms being driven by +smaller-scale paperwork struggles and peers’ narratives, stories and +experiences. However, unexpected emergencies - due to my eviction on the +31st of January 2024 - placed centrally my personal struggles unfolded +in parallel with the making period. I ended up conducting accidentally +auto-ethnography as the project was dynamically being reshaped due to +the material constraints of the bureaucratic timeline.

    +

    Talking Documents are performative bureaucratic text inspections that +intend to create temporal public interventions through performative +readings. 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 regulatory mechanism +reflecting narratives, ideologies, policies.

    +

    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. 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 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.

    - - + +
    -

    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. As an act it’s a series of -letters, click by click.
    -

    +

    -The first letter. - + +
    +

    +

    I perceive the document as a unit and as the fundamental symbolic +interface of the bureaucratic network. The transformation of the +materiality of a document into a scenario to be enacted collectively in +public aims to examine these artifacts and highlight the shrouded +performative elements of these processes.

    +

    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 organized a +series of performative readings of my own bureaucratic literature in +different spaces and contexts, pubic and semi-public WDKA, Art Meets +Radical Openness Festival in Linz, the City Hall of Rotterdam where I +invited people to perform the play together, like a tiny theater.

    -The second letter. - + +
    -

    Cake Intimacies is a performance that took a year to bring together. -It is a small selection of stories people told me and I held to memory -and rewrote here. The stories come from two performances I hosted. -First, I asked participants to eat cake, sitting facing or away from -each other and sharing their stories about cake and the Internet. The -second performance was hosted at the Art Meets Radical Openness -Festival, as part of the Turning of the Internet workshop. For this -performance, I predicted participants’ future lives on the Internet -using felted archetypes and received stories from their Internet past in -return. Now the stories are here, each of them a cake with a filling -that tells a story, merging the bodily with the digital and making a -mess of it all.
    -

    +

    - - + +
    - - -
    -

    The play ends as all plays do. The curtains close, the website stays -but the stories will never sound the same. For the final act, I give you -the stories. It’s one last game, one last joke to ask my question again. -Digital intimacies about the digital, our bodies and the cakes we eat. -For the last act, I ask you to eat digital stories. To eat a comment, to -eat a digital intimacy. Sharing an act of physical intimacy with -yourself and with me, by eating sweets together. Sweets about digital -intimacies that never had a body. There is no moral, no bow to wrap the -story in. A great big mess of transcendence into the digital, of -intimacy and of bodies. The way it always is. Thankfully.
    -

    -
    - - +The garden of Gemeente +
    +

    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 voiced scenario. This audio piece is a constellation of +different recordings and soundscapes of these public moments, a vocal +archive, published in the graduation exhibition of XPUB in 2024.

    -
    +

    Performing the Bureaucratic Border(line)s

    @@ -1871,105 +1969,82 @@ and solidarity in the wake of Europe’s refugee crisis. London: Rowman -
    -

    Talking Documents

    -

    -
    - - -
    -

    This project appeared as a need to explore potential bureaucratic -dramaturgies within the educational institution I was part as a student. -I was curious about educational bureaucratic mechanisms being driven by -smaller-scale paperwork struggles and peers’ narratives, stories and -experiences. However, unexpected emergencies - due to my eviction on the -31st of January 2024 - placed centrally my personal struggles unfolded -in parallel with the making period. I ended up conducting accidentally -auto-ethnography as the project was dynamically being reshaped due to -the material constraints of the bureaucratic timeline.

    -

    Talking Documents are performative bureaucratic text inspections that -intend to create temporal public interventions through performative -readings. 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 regulatory mechanism -reflecting narratives, ideologies, policies.

    -

    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. 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 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 as the fundamental symbolic -interface of the bureaucratic network. The transformation of the -materiality of a document into a scenario to be enacted collectively in -public aims to examine these artifacts and highlight the shrouded -performative elements of these processes.

    -

    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 organized a -series of performative readings of my own bureaucratic literature in -different spaces and contexts, pubic and semi-public WDKA, Art Meets -Radical Openness Festival in Linz, the City Hall of Rotterdam where I -invited people to perform the play together, like a tiny theater.

    -
    - - -
    -

    -
    - - -
    +
    +

    Wink!

