⊞
-
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 @@ -3075,48 +3067,56 @@ 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).
+
@@ -3124,6 +3124,7 @@ alt="Monogram, Piet Zwart, c. 1968." />
c. 1968.
+
Introduction
This document is a collection of fragments exploring beliefs about labour in the creative industries, in particular graphic ⊞. Each @@ -3150,6 +3151,7 @@ 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?
- A ⊞er is a person who wakes up at 5am but refuses to open their @@ -3172,6 +3174,7 @@ 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.
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 @@ -3195,6 +3198,7 @@ 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, @@ -3209,14 +3213,14 @@ 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
+
+
“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 @@ -3229,14 +3233,14 @@ 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
+
+
“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 @@ -3270,7 +3274,6 @@ 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. @@ -3298,6 +3301,7 @@ their stuff and think well that’s just beyond me.
- 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
@@ -3318,18 +3322,22 @@ were or are the beliefs of the authors and their audiences?
+
+
+
-
-
- “To describe the problem is part of the solution. This implies: not
+
+
“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
+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 @@ -3345,6 +3353,7 @@ 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 @@ -3359,15 +3368,14 @@ 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
+
+
“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 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 @@ -3378,12 +3386,12 @@ 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.
-- 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 @@ -3417,38 +3425,36 @@ it value perfection in me, what is it trying to teach me? Why wont it leave me alone?
- I have taken eleven of the forty steps. I will rest.
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) -
+“⊞ 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
+
+
“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
+
+
“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. @@ -3460,16 +3466,14 @@ 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.
+id="excerpt-from-an-interview-with-the-members-of-distinctive-repetition.">Excerpt +from an interview with the members of Distinctive Repetition. +Principal ⊞er 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 seats.
- ◲: whats your favourite colour?
- ◰: red. @@ -3509,9 +3513,9 @@ 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
@@ -3522,8 +3526,8 @@ 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
+
+
“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 @@ -3534,8 +3538,8 @@ 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 @@ -3548,10 +3552,10 @@ 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 -
+◳: 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? @@ -3562,12 +3566,12 @@ 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
+
+
◱: 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 @@ -3575,9 +3579,9 @@ 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 -
+◱: 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 @@ -3585,12 +3589,11 @@ 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) -
+
+“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 @@ -3601,8 +3604,7 @@ 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 +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 @@ -3623,6 +3625,7 @@ 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 @@ -3635,13 +3638,12 @@ 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
+
+
“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 @@ -3649,9 +3651,9 @@ 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 -
+◱: 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 @@ -3660,11 +3662,11 @@ but are afraid of it.
analysis of a joke about ⊞ in the early 21st centuryWhen 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) -
+“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 @@ -3712,6 +3714,7 @@ part.
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
- I have no idea what any of this structuring does. And I don’t
@@ -3747,12 +3750,11 @@ 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
++
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 @@ -3765,9 +3767,9 @@ 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.
--
-
- “And I don’t care.” -
+
“And I don’t care.”
+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 ⊞ @@ -3791,7 +3793,6 @@ 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.
- my god im trying to use scribus to prepare a booklet
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 @@ -3826,6 +3827,7 @@ 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 @@ -3845,6 +3847,7 @@ 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 @@ -3869,6 +3872,7 @@ 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 @@ -3890,6 +3894,7 @@ any thoughts or maybe you meant something completely different.
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 @@ -3915,6 +3920,7 @@ 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 @@ -3923,28 +3929,60 @@ 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 +
+
-
-
“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”
+- “a funny feeling its a bit weird”
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 +
+
+
-
+
- “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 @@ -4009,6 +4047,9 @@ Goblet, Sixteen Essays on Typography, London: The Sylvan Press.
Capitalism”, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften 20, no. 1 (1904), pp. 1–54; 21, no. 1 (1905), pp. 1–110.Acknowledgements
+Thanks to Ada, Aglaia, Ben, Chae, Conor, Irmak, Jenny, Joseph, kamo, +Leslie, Manetta, Marloes, Michael, Rossi.