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"multidisciplinary" Tag


Dynamic pages


Saturday, February 4, 2017

As soon as I opened Janet Cardiff’s The Walk Book in the Rietveld library, I knew I had found the book I was going to make my research on. There was not a single page that didn’t awake my curiosity on how the design had evolved.

The reason for this was the very dynamic and multidisciplinary design. Distinctive colors, shapes and placement of the content creates a chaotic and playful impression. Although you suspect the organized work behind it. Those responsible for this are the two designers, Thees Dohrn and Philipp von Rohden who shared the design agency Zitromat in Berlin. The later of which I had a chance to interview on a few points. I will share this with you as the text develops.

Let’s begin where the journey of the actual The Walk Book begins. It was initiated by a proposal from the art collector Francesca von Habsburg  to the artist in the early 2000’s. The hopes of von Habsburg were to enlighten many others to “the magical world behind Janet Cardiff, her creative talent, and vivid imagination”. She also says “Hopefully, it will reveal how she works in a playful, yet extremely serious manner (…)”.

For those who aren’t yet acquainted with Cardiff, let me give you a short introduction.

As this book investigates, she has created several video and audio walks. These are extraordinary works that allows the participant to experience a dualistic moment through the act of walking and continuously listening to her narrative. The act of walking unfolds the space along with the process of narration which creates both a corporeal and a visceral form of knowledge, as two intertwined levels of consciousness.

In my interview with Philipp von Rohden he shares with me that from the start the plan was only to make something like a small catalogue on approximately 120 pages for one of the “walks”, but as the actual result now shows it turned into a 345 page book.

One of the additions to the production was the artist’s own suggestion to turn the book into a walk itself. This is the reason for the cd on the cover. This inventive design allows even the front of the book to be dynamic, as another aspect of this multi-layered book.

oooooooooooooooooooooooothewalkbookcover_janet

But it is not merely a cd that adds to the aesthetics of the book, the track-list introduces me, as the reader/walker to the book in a frisky way. It invites to a vivid insight into Cardiff’s work and welcomes you to approach the book in a non-linear fashion. The audio walk in itself makes the already expressive impression of the pages become even more alive. The book actually expands even outside the pages when brought along on a walk and your “real world” impressions become combined with the audio and the content of the book. Pictures appear almost animated and the content is even more appealing when you’re encouraged to dive into parts of the the material along with Cardiff herself. I start to detect the hidden codes for the different design layers. For example I notice differences in size and color of the text according to the different sounds or voices I hear.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

This brings me back to my research.

Perhaps it has already started to make more sense now that I’ve shared a little more on the actual subject of the book, and how she expresses herself. Fact is, that when I ask what is the organizational guideline behind this very expressive design I’m told that they based their inspiration on Cardiff’s own working process.

She works by collecting fragments and combining them to art pieces. Sounds, pictures, words. And this notion of collecting fragments is what initiated the design. A clear example is the special typeface used on the cover and also on titles inside the book. These characters were set up especially for this book and were created by finding typography elements and then combining them. Collecting fragments.

ooooooooooooooooooooooootypeface2

Another design element inspired by the work process of the subject herself are the yellow highlighted words continuously occurring in the text, smaller sized sentences in between the lines in the middle of a text and the little arrows leading the reader away from the columns to imbibe some extra information that could be useful for understanding the text.

These features are not just there by chance, they are inspired by Cardiff’s own notes, which are actually embedded in the book as well in their full pride on pages 54-61 for example.

notes

ooooooooooooooooooooooootexterna30_600

The result were these playful pages that by constant interruption prevent a traditional reading experience. Von Rohden comments on the way Cardiff highlights certain pieces of her notes, crosses out and adds words to the texts in between the lines, “is it just a comment? Is it important or not?” he asks rhetorically. This process is clearly applied to the design of the book and I think it’s fun to be invited to see the connection.

Further, I’m informed that they had 6 content layers when designing the book.

For example my suspicions when experiencing the walk are confirmed:

Cardiff’s voice is always blue,

and a little bit bigger

than the author Miriam Schaub’s texts that are black and seem regular sized in comparison. Another layer example are the pages in the back of the book that contains writings from exterior curators and are drained in a yellow color to divide them from the rest of the content.

yellow

Other genuine elements in this book that the artist herself is particularly happy about are the fold out pages to show the actual audio editing. Among other things, she also mentions the photos that are simply thrown into the book, detached so that you easily can hold them up in front of you when you experience the walk that’s included. I agree with her that these relatively rare book design elements definitely contribute to the exciting impression of this book.

The project went on for ca 2 years and the design process was short and difficult, described as a nightmare by von Rohden. But that doesn’t change the fact that he feels it was an honor to be a part of a project like this, and that it is rewarding to see that the book still seems to have some relevance after more than a decade.

I’m happy I got acquainted with this book, the artist and the design methods. Brought upon much inspiration for the future.

Thank you to Philipp von Rohden and Janet Cardiff for sharing your thoughts and knowledge about this book.

 

The Walk Book /Rietveld library catalogue no : card 1

Collaborations with the Multidisciplinary


Monday, April 9, 2012

Emmeline de Mooij’s • Mixed Media

Emmeline de Mooij (Delft, 1978), currently lives and works in New York and Amsterdam and has a very detailed collection of works. She works a lot with settings in photography and from what we see she often centers herself like an actor in her own works. From 1997 to 2002 she studied Fashion Design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. If you see her work, you can see that she’s not your ordinary fashion alumni because her works are a combination of a lot of disciplines containing, but not limited to: sculptures, installations, photography, graphic design, video and performance art. I guess it’s safe to say her work is Mixed Media galore.

Where some alumni remain somewhat more linked to fashion, or at least to fashion within the ‘logical’ borders of fashion, I notice that there is an interesting thing that happens a lot during and after studying at the Rietveld. Something that I see less at other art schools seems to be more apparent there. The tendency to not-choose just one direction, but have a strong drive towards multi-disciplinary ways of creating their form of art. This is something that I not only see in the work of Emmeline de Mooij, but also in the work of other alumni like Felix & Mumford (Fashion, Installation, Graphic Design and more -),  Soepboer & Stooker (Fashion, Graphic Design and more -) and for example the way Thera Hillenaar doesn’t just make clothes for wearing, but also adds a focus on it’s interactive function.

The following images are taken from the solo exhibition ‘Strip it down baby, give me those bare necessities’ at the Steinsland/Berliner gallery in Stockholm.
What I have mentioned in the above, becomes clearly visible in these photographic images.

‘Strip it down baby, give me those bare necessities’
image © Emmeline de Mooij

image © Emmeline de Mooij

image © Emmeline de Mooij
image copyright - Emmeline de Mooij

In the above work she spent weeks in European forests with her colleague Melanie Bonajo and together they researched and visualized how the modern man compares itself to the outdoors nature.

“By wearing masks, I attempted to free myself from my ego and access a collective unconsciousness. It is a reaction to the Western urban human being, wallowing in a nostalgic concept of nature, convinced of being able to reach a certain pure natural state within the safe context of taking a course in “primal dancing” or “collaborating” with dead ancestors.”

[welikeart.nl/]

I feel that from what I am learning now at the Rietveld, it is very important to try and focus on this collective unconsciousness, or somewhat try to approach and question the way you are thinking, and the way you approach a problem that you come across on your way to making a piece of art. This and the multidisciplinary approach to her works give me the feeling of a strong connection to the Rietveld.

(more…)


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