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. 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 will be 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 participate in the performance either by speaking in the microphone, observing and/or typing. This inviting participation of the visitors in one form or another continued in the following Special Issues, as well as the planning of the showing of my graduation project for the Grad Fest.
I also gained 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 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 myselfโwas a central part of my final project. Already during the process I had to accept the feeling of being unfamiliar with new tools and learning to embrace the unknown. This process showed me a way of embracing a nescience of tools and processes in order to experiment intentionally with them and not being afraid of imperfection, failure, or completeness.
super visual hyper zine
[super visual hyper zine] is a collective zine with screenshots of all our browser extension experiments during prototyping class.
This project could be seen as some sort of milestone for me using Jinja and paged.js. This [use] was very helpful for my graduation projects like for one of my paged.js prototypes the internet meme zine graphic design is my pa??ion and static site generator Pelican I used for my (b)logbook.
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."
This project sparked my general interest in diving deeper into alternative design tools like ImageMagick, a software for converting, editing and manipulating images, invoked through the terminal. I had especially an interest in designing through the terminal without any GUI software and avoiding for the first time Adobe software completely. For this project I decided on working with internet memes around the topics of labour and leisure in the form of annotation, recreating and manipulating. Through this archive of internet memes, I started already simultaneously to elaborate it with subject labour but specialized in the field of graphic design and graphic making. This archive I later used as a centralised part of my graduation project. This themes and processes also brought me further to questioning the status quo, norms, tools and established practices of graphic design and utilising a process-based counterpraxis.
Additionally to the work around ImageMagick scripts and the creation of animations I also wanted to connect the visuals 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 to the space which allows to participate and engage in the project. This general idea of offering engaging I plan to follow further for the Grad Fest, see below.
Reading and Writing
To use 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 of XPUB mostly with topics around visual internet aesthetics and their psychology around. I was still quite anchored in visual 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 years, gaining increasingly disenchantment and feeling strange to it. 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. Although this theory of internet aesthetics lead me eventually to internet memes, their aestheticisation, circulation and community/belonging making.
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 the fact of my experience and realistically accepting my possibilities. And here I am, writing a (b)logbook as my graduation. However, I want to emphasise that the process of "thought-writing" as in my (b)logbook helped me incredibly in documenting my practice and "discoveries" and learning what my practice actually is, where I want to go and how my perception generally changed.
Prototyping
Prototyping in general, especially in the beginning of the 2nd year as Rapid Prototyping was the starting point for my online (b)logbook. I started a practice of documenting, experimenting and trying out with my Prototyping wiki.
In the first year the write poetry generator (wiki: write_poetry) was leading me in the graduation year to a continuation as a prototype to generate automated Unicode patterns. (wiki: automated_Unicode_with_python)
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
These chapters include โDesign and rejectionโ, where I give an introduction to my experiences in the graphic design field. I examine the historical role of graphic design and its status quo within capitalism by analysing it through different perspectives. I give examples, how the software company Adobe is dominating the creative industry.
The second chapter โAnti-design as counterpraxisโ gives an introduction to the radical design movement and their ideas about anti-design as reaction against โgood designโ and the industry norm within its later misuses. I attempt to compare it with process-based strategies and possible implications to counterpraxis.
The last chapter โTools while caringโ reflects on my selected counter-tools which give alternative approaches to proprietary software in their utilisation, appropriation, ethos and limits.
Final work
counter-tools.xyz
(๐ท)๐๐๐๐ท๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ถ๐๐๐๐๐๐ถ๐๐พ๐๐ ๐น๐๐๐พ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ถ๐ ๐ธ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐
๐๐ถ๐๐พ๐
Website based on pelican, a static site generator
In the beginning of the second year we should make regularly Rapid Prototypes and I kinda took this quite serious. Almost every week I worked on another one in the hope it would lead me to an idea of the graduation project. Therefor I started a Prototype wiki page with my try-outs and used as a base for documenting experiments. Since I worked with ImageMagick in the previous Special Issue I wanted to play around with other tools and during this documenting process on the wiki I made friends with the idea of using this very documentation process on different tools and engines as my graduation project. Quite early my intention was not to learn a specific tool deeply, rather overview several in different areas and gain an overall understanding of possibilities and approachability and being able to make comparisons.
I refer to them as counter-tools, given that they stand in contradictory to usual graphic design production means, which today are generally limited to proprietary software like Adobe.
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.
Circulating 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 in-space somewhere at the space at Agnes during the Grad Fest or circulated/spread somewhere else. As I described earlier I had an interest in circulating the medium internet meme in the offline public space, outside of the internet. This medium allows easy circulating, since the memes are getting fast and simple printed with a receipt thermal printer. With the addition on the bottom of the print "edited with XYZ -> counter-tools.xyz, alternative design tools (b)logbook (f*ck adobe)" I circulate therefore the used counter-tools (open source and F/LOSS tools) and my (b)logbook as well even though they have different levels of circulation.
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 the space or spread somewhere else. With that I hope to spark interest with discovering the memes around the space and an aspect of sharing and discourse.
Next to the thermal printer will be a metal grid with printed out entries of my (b)logbook as zines to connect them to the prints, internet memes and space. This metal grid also includes information the the project, the meme pile and the upload function for the thermal printer.
The online (b)logbook itself will be presented on a shared screen/computer with Charlie, Eleni, Sevgi, and Tessa.
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.