    +

    A Prototype +for Interactive Children’s Literature

    +

    Wink is a prototype for an interactive picture book platform. This +platform aims to make reading into a mindfull and thought provoking +process by using interactive and playful elements, multiple stories +within one narrative and sound elements. Especially today where +consumerism and low attention span is a rising issue especially amongst +young readers, this was an important task to tackle. The thought of Wink +emerged to find a more sustainable and creative way of reading for +elementary school children.

    +

    +{.half-image}

    +

    +{.image-95}

    -The garden of Gemeente - + +
    -

    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 voiced scenario. This audio piece is a constellation of -different recordings and soundscapes of these public moments, a vocal -archive, published in the graduation exhibition of XPUB in 2024.

    +

    Working as a children’s literature editor for years, I came to a +realisation that picture books were turning into another object that +kids read and consume on daily basis. At least this is what I observed +in Turkey. Teachers and parents were finding it difficult to find new +books constantly or were tired of rereading the same book. As a young +person in the publishing sector, I believe there should be more options +for children as there is for adults; such as ebooks, audiobooks etc. But +moreover a “book” that can be redefined, reread or be interacted with. +So I revisited an old story I wrote, translated to English and named it, +“Bee Within”.

    +

    +{.image-95}

    +

    +{.image-95}

    +

    Bee Within, is a story about grief and it is based on my experiences +throughout the years. I erased it, rewrote it, edited it, destroyed it +multiple times over the past years, simultaneously with new experiences +of loss. In the end, I believe the story turned out to be an ode to +remembering or might I say an ode to not being able to forget or an ode +to the fear of forgetting which I now think is a great and sweet battle +between death and life. I think it is an important subject to touch +upon, especially for children dealing with trauma in many parts of the +world.

    +

    {.half-image}

    +

    {.image-95}

    +

    {.image-95}

    +

    Over the past two years, experimenting with storytelling techniques, +interactivity options and workshops with children and adults, around +reading and doing various exercises on Bee Within, I improved the story +to be a more playful and interactive one which can be re-read, re-played +and eventually re-formed non digitally to be reachable for all +children.

    +

    +{.half-image}

    +

    +{.half image}

    +

    +{.image-95}

    -
    +

    Fair Leads

    Fair @@ -2774,1165 +2849,96 @@ codes-in-knots-sensing-digital-memories/.

    -
    -

    Wink!

    -

    A Prototype -for Interactive Children’s Literature

    -

    Wink is a prototype for an interactive picture book platform. This -platform aims to make reading into a mindfull and thought provoking -process by using interactive and playful elements, multiple stories -within one narrative and sound elements. Especially today where -consumerism and low attention span is a rising issue especially amongst -young readers, this was an important task to tackle. The thought of Wink -emerged to find a more sustainable and creative way of reading for -elementary school children.

    -
    - - -
    +
    +

    do you ever dream about +work?

    +

    stephen kerr, 2024

    +

    Reading an email in a dream and you can hear the voices of every word +you read. Or the one where you’re on a computer working, frantically +typing, late, stressed, rushed. What about that dream where you had no +idea how to do your job, everyone is going to know you’re a fake. In +this project I have made spaces for us to share our dreams about labour, +and through that allow conversations about our work, our working +conditions, and the feelings we’re left with when we fall asleep each +night.

    +

    For the past year I have spoken with designers, artists and makers +finding out how they spend their time in everyday life, what they +believe and how they feel. In our dreams we feel the weird bits the +most: hmm a bit uncomfortable, ooh that gave me a fright, aah so, so +sad. Through performances, online tools and storytelling, I want to hold +these dreams together, to unite our experiences. Online I have made tools to gather +stories and tools to tell them. I have facilitated group dream re-enactments (a few times), using felt dolls to share our night time +theatre.

    +

    stephen kerr is a graphic designer or a musician or a very weird +and long dream.

    + + + +
    - - + +
    - - + +
    -

    Working as a children’s literature editor for years, I came to a -realisation that picture books were turning into another object that -kids read and consume on daily basis. At least this is what I observed -in Turkey. Teachers and parents were finding it difficult to find new -books constantly or were tired of rereading the same book. As a young -person in the publishing sector, I believe there should be more options -for children as there is for adults; such as ebooks, audiobooks etc. But -moreover a “book” that can be redefined, reread or be interacted with. -So I revisited an old story I wrote, translated to English and named it, -“Bee Within”.

    - - + +
    - - -
    -

    Bee Within, is a story about grief and it is based on my experiences -throughout the years. I erased it, rewrote it, edited it, destroyed it -multiple times over the past years, simultaneously with new experiences -of loss. In the end, I believe the story turned out to be an ode to -remembering or might I say an ode to not being able to forget or an ode -to the fear of forgetting which I now think is a great and sweet battle -between death and life. I think it is an important subject to touch -upon, especially for children dealing with trauma in many parts of the -world.

    -
    - - -
    -
    - - -
    -

    Over the past two years, experimenting with storytelling techniques, -interactivity options and workshops with children and adults, around -reading and doing various exercises on Bee Within, I improved the story -to be a more playful and interactive one which can be re-read, re-played -and eventually re-formed non digitally to be reachable for all -children.

    -
    - - -
    -
    - - -
    -

    Here is some more documentation from the beggining of this journey -towards making accesible interactive narratives…

    -
    - - -
    -
    - - -
    - -
    - - - -
    -

    ⊞

    -
    -

    Stephen Kerr

    -

    ⊞

    -

    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 & ⊞: Experimental Publishing.

    -

    Adviser: Marloes de Valk
    -Second Reader: Joseph Knierzinger
    -Word count: 7828 words

    -

    To de-sign design, I -will assign a sign: ⊞

    -

    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).

    -
    -The Cadaster of Orange, unknown ⊞er, c. 100 CE. -
    -Grid Systems in Graphic ⊞, Josef Muller-Brockmann, 1981. -
    - - -
    -
    - - -
    -
    - - -
    -
    - - + +
    -The Po Valley, The Roman Empire, 268 BCE. - + +
    -Monogram, Piet Zwart, c. 1968. - -
    -
    -

    Introduction

    -

    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. 

    -

    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 -⊞? 

    -

    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. 

    -

    What is a ⊞er?

    -
      -
    1. 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. 
      2. -
    2. 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.
      3. -
    -

    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. 

    -

    ⊞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. 

    -

    Geestelijk

    -

    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. 

    -

    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 -Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art (1917). They claimed a shared -spirit was driving this universalisation. A later paragraph of the -manifesto is translated into english as:

    -
      -
    • “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.”
      • -
    -

    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:

    -
      -
    • “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.”
      • -
    -

    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. 

    -

    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? 

    -

    Excerpt -from an interview with Conor Clarke, 1st December 2023

    -

    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 ⊞, 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. (⊞west.eu, 2023)

    -
    -
      -
    • SK: What do you think is the best shape?
      • -
    • CC: Oh yeah, good god. square.
      • -
    • SK: Square? how come?
      • -
    • CC: Dunno, it just, it just seems resolved. I don’t like spheres. -Circles I sometimes like.
      • -
    • SK: Yeah, squares, do you use grids?
      • -
    • CC: Sometimes. Not always.
      • -
    • SK: Once you have grids squares make sense. But you like squares -maybe because you like logos?
      • -
    • 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.
      • -
    • SK: That’s a bit chaotic?
      • -
    • 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.
      • -
    • SK: Things are a bit organised when there’s squares around?
      • -
    • 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.
      • -
    • SK: Its something else?
      • -
    • CC: Yeah. so yeah.
      • -
    • SK: At least you didn’t say triangle.
      • -
    • CC: Oh good god. Good god no.
      • -
    - -

    Maths and grids

    -

    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 Grid Systems (Figure 2) -for example or Karl Gerstner’s ⊞ing Programmes (1964). I read -these ⊞ theorists as you might comparatively read religious texts. What -were or are the beliefs of the authors and their audiences?
    -    
    -    
    -    
    -    
    -    
    -    
    -    
    -    
    -    
    -    
    -    
    -    
    -    
    -    

    -
      -
    • “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.”
      • -
    • (Gerstner, 1964)
      • -
    • “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.”
      • -
    • (Muller-Brockman, 1981)
      • -
    -

    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. 

    -

    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.

    -

    The ⊞ grid and the written -word

    -

    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 CARNIVAL -(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. 

