“The Dice Man”

If you are looking for an answer for something, a hint, or that the cosmos will decide things for you, you are in the right place. This blog and this post in particular. You can try to find your answer in the cards below, just click on one and see what it says.

The dice man is a book that tells the story of a New York psychiatrist named Luke Rhinehart who, feeling bored and unfulfilled in life, starts making decisions based only on the roll of a dice. He can’t change the dice’s decisions, including decisions about sex, murder, rape, and more.

This is your dice.

If the cards are not enough, you can start browsing the blog looking for a hint for life or an answer, using the overwhelming amount of posts the blog has to offer and using the randomness surfing that is possible here. But you need a method, you can use mine:

First post I choose randomly, then I scrolled down until the post ends, if something caught my eye or my mind, I lingered, wrote some notes, seldom made a screenshot.  Then, I clicked on a left purple tag that is located on the same line as the end of the post (the grey tagging section). I had some choice between 2-6 tags, depends on how big the grey tagging section was. And then I continued to the next post, scrolled down, chose a tag one the left that is exactly at the end of the post, and so on.

The amount of time you should do it is as the number that is on your card, or until you find your perfect hint.

I browsed in the blog, partly floating, partly with full attention. I moved in the world of the blog through the tags on the left. I had a method: First post I choose randomly, then I scrolled down until the post ends, if something caught my eye or my mind, I lingered, wrote some notes, seldom made a screenshot.  Then, I clicked on a left purple tag that is located on the same line as the end of the post (the grey tagging section). I had some choice between 2-6 tags, depends on how big the grey tagging section was.

The first post was in Dutch, so the visualization was the only thing I had.

Grey Hypocrisy felt like it was made for me, the first hint, “quest for the dull”, he said. With an image of a room, with a personless solitary chair. These kind of rooms and chairs I’m trying to portray for a while.

5 years ago, Marlies wrote about Imme van der Haak . She reminded me of Yocheved Weinfeld,  Yocheved Weinfeld, and her artworks in the 70’s.

“why?”> ON QUESTIONING > “wrong side”

I encountered a post that was written on my birthday, and then a post that was written on my mother’s birthday. It’s gotta be a sign! I found myself looking for hints, not sure for what. 

Keep scrolling.

“warning” > “Ability to choose” >

“waiting”! “For the next to come along.”

More and more hints. Like these sentences are designed for me. I realized that I’m browsing like I could wander the streets as a small girl: not being a “believing person” but to believe in traffic lights. wherever there is a green light is the way I should go, it’s the right way for me, no space for free choice, it’s from above. From the god of traffic lights.

> “waiting to be found” > chairs!

“Death”> “yellow and tiny”>

I agreed with Rosa Doornenbal, she wrote some nice stuff. I started to decide for me, what is a metaphor in this infinite data. To find the metaphors.

Marie Knudsen wrote about a jewelry book about joints. Extract from the book: ”A joint is a place where two or more parts are united or made to fit together.”– is this about silver or people? she asks herself.

for me, it was About putting stuff out of context on purpose. To give things meaning by taking their context away. It’s about the movement between the details and being far from the details until its abstract.

“alive”>”alienation”>”abstract”>”time”>”enjoying”>”no time”>”absence”>”all sort of apes”>”allegorical”>”queue”

brows like you are looking for a quate. Saw a quaote of Walter Benjamin: “Beauty is not the object and not the shell, but the object in its shell.” Ok. Maybe another day it will mean something, keep it.

“I would like to bring your attention to noticing things.” I think it’s funny.

Walking with a Line was beautiful. Made it clear for me that sometimes the combination of things punctuate your heart. The context is important. Context is everything. to put things out of context means just putting it in a new context, in order to look at them beautifully.

look at this together! It’s so different then as two solitary pictures. 

And this also, it does something only together, when isolated it’s almost nothing.

Scrolled more.

I see more chairs. Van Goch’s chair >”walls” >>>

The browsing led me to this:

“The Dice Man”

If you are looking for an answer for something, a hint, or that the cosmos will decide things for you, you are in the right place. This blog and this post in particular. You can try to find your answer in the cards below, just click on one and see what it says.

The dice man is a book that tells the story of a New York psychiatrist named Luke Rhinehart who, feeling bored and unfulfilled in life, starts making decisions based only on the roll of a dice. He can’t change the dice’s decisions, including decisions about sex, murder, rape, and more.

This is your dice.

If the cards are not enough, you can start browsing the blog looking for a hint for life or an answer, using the overwhelming amount of posts the blog has to offer and using the randomness surfing that is possible here. But you need a method, you can use mine:

First post I choose randomly, then I scrolled down until the post ends, if something caught my eye or my mind, I lingered, wrote some notes, seldom made a screenshot.  Then, I clicked on a left purple tag that is located on the same line as the end of the post (the grey tagging section). I had some choice between 2-6 tags, depends on how big the grey tagging section was. And then I continued to the next post, scrolled down, chose a tag one the left that is exactly at the end of the post, and so on.

The amount of time you should do it is as the number that is on your card, or until you find your perfect hint.

Although I never have played chest I was quite intrested in this chess set from Josef Harwig. When I was searching for the information I immediatly would think of how much info I could get out of this webpage or this book? It became kind of this game the books with a lot of information about the chess set became the kings or the queens of the game the other ones the pawns,  the castles, the knights or the bishops. It’s like a chess game you have the book information vs the information you can find on the internet, like white versus black.

The books are the white game members.
You can find a lot of books about Bauhaus. Only in the Stedelijk they already have 400 books about Bauhaus. The only problem is that in most books you can only find one sentence about the chess set from Josef Hartwig.

 For example if you take Bauhaus from Frank Whitford. This book is written in 1984 and you could see that they knew really much about Bauhaus, but the book is not that big or thick like the books that are now written that subject. If you search in this book for Josef Hartwig you see that he is only mentioned on two pages (64 and 149). On page 64 his name is only in one sentence where he is mentioned because he took over the wood-carving workshop and the sculpture workshop. On page 149 there is a picture of the chess set and her is more information about it as well. Its nice to see that the chess set on the picture has still a cylinder for the queen in the Stedelijk it became a square. These books you could see as pawns they carry a lot of information and they are important for the game, but individually they don’t say a lot about the artist or about some artworks.

Than you have books like BAUHAUS from Jeanine Fiedler.This book came out in 2013 and is ta really big and thick book. It has 639 pages which is a lot of information. And even though there are so much pages there are only a few about Josef Hartwig. Books like Bauhaus design from Bernd Polster are more categorized versions. They have every design on one page and tell than some thing about the maker and the design piece. There are 350 pages and more than 200 design objects are being discussed. Both of these books are kind of new and so carry a lot of information. I think you could see this books as the castles, they are bigger than the pawns and stand on the edges of the game they protect kind of the other books, because they are also based n the other books.

My next move was to go to the Bauhaus archive. Only the real bBauhaