@ -278,6 +278,7 @@ My intention is to facilitate a series of collective performative readings of bu
As I sit in the waiting area at the gate B7 in the airport preparing to come back to the Netherlands, I am writing the last lines of this text. I am thinking of all these borders and gates that my body was able to pass through smoothly, carrying my magical object through which I embody power- at least within this context. However, I yearn for a reality where we stop looking at those bodies that cross the multifaceted borders and get crossed and entrenched by them, but on the contrary we start interrogating and shouting at the contexts and the frameworks that construct them and render them invisible, natural and powerful.
---
<divclass="bibliography">
## references
@ -323,3 +324,4 @@ Mouffe, C. (2008) ‘Art and Democracy: Art as an Agonistic Internvention’. Op
Pater, R. (2021) Caps lock: How capitalism took hold of graphic design, and how to escape from it. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Valiz.
Picozza, F. (2021). The coloniality of asylum : mobility, autonomy and solidarity in the wake of Europe’s refugee crisis. London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
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.
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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.
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Teachers and parents were finding it difficult to find new books constantly or were tired of rereading the same book.
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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 called it, "Bee Within".
Bee Within, is a story about grief/memory 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.
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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.
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I would like to clarify and introduce some terms for you in order to read this text in the desired way. For a while, we will stay in the bight of this journey as we move into forming loops, theories and ideas on how interactive picture books can be used to foster curiosity for reading and creativity for children. I am building a web platform called Wink that aims to contain a children’s story I wrote and am making into an interactive experience, in relation to my research.
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Through this bight of the thesis, I feel the necessity to clarify my intention of using knots as a “thinking and writing object” throughout my research journey. Although knots are physical objects and technically crucial in many fields of labor and life, they are also objects of thought and are open for wide minds’ appreciation. Throughout history, knots have been used to connect, stop, secure, bind, protect, decorate, record data, punish, contain, fly and many other purposes. So if the invention of flying -which required a wing that was supported using certain types of knots was initiated with the knowledge of how to use strings to make things, why wouldn’t a research paper make use of this wonderful art as an inspiration for writing and interactive reading?
## KNOTS AS OBJECTS TO THINK WITH
### KNOTS AS OBJECTS TO THINK WITH
There is a delicate complexity of thinking of and with knots, which ignites layers of simultaneous connections to one’s specific experience; where one person may associate the knots with struggles they face, another may think of connecting or thriving times. In a workshop in Rotterdam, I asked participants to write three words that comes to mind when they think of knots. There were some words in common like strong, chaotic, confusing and anxious. On the other hand, there were variations of connection, binding, bridge and support. Keeping these answers in mind or by coming up with your words on knots and embodying them in the practice of reading would make
a difference in how you understand the same text.
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Seeing how these words, interpretations of a physical object were so different to each other was transcendental. In this thesis, I am excited to share my understanding of knots with you.
My three words for knots are resistance, imagination and infinity. Keeping these in mind,
@ -75,7 +75,7 @@ This map will reveal your mode of reading. The order of reading will be indicate
as an exercise for concrete thinking. See you at the standing end! and a number on top of the sign with a color. This is the numeric order you should follow to read the thesis, if you choose to read with a mode.
Every reader starts from 1 and continues until 12, with a consecutive numeric order, according to their color/mode.
After many loops of thought, we are here at the standing end of the thesis. There is room for
more loops and knots in the future to secure this string of thought but for now, we have come to
@ -603,7 +603,10 @@ I am looking forward to making more knots on this long and mysterious string at
</section>
## Bibliography
<divclass="bibliography">
## Bibliography
Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (2009) ‘“multiliteracies”:
New Literacies, new learning’, Pedagogies: An International Journal,
4(3), pp.164–195. doi:10.1080/15544800903076044.
@ -646,8 +649,9 @@ Vega, N. (2022) Codes in Knots.
Sensing Digital Memories, The Whole
Life. Available at: https://wholelife.hkw.de/
codes-in-knots-sensing-digital-memories/.
</div>
## Acknowledgements
Thank you Marloes de Valk, for your enlightening feedbacks and ideas. Thank you Michael Murtaugh, Manetta Berends, Joseph Knierzinger, Leslie Robbins and Steve Rushton for sharing your time and knowledge with me throughout these years.
Thank you XPUB friends for funny, hectic and memorable moments we made together.
@ -2420,8 +2526,8 @@ alt="The garden of Gemeente" />
<!--<section id="section-8" class="section">-->
<sectionid="section-8" class="section">
<!--<section id="section-9" class="section">-->
<sectionid="section-9" class="section">
<h1id="fair-leads">Fair Leads</h1>
<<<<<<<HEAD
<h3id="fair-leads-or-fair-winds-is-a-saying-sailors-and-knotters-use-to-greet-each-other.-it-comes-from-the-working-end-of-a-string-that-will-soon-be-forming-a-knot.">Fair leads or Fair winds is a saying sailors and knotters use to greet each other. It comes from the working end of a string that will soon be forming a knot.</h3>
@ -2574,7 +2680,7 @@ on how interactive picture books can be used to foster curiosity for
reading and creativity for children. I am building a web platform called
Wink that aims to contain a children’s story I wrote and am making into
an interactive experience, in relation to my research. <img
src="../irmak/unnamed.png" class="image-80" alt="“Knotatomy”" /> Through
src="../irmak/unnamed.png" class="image-80" alt="Knotatomy." /> Through
this bight of the thesis, I feel the necessity to clarify my intention
of using knots as a “thinking and writing object” throughout my research
journey. Although knots are physical objects and technically crucial in
@ -2586,8 +2692,8 @@ flying -which required a wing that was supported using certain types of
knots was initiated with the knowledge of how to use strings to make
things, why wouldn’t a research paper make use of this wonderful art as
an inspiration for writing and interactive reading?</p>
<h2id="knots-as-objects-to-think-with">KNOTS AS OBJECTS TO THINK
WITH</h2>
<h3id="knots-as-objects-to-think-with">KNOTS AS OBJECTS TO THINK
WITH</h3>
<p>There is a delicate complexity of thinking of and with knots, which
ignites layers of simultaneous connections to one’s specific experience;
where one person may associate the knots with struggles they face,
@ -2601,15 +2707,15 @@ practice of reading would make a difference in how you understand the
@ -3614,12 +3705,28 @@ alt="“A screenshot from Wink!”" />
>>>>>>> 0d34f2967a266c03a36514751c02bce2519f810f
</figure>
</section>
*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.
suzan