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      -
    • “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.”
      • -
    • Description of Steve McCaffrey’s CARNIVAL
      -(The Idea of the Book, 2024)
      • -
    -
    -

    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?

    -

    Mystically -assigning or finding meanings in ⊞

    -

    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. 

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    -
      -
    1. 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.
      2. -
    2. 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.
      3. -
    3. 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?
      4. -
    4. I have taken three of the forty steps.
      5. -
    5. I have taken seven of the forty steps.
      6. -
    6. ⊞ 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?
      7. -
    7. I have taken eleven of the forty steps. I will rest.
      8. -
    -

    What -does ⊞ do? What is the ⊞er trying to do by pressing all these buttons -and making the screen vibrate?

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      -
    • “⊞ only generates longing”
      • -
    • (Van Der Velden, 2006)
      • -
    -

    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.

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      -
    • “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.”
      • -
    • Michael Bierut (creativechair.org, 2018)
      • -
    -

    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?

    -
    -
      -
    • “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.”
      • -
    • (Hu, 2022)
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    -

    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.

    -

    Excerpt -from an interview with the members of Distinctive Repetition on 1st -December 2023.

    -

    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.

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      -
    • ◲: whats your favourite colour?
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    • ◰: red.
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    • ◲: red.
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    • ◱: really? thats it? are you fucking kidding me?
      • -
    • ◰: do i fill it in?
      • -
    • ◳: they’re warm up questions obviously they’re to get you -comfortable answering questions.
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    • ◳: yellow
      • -
    • ◲: 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?
      • -
    • ◳: jelly that’s not quite solid
      • -
    • ◳: not quite solidified in the fridge yet
      • -
    • ◳: and its just oozing through my fingers
      • -
    • (redacted sentence)
      • -
    • ◳: that’s what today has been like but its my brain thats oozing out -of me
      • -
    • ◲: yes. that’s a good answer. ok will we keep going in a -circle?
      • -
    • ◱: whatever you like bro.
      • -
    • ◲: do you ever dream about work?
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    • ◱: all the time.
      • -
    • ◲: would you care to share one of those dreams?
      • -
    • ◱: 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.
      • -
    • ◳: weren’t you taking grids out of drawers in a dream recently?
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    • ◱: yeah yeah.
      • -
    • (obscured)
      • -
    • ◲: why were you taking grids out of drawers?
      • -
    • ◱: 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.
      • -
    • (section redacted by request of interviewees)
      • -
    - -

    About the interview

    -

    Before meeting them in person, I mailed a small booklet to the -interviewees entitled Enthusiasm 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:
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    • “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. The -Method of Properly Guiding the Reason in the Search of Truth in the -Sciences 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.”
      • -
    -

    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 -relationship with grids that there -is a relationship with ⊞.

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      -
    • ◳: jelly that’s not quite solid, not quite solidified in the fridge -yet and its just oozing through my fingers
      • -
    - -

    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? 

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      -
    • ◱: 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.
      • -
    -

    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.

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    • ◱: just fucking use those grids
      • -
    - -

    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.

    -

    Modern work

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    • “A cause becomes unmodern at the moment when our feelings revolt, -and as soon as we feel ourselves becoming ridiculous”
      • -
    • Adolf Loos, On Thrift, 1924 (Loos, 2019)
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    -

    Adolf Loos was a modernist architect whose writings such as -Ornament and Crime 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 The Protestant Ethic and the -Spirit of Capitalism (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. 

    -

    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.

    -

    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.

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    The Roman grid

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    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:

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      -
    • “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.”
      • -
    • Descartes was Here, Clemens Driessen, 2020
      • -
    -

    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. 

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    -
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    • ◱: for fucks sake why don’t we use those grids
      • -
    - -

    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.

    -

    An -analysis of a joke about ⊞ in the early 21st century

    -

    When reviewing the AIGA Next conference in Denver Colorado, 2008, ⊞ -critic Adrian Shaughnessy tells a joke:

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    • “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.”
      • -
    • (Shaughnessy, 2013)
      • -
    -

    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.

    -
    -

    An -annotation of my practices as a graphic ⊞er on a typical working day, -23rd October 2023

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    1. I read an email
      2. -
    2. and
      3. -
    3. I type
      4. -
    4. 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
      5. -
    -
    -

    ⊞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). 

    -

    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. 

    -

    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. 

    -

    LibreOffice

    -
      -
    1. 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.
      2. -
    2. 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. 
      3. -
    -

    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 ⊞. 

    -

    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.

    -
      -
    • my god im trying to use scribus to prepare a booklet
      -im going crazy
      -im going crazy
      • -
    • Correspondance with kamo, 2024
      • -
    -

    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.

    -
      -
    1. “And I don’t care.” 
      2. -
    -

    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. 
    - 

    -

    Work Sans

    -
      -
    1. 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.
      2. -
    -
    -

    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.

    -

    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. 
    - 
    -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?

    -
    -

    Follow up questions for -Conor

    -

    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:

    -

    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.

    -

    And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im -totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.  

    -

    Thanks,
    -Stephen

    -
    -

    Follow up questions for ◱

    -

    Yo ◱, hope all’s good with you these days? 

    -

    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. 

    -

    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. 

    -

    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 :)

    -

    And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im -totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.

    -

    Thanks,
    -Stephen

    -
    -

    Follow up questions for ◳

    -

    Hey ◳, hope youre good! 

    -

    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. 

    -

    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.

    -

    And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im -totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.  

    -

    Thanks,
    -Stephen

    -

    Conclusion

    -

    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. 

    -

    ⊞ 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. 

    -

    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. 

    -
    -

    Conclusion

    -

    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 

    -
      -

    • “I dunno, I’m more confused than ever”

      • -

    • and they said 

      • -

    • and then you said

      • -

    • “a funny feeling its a bit weird”

      • -

    • “I’m just trying to touch it gently and acknowledge it” 

      • -

    • “live the gap between where you are and where you could -be” 

      • -
    -

    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.

    -
    -
    -
    -

    Acknowledgements

    -

    Thanks to Ada, Aglaia, Ben, Chae, Conor, Irmak, Jenny, Joseph, kamo, -Leslie, Manetta, Marloes, Michael, Rossi.

    -

    Bibliography

    -

    Bayer, H. et al. (1975) Bauhaus, 1919-1928. New -York: Museum of Modern Art. 

    -

    Berlant, L. (2022) On the Inconvenience of Other People, -Durham: Duke University Press.

    -

    Brodine, K. (1990) Woman Sitting at the Machine, Thinking: -Poems. Seattle: Red Letter Press.

    -

    creativechair (2018) ‘Michael Bierut’ [Interview], Creative -Chair. Available at: creativechair.org/michael-bierut (Accessed: 15 -April 2024).

    -

    Design West (2024) Design West. Available at: -designwest.eu (Accessed: 16 April 2024).

    -

    Driessen, C. P. G. (2020). Descartes was here; In Search of the -Origin of Cartesian Space’. In R. Koolhaas (Ed.), Countryside, A -Report (pp. 274-297)
    - 
    -Gates, B (2004) Remarks by Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software -Architect, Microsoft Corporation [speech transcript] University of -Illinois Urbana-Champaign February 24, 2004 Available at: -web.archive.org/web/
    -20040607040830/https://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2004/02-24UnivIllinois.asp -(Accessed: 13 April 2024)

    -

    Gerstner, K. and Keller, D. (1964) Designing Programmes. -Teufen (AR): Niggli. 

    -

    Google (2014) Introduction, Material Design. -Available at: m1.material.io (Accessed: 16 April 2024). 

    -

    Hu, T.-H. (2024) Digital Lethargy: Dispatches from an age of -disconnection. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 

    -

    The Idea of the Book (2024) CARNIVAL: the first panel -1967–70 [book description] Available at: theideaofthe
    -book.com/pages/books/529/steve-mccaffery/carnival-the-first-panel-1967-70 -(Accessed: 13 April 2024)

    -

    Loos, A. (2019) Ornament and Crime. London: Penguin. 

    -

    Lorusso, S. (2023) What Design Can’t Do: Essays on design and -disillusion. Eindhoven: Set Margins. 

    -

    Mondriaan , P. et al., (1917) ‘Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art’, -De Stijl, Nov. 

    -

    Mould, O. (2018) Against Creativity. London: Verso.

    -

    Müller-Brockmann, J. (1981) Grid systems in graphic ⊞. -Stuttgart: Hatje. 

    -

    Pater, R. (2021) Caps Lock. Amsterdam: Valiz.

    -

    Rock, M., (1996) The ⊞er as Author. Available at: -2x4.org/ideas/1996/⊞er-as-author (Accessed: 16 April 2024). 

    -

    Shaughnessy, A. (2005) How to Be a Graphic ⊞er, without Losing -Your Soul. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press.

    -

    Shaughnessy, A. (2013) Scratching the Surface. London: Unit -Editions.

    -

    Tufte, E (1991) The Visual Display of Quantitative -Information. Cheshire: Graphics Press.

    -

    Van der Velden, D., (2006) ‘Research & Destroy: A Plea for ⊞ as -Research’, Metropolis M 2, April/May 2006.

    -

    Van Doesburg, T. et al. (1917) ‘Manifesto I’, De Stijl, -Nov. 

    -

    Van Doesburg, T. et al. (1921) -‘Manifesto III’, De Stijl, Aug.

    -

    Warde, B. (1913) ‘Printing Should be Invisible’ The Crystal -Goblet, Sixteen Essays on Typography, London: The Sylvan Press.

    -

    Weber, M., (1905) “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of -Capitalism”, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften 20, no. 1 (1904), -pp. 1–54; 21, no. 1 (1905), pp. 1–110.

    - -
    - - - -
    -

    do you ever dream about -work?

    -

    stephen kerr, 2024

    -

    Reading an email in a dream and you can hear the voices of every word -you read. Or the one where you’re on a computer working, frantically -typing, late, stressed, rushed. What about that dream where you had no -idea how to do your job, everyone is going to know you’re a fake. In -this project I have made spaces for us to share our dreams about labour, -and through that allow conversations about our work, our working -conditions, and the feelings we’re left with when we fall asleep each -night.

    -

    For the past year I have spoken with designers, artists and makers -finding out how they spend their time in everyday life, what they -believe and how they feel. In our dreams we feel the weird bits the -most: hmm a bit uncomfortable, ooh that gave me a fright, aah so, so -sad. Through performances, online tools and storytelling, I want to hold -these dreams together, to unite our experiences. Online I have made tools to gather -stories and tools to tell them. I have facilitated group dream re-enactments (a few times), using felt dolls to share our night time -theatre.

    -

    stephen kerr is a graphic designer or a musician or a very weird -and long dream.

    - - - -
    -
    - - -
    -
    - - -
    -
    - - -
    -
    - -
    -Web page to share and read labour dreams. Scroll down for more. -
    -
    -
    - -
    -Interactive dream telling. Click then type your story. -
    -
    -
    - - -
    -
    - - -
    -
    - - + +

    Licensing information

    This work is free to distribute or modify under the terms of the SIXX @@ -4350,6 +3356,962 @@ I made this to explore why designers make design, based on Clifford Geertz's ide +

    +

    ⊞

    +
    +

    Stephen Kerr

    +

    ⊞

    +

    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 & ⊞: Experimental Publishing.

    +

    Adviser: Marloes de Valk
    +Second Reader: Joseph Knierzinger
    +Word count: 7828 words

    +

    To de-sign design, I +will assign a sign: ⊞

    +

    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).

    +
    +The Cadaster of Orange, unknown ⊞er, c. 100 CE. + +
    +
    +Grid Systems in Graphic ⊞, Josef Muller-Brockmann, 1981. + +
    +
    + + +
    +
    + + +
    +
    + + +
    +
    + + +
    +
    +The Po Valley, The Roman Empire, 268 BCE. + +
    +
    +Monogram, Piet Zwart, c. 1968. + +
    +
    +

    Introduction

    +

    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. 

    +

    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 +⊞? 

    +

    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. 

    +

    What is a ⊞er?

    +
      +
    1. 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. 
      2. +
    2. 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.
      3. +
    +

    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. 

    +

    ⊞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. 

    +

    Geestelijk

    +

    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. 

    +

    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 +Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art (1917). They claimed a shared +spirit was driving this universalisation. A later paragraph of the +manifesto is translated into english as:

    +
      +
    • “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.”
      • +
    +

    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:

    +
      +
    • “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.”
      • +
    +

    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. 

    +

    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? 

    +

    Excerpt +from an interview with Conor Clarke, 1st December 2023

    +

    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 ⊞, 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. (⊞west.eu, 2023)

    +
    +
      +
    • SK: What do you think is the best shape?
      • +
    • CC: Oh yeah, good god. square.
      • +
    • SK: Square? how come?
      • +
    • CC: Dunno, it just, it just seems resolved. I don’t like spheres. +Circles I sometimes like.
      • +
    • SK: Yeah, squares, do you use grids?
      • +
    • CC: Sometimes. Not always.
      • +
    • SK: Once you have grids squares make sense. But you like squares +maybe because you like logos?
      • +
    • 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.
      • +
    • SK: That’s a bit chaotic?
      • +
    • 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.
      • +
    • SK: Things are a bit organised when there’s squares around?
      • +
    • 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.
      • +
    • SK: Its something else?
      • +
    • CC: Yeah. so yeah.
      • +
    • SK: At least you didn’t say triangle.
      • +
    • CC: Oh good god. Good god no.
      • +
    + +

    Maths and grids

    +

    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 Grid Systems (Figure 2) +for example or Karl Gerstner’s ⊞ing Programmes (1964). I read +these ⊞ theorists as you might comparatively read religious texts. What +were or are the beliefs of the authors and their audiences?
    +    
    +    
    +    
    +    
    +    
    +    
    +    
    +    
    +    
    +    
    +    
    +    
    +    
    +    

    +
      +
    • “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.”
      • +
    • (Gerstner, 1964)
      • +
    • “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.”
      • +
    • (Muller-Brockman, 1981)
      • +
    +

    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. 

    +

    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.

    +

    The ⊞ grid and the written +word

    +

    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 CARNIVAL +(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. 

    +
      +
    • “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.”
      • +
    • Description of Steve McCaffrey’s CARNIVAL
      +(The Idea of the Book, 2024)
      • +
    +
    +

    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?

    +

    Mystically +assigning or finding meanings in ⊞

    +

    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. 

    +
    +
      +
    1. 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.
      2. +
    2. 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.
      3. +
    3. 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?
      4. +
    4. I have taken three of the forty steps.
      5. +
    5. I have taken seven of the forty steps.
      6. +
    6. ⊞ 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?
      7. +
    7. I have taken eleven of the forty steps. I will rest.
      8. +
    +

    What +does ⊞ do? What is the ⊞er trying to do by pressing all these buttons +and making the screen vibrate?

    +
      +
    • “⊞ only generates longing”
      • +
    • (Van Der Velden, 2006)
      • +
    +

    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.

    +
      +
    • “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.”
      • +
    • Michael Bierut (creativechair.org, 2018)
      • +
    +

    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?

    +
    +
      +
    • “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.”
      • +
    • (Hu, 2022)
      • +
    +

    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.

    +

    Excerpt +from an interview with the members of Distinctive Repetition on 1st +December 2023.

    +

    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.

    +
      +
    • ◲: whats your favourite colour?
      • +
    • ◰: red.
      • +
    • ◲: red.
      • +
    • ◱: really? thats it? are you fucking kidding me?
      • +
    • ◰: do i fill it in?
      • +
    • ◳: they’re warm up questions obviously they’re to get you +comfortable answering questions.
      • +
    • ◳: yellow
      • +
    • ◲: 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?
      • +
    • ◳: jelly that’s not quite solid
      • +
    • ◳: not quite solidified in the fridge yet
      • +
    • ◳: and its just oozing through my fingers
      • +
    • (redacted sentence)
      • +
    • ◳: that’s what today has been like but its my brain thats oozing out +of me
      • +
    • ◲: yes. that’s a good answer. ok will we keep going in a +circle?
      • +
    • ◱: whatever you like bro.
      • +
    • ◲: do you ever dream about work?
      • +
    • ◱: all the time.
      • +
    • ◲: would you care to share one of those dreams?
      • +
    • ◱: 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.
      • +
    • ◳: weren’t you taking grids out of drawers in a dream recently?
      • +
    • ◱: yeah yeah.
      • +
    • (obscured)
      • +
    • ◲: why were you taking grids out of drawers?
      • +
    • ◱: 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.
      • +
    • (section redacted by request of interviewees)
      • +
    + +

    About the interview

    +

    Before meeting them in person, I mailed a small booklet to the +interviewees entitled Enthusiasm 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:
    +    

    +
      +
    • “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. The +Method of Properly Guiding the Reason in the Search of Truth in the +Sciences 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.”
      • +
    +

    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 +relationship with grids that there +is a relationship with ⊞.

    +
      +
    • ◳: jelly that’s not quite solid, not quite solidified in the fridge +yet and its just oozing through my fingers
      • +
    + +

    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? 

    +
      +
    • ◱: 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.
      • +
    +

    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.

    +
      +
    • ◱: just fucking use those grids
      • +
    + +

    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.

    +

    Modern work

    +
      +
    • “A cause becomes unmodern at the moment when our feelings revolt, +and as soon as we feel ourselves becoming ridiculous”
      • +
    • Adolf Loos, On Thrift, 1924 (Loos, 2019)
      • +
    +
    +

    Adolf Loos was a modernist architect whose writings such as +Ornament and Crime 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 The Protestant Ethic and the +Spirit of Capitalism (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. 

    +

    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.

    +

    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.

    +

    The Roman grid

    +

    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:

    +
      +
    • “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.”
      • +
    • Descartes was Here, Clemens Driessen, 2020
      • +
    +

    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. 

    +
    +
      +
    • ◱: for fucks sake why don’t we use those grids
      • +
    + +

    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.

    +

    An +analysis of a joke about ⊞ in the early 21st century

    +

    When reviewing the AIGA Next conference in Denver Colorado, 2008, ⊞ +critic Adrian Shaughnessy tells a joke:

    +
      +
    • “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.”
      • +
    • (Shaughnessy, 2013)
      • +
    +

    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.

    +
    +

    An +annotation of my practices as a graphic ⊞er on a typical working day, +23rd October 2023

    +
      +
    1. I read an email
      2. +
    2. and
      3. +
    3. I type
      4. +
    4. 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
      5. +
    +
    +

    ⊞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). 

    +

    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. 

    +

    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. 

    +

    LibreOffice

    +
      +
    1. 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.
      2. +
    2. 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. 
      3. +
    +

    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 ⊞. 

    +

    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.

    +
      +
    • my god im trying to use scribus to prepare a booklet
      +im going crazy
      +im going crazy
      • +
    • Correspondance with kamo, 2024
      • +
    +

    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.

    +
      +
    1. “And I don’t care.” 
      2. +
    +

    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. 
    + 

    +

    Work Sans

    +
      +
    1. 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.
      2. +
    +
    +

    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.

    +

    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. 
    + 
    +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?

    +
    +

    Follow up questions for +Conor

    +

    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:

    +

    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.

    +

    And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im +totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.  

    +

    Thanks,
    +Stephen

    +
    +

    Follow up questions for ◱

    +

    Yo ◱, hope all’s good with you these days? 

    +

    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. 

    +

    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. 

    +

    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 :)

    +

    And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im +totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.

    +

    Thanks,
    +Stephen

    +
    +

    Follow up questions for ◳

    +

    Hey ◳, hope youre good! 

    +

    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. 

    +

    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.

    +

    And if youre uncomfortable with being included in this way, Im +totally fine with anonymising, removing, or editing.  

    +

    Thanks,
    +Stephen

    +

    Conclusion

    +

    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. 

    +

    ⊞ 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. 

    +

    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. 

    +
    +

    Conclusion

    +

    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 

    +
      +

    • “I dunno, I’m more confused than ever”

      • +

    • and they said 

      • +

    • and then you said

      • +

    • “a funny feeling its a bit weird”

      • +

    • “I’m just trying to touch it gently and acknowledge it” 

      • +

    • “live the gap between where you are and where you could +be” 

      • +
    +

    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.

    +
    +
    +
    +

    Acknowledgements

    +

    Thanks to Ada, Aglaia, Ben, Chae, Conor, Irmak, Jenny, Joseph, kamo, +Leslie, Manetta, Marloes, Michael, Rossi.

    +

    Bibliography

    +

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    +

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    +

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    +

    creativechair (2018) ‘Michael Bierut’ [Interview], Creative +Chair. Available at: creativechair.org/michael-bierut (Accessed: 15 +April 2024).

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    +

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    + +
    + + +

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