User:Chrissy/T6 Assessment
- your individual contributions to the special issues (where relevant to your final project),
- the development of your reading/writing practice across the 2 years,
- the development of your prototyping practice across the 2 years,
- your thesis (only a brief overview for context, as this has been assessed separately in depth),
- your final work and research in the second year,
- plans for final publication and grad show (with the understanding that you will continue to work on this after the assessment)
Special Issues
Special Issue 25
Lost in Narration
Lost in Narration together with Alexandria, Claudio, Eleni and Kiara.
During this Special Issue I was honestly at first quite overwhelmed with possibilities given for the Special Issue event. During the process I more or less went with the flow of my group and couldn't contribute that much, which changed during the event. Being part of a performance felt at first very uncomfortable, but during I started to feel a kind of togetherness with my group and the installation we build. At his point I didn't know that this was the starting point of gaining an increasing interest of real alternative tools during my two years of XPUB. Using the python script for speech recognition and the thermal printer for printing out these outcomes were somehow leading to my later contributions to the following Special Issues. Additionally the fact, that the installation allowed visitors to be participate in the performance either by speaking in the microphone, observing and typing. This participation of the visitors in one or another form continues in the following and last Special Issues, as well the planning of the exhibition of my graduation project for the Grad Fest.
Further practice in learning HTML/CSS as part of the website designs for Protocols for Collective Performance and SI#25 event website
Special Issue 26
Specific Viewer
Specific Viewer with Kiara. Browser extension to learn and discover CSS Positions and Display on websites.
In the second Special Issue we worked on the browser extensions which also lead me to learning more HTML/CSS/JS and thinking about the process of learning itself. Working on a tool that allows you to โteachโ othersโeven though Iโm still learning how to use it myselfโwas a central part of my final project. During the process I had to accept feeling unfamiliar and learning to embrace the unknown.
super visual hyper zine
[| super visual hyper zine] as a collective zine with screenshots of all our browser extension experiments during prototyping from our class.
The milestone for me using Jinja and paged.js I guess :)))
Special Issue 27
Experimenting with the fabric of time๐โน ึดึถึธ
| Experimenting with the fabric of time๐โน ึดึถึธ "Time perception and reception with a sensor connected to a microcontroller through GIF sequences created with ImageMagick. There are also memes."
I wanted to point out the perception of time, if we're looking more closely to things โ how time flies and also stands still in different situations. How we're losing time easier when we try to hold more onto it. To questioning the prioritization of wage labor vs. free time.
This project woke the interest in diving deeper into alternative design tools like ImageMagick. I had especially an interest in designing through the terminal without any GUI software and avoiding Adobe software completely. For this project I decided on working with internet memes around the topics labour and leisure in the form of annotation, recreating and manipulating.
Additionally to the work around ImageMagick scripts and the creation of animations I wanted to connect the visuals also with an installation in the space to create an embodied experience with interaction. By changing the distance of the animation/microcontroller (meaning closer and farther away) the animation changed accordingly its speed. This interest of transmitting an only observation to an action in the room which allows to participate and engage in the project. This general idea I want to follow further for the Grad Fest, see below.
Reading and Writing
Usinse the last sentence of my thesis to apply it to the two years in XPUB of practice and theory: "[โฆ]constantly questioning norms, tools and established practices. I found a contrast to the exclusive interested in finished outcomes and productivity, which are typically characterising in conventional design and capitalist systems. Hence, I shifted my focus more towards actively engaging in the making process, rather than the product and embracing the unknown and unproductive detours for unusual gestures."
My reading list started in the first year mostly with topics around visual internet aesthetics and their psychology around. I was still anchored in graphic design theory and trying to find ways to reject these. I found myself in a friction between going a complete opposite way of graphic design, since I worked and studied in that field for so many years and feeling increasingly strange to it (the status quo). At at the same time having so much experience in several fields in it (studios and education) and still feeling somehow attached to it. This friction lead me to ask myself questions of not just aesthetics (and later anti-design) as mode of production but also the interconnected the means of production of graphic designers.
My previous art academy had a predominantly focus on practice and very(!) little on writing. This realisation I had even more while starting my first thesis draft or even already the outline and project proposal. The process was followed with lots of frustration but also reminding myself constantly about this fact and realistically accepting my possibilites. And here I am writing a (b)logbook as my graduation. However, I want to emphasize that the process of "thought-writing" as in my (b)logbook helped me incredibly in document my practice and discovering/learning what my practice actually is or where I want to go.
Prototyping
Prototyping in general, especially in the beginning of the 2nd year was the start point for my (b)logbook. Practice of documenting, experimenting, trying out: Prototypes
Thesis
graphic design is my pa??ion
Investigating alternative design tools as counterpraxis opposed to traditional graphic design, towards a process-oriented, anti-capitalist approach.
Introduction
Design and Rejection: "Good design", Exclusion, Capitalism, Education, Tools
Anti-design as counterpraxis: Radical design movement, The new ugly aesthetic, Process-based strategies
Tools while caring: Experiments, Stop normalising the grind, Encountered challenges, Implementation
Conclusion
Final work
counter-tools.xyz
(๐ท)๐๐๐๐ท๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ถ๐๐๐๐๐๐ถ๐๐พ๐๐ ๐น๐๐๐พ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ถ๐ ๐ธ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐
๐๐ถ๐๐พ๐
Website based on pelican, a static site generator
meme pile
Part of the (b)logbook is an online meme pile (published), which is currently published as a static page. This collection of internet memes on the topic of graphic design, that I had collected during my thesis research. This logbook therefore contains both my observations on the counter-tools including the graphic design discourse through memes. With this approach I found a way to connect my praxis with my research in a low-key manner. With this mode of production I re-generate, annotated and overlay these memes and incorporate my counter-tools.
meme pile (for grad fest) I created (with lots of help!) a flash application on which allows uploading memes (or images in general) to the meme pile archive. The uploaded memes are displayed in the whole pile and as well in a designated "uploads" section.
This section include "proprietary tools", "counter-tools", "capitalism", "pa??ion", "caring" and "labour" in which my collection is sorted into. Additionally an about section which tries to explain the meme pile in general.
Publishing counter-tools.xyz
I went to several bath rooms in the WdkA building (bathrooms on the list: freelance cafรจs, Gerrit Rietveld Academie , HKU University of Arts Utrecht) to stick the thermal prints in the booths. The print includes a dithered and generated meme with one of my counter-tools and the additional information as text like "made with ImageMagick -> counter-tools.xyz
Plans for Grad fest
The plan for the Grad Fest will be, that after a submission to the meme pile, the image gets dithered and compressed via this ImageMagick script, to make it printable on the Epson printer:
magick images/practice_HK.png -resize 100x -dither FloydSteinberg -remap pattern:gray50 images/practice_HK_dith4_small.jpg
magick images/practice_HK_dith4_small.jpg -resize 600x images/practice_HK_dith4.png
After this compression the meme prints automatically on receipt paper with the Epson thermal printer. The meme can be stuck to the "in-space meme pile" during the Grad Fest or brought/spread somewhere else. As I described earlier I had an interest in bringing the medium internet meme in the public space, outside of the internet. This idea of memetics (units of cultural meaning of information, which spreads between humans) often referred to cultural genes I want to activate by letting visitors upload and print a chosen meme and either contribute to offline meme pile or spread it somewhere else. I also hope to spark some sort of communication around the displayed meme and an aspect of sharing and discourse.
After the Grad Fest I want to bind all the remaining thermal prints into a simple publication by glue binding. This publication will have an end date like internet Memes as well, since thermal prints last for about 5-8 years.