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Title

Grad project Description

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This is where your grad project goes

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BackPlaces is a web-based anthology that explores intimate and +emotional spaces on the internet. It consists of four pages, each +embodying an archetype. The sunrise, the nosebleed, the star, and the +hand.

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These pages trace a thread of online emotions: of shared grief, +collective processing through writing, youthful excitement, and finally, +of being on or off the internet. They present stories in the formats in +which they were originally told, allowing you to imagine yourself as one +of these pages, wearing your own clothing as a costume and reenacting +the play of your first kiss.

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This project tenderly pays tribute to the rawest emotions found +online. It seeks to diversify the conversation by reminding us that the +internet is a reflection of the people and feelings that inhabit it. The +web is an artifice—a house built by others where we live and communicate +together. If we all left, the internet might cease to exist.

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However, the internet can be a harsh landscape where sensitive +individuals find refuge in backplaces, rooms where they can be more than +their physical selves allow. Here, they meet, whisper secrets, share +laughter and pain, and grow together until they move on. These stories +reflect these moments, drawn from the collective knowledge of people +I’ve loved online. Their words have been woven into stories to protect +and celebrate them. Some were social media comments, some were friends +sharing cake, some were emails, and some were conversations.

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Hello. We’re four students of Experimental Publishing (XPUB). We made +this catalogue for you, we made it for ourselves. It’s all the work we +made from 2022 to 2024, during our Master’s programme at the Piet Zwart +Institute in Rotterdam. This book contains our theses and graduation +projects. Following the projects, you will find the documentation of +three Special Issues that were published during our first year of XPUB. +(could this be clearer?)

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In Do you ever dream about work?, Stephen Kerr talks with graphic +designers about their work and how they feel about it. His thesis ? +documents these discussions and puts them in context of the spiritual +traditions of modernism.

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Talking Documents, made by Aglaia Petta, are performative +bureaucratic text inspections that intend to create temporal public +interventions through performative readings. The graduation project +holds hands with the written text Performing the Bureaucratic +Border(line)s which attempts to unleash intuitively a conversation +concerning the entangled relation between material injurious borders and +bureaucracy.

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Ada made like a thing called Backplaces. Before that she wrote about +it in a text called . Its about people on the +internet.

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Wink, is a web platform made by Irmak Susan Erta?, a creative writing +and reading toolkit that enables children to make their own stories or +read the stories they want from the existing library. The text Fair +Leads expands on the concepts of interactive fiction using knot theory +practices.

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Paragraph about common ground. performance, storytelling, words, +memory feeling, loss, reflection, Intimacy, experience, narrative and +memory, the public and the private. Memory (for example, and other +themes), how it appears in the four projects. The written and spoken +word as materials and actions that exist in society, technology, people. +We care about this because (whatever goes here is important). The +personal element in each project.

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XPUB is the Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Experimental +Publishing of the Piet Zwart Institute. XPUB focuses on the acts of +making things public and creating publics in the age of post-digital +networks. XPUB’s interests in publishing are therefore twofold: first, +publishing as the inquiry and participation into the technological +frameworks, political context and cultural processes through which +things are made public; and second, how these are, or can be, used to +create publics.

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Experimental Publishing is some experiences or feelings of being in +xpub for two years.

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  • Special Issues
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    Special Issue 19

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    What was the special issue

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    Description about si19 goes here

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    Another thing that came out of our first two sessions was the One -Sentence Ritual. Each week for six weeks in a row, we wrote down a -ritual of our own and took turns performing the ritual from the list. -Coffee fortune-telling, hard drive purifications, collective eating, -sound meditations, and talking to worry dolls made us reflect on the -content of the week and our lives.

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    Garden Leeszaal: Special +Issue XIX

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    Public libraries are more than just access points to knowledge. They +are social sites where readers cross over while reading together, +annotating, organising and structuring. A book could be bound at the +spine, or an electronic file gathered together with digital binding. A +library could be an accumulated stack of printed books, a modular +collection of software packages, a method of distributing e-books, a +writing machine.

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    In the Special Issue 19, How do we library that? or alternatively +Garden Leeszaal, we started re-considering the word “library” as a verb; +actions that sustains the production, collection and distribution of +texts. A dive into the understanding structure of libraries as systems +of producing knowledge and unpacking classification as a process that +(un)names, distinguishes, excludes, displaces, organizes life. From the +library to the section to the shelf to the book to the page to the text. +The zooming in and zooming out process. The library as a plain text.

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    Like community gardens, libraries are about tenderness and +approachability. However, does every book and each person feel welcome +in these spaces? Publications are empty leaves if there is no one to +read them. Libraries are soulless storage rooms if there is no one to +visit them. People give meaning to libraries and publications alike. +People are the reason for their existence. People tend to cultivate +plants. Audiences tend to foster content. The public tends to enrich the +context. Libraries as complex social infrastructures.

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    The release of the Special Issue 19 was a momentary snapshot of the +current state of a library seen through the metaphor of gardening; +pruning, gleaning, growing, grafting and harvesting. Garden Leeszaal is +an open conversation; a collective writing tool, a cooperative collage +and an archive. We asked everyone to think of the library as a garden. +For us, being a gardener means caring; caring for the people and books +that form this space.

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    During the collective moment in Leeszaal people started diving into +recycle bins, grab books, tear pages apart, drawing, pen plotting, +weaving words together, cutting words, removing words, overwriting, +printing, scanning. It was magical having an object in the end. A whole +book made by all of us in that evening. Stations, machines, a cloud of +cards, a sleeve that warms up THE BOOK.

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    + + Book recycle bins description +inside page of the final book Photo of the book - cover and sleeve

    \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/stephen/index.md b/stephen/index.md index 1f0369a..af47a11 100644 --- a/stephen/index.md +++ b/stephen/index.md @@ -1,10 +1,31 @@ --- -title: Project +title: What do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and what does "graphic design" even mean?!????!!1!? author: Stephen --- -# Title +# What do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and what does "graphic design" even mean?!????!!1!? + +An investigation into the practices and ideologies of graphic design in 2023–24 though practice-led artistic research and ethnographic methods. I held graphic design in my hands using ethnography, toolmaking and performance as research methods. I examined how a designer spends their time in everyday life, this designer, me, as well as you, what are we doing? What are our worldviews, belief systems, mythologies and ideologies? + +*What do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and what does "graphic design" even mean?!????!!1!?* is an assessment of what the term "graphic design" means to its practitioners today. Through experimental ethnographic research methods and the development of reflexive tools, the project highlights and questions the boundaries that exist around this apparent category. The research focuses on my own practices as well as other people and groups that identify with "graphic designer" as a label. The research was both conducted by and shared with interested parties in the form of the tools themselves, as well as a series of performances. There is no strict distinction between the research and its publication. The tools were released in an iterative cycle throughout the process of the project, and the research is conducted through the performative use and development of these tools. + +This research is carried out in three intersecting methods: experimental ethnographic research, reflexive tools, and performative research. Keylogging, performance of personal work habits, interviews about the manual work of "immaterial labourers", and dream analysis are combined in order to uncover less obvious and less discussed aspects of what a designer is and does in their daily life, as entry points to their worldviews, belief systems, mythologies or ideologies. The methods were developed in an iterative process that reflected on findings from the previous prototypes. The research took into account its own publication as part of one process. + +1. Experimental ethnographic research methods: I documented my own practices as a graphic designer for nine months. Sometimes based on technical observations of my interaction with my tools, primarily my laptop computer and the software on it. I conducted interviews with designers. I recorded the interviews. I had prompts to open the discussion such as reading material and weird tools to try with them. I will carry out auto-ethnographic research using experimental methods such as mouse tracking and unusual annotation methods. I shared the results of this research as a series of interactive publications (tools) with a small but selected audience of people who are involved in these processes and who would benefit from it. + +2. Reflexive tools: Software and hardware tools that explore the boundaries of "graphic design" as a category. For example at the boundaries between graphic design and other disciplines. At the boundaries between work and play, or between design and art. These tools malfunction in order to explore what it even means to be working. The tools aim to highlight what a graphic designer does by interacting with their user in ways that the designers standard tools do not (for example an interface to connect musical instruments to the designers workflow), or conversely by amplifying how the designer usually interacts with their tools (for example a keylogger to celebrate and focus on the use of the keyboard). The tools are digital in nature and involve software and hardware interventions into the graphic designers work. + +3. Performative research: I see all the methods above as having a performative element. For example the ethnographic-slash-performative act of answering my emails on a large screen in front of an audience, research which was carried out as part of this project at Leeszaal, Rotterdam West on November 7th 2023. By showing directly the work practices of graphic designers to an audience, or their interaction with the tools mentioned above, I am publishing through performance the daily activities of designers and my aim is to show these practices without the conventional lenses they are seen through. To be contrasted for example with how graphic design is presented on behance.net or in a bookshop, this performative approach will highlight the mythologies and practices of the graphic designer. + +I made this to explore why designers make design, based on Clifford Geertz's ideas of why humans make culture: "to affirm it, defend it, celebrate it, justify it and just plain bask in it" (Geertz, 1973). This exploration will also involve less constructive actions like participating, dissociating, questioning, protesting, destroying and disregarding. There is a disconnect between the narratives about "graphic design" and the effects it is known to have on its audiences, practitioners, and society in more general terms. I am attempting to "loosen the object" of graphic design (Berlant, 2022), to make the definition less defined and maybe more useful or easier to engage with. This shit could be better. Its urgent for the people being exploited by it, to break the inequalities it serves to maintain, to expose what it hides, to improve things that are definitely working but not in a good way. Design can hide and reproduce inequalities in its output and also dominate workers in its practices. This research starts primarily from the bodies and actions of the practitioners so will primarily engage with the effects on and by these bodies. + +![The result of a tool that connects musical instruments to a pen plotter, using an arduino module. I created this tool to cross the boundary of "graphic design" as a discipline separate from music.](imagename.png) +![A performative tool that measures the laziness of the designer as they work and graphs it on a pen plotter. The less the designer uses the mouse, the longer a line the pen plotter will draw.](imagename.png) +![A performative autoethnographic research of graphic design practices, in this case answering emails using Google's Gmail service. Leeszaal, Rotterdam West, November 7th 2023](imagename.png) +![Collective performative dream re-enactment at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, Netherlands. February 5th 2024. ](imagename.png) +![Collective performative dream re-enactment at Art Meets Radical Openness, Linz, Austria. March 11th 2024. ](imagename.png) +![Keyboard of things designers have said.](imagename.png) +![keylogging research, recording the buttons a graphic designer presses while working](imagename.png) +![do you ever dream about work? online research](imagename.png) -### Grad project Description -This is where your grad project goes \ No newline at end of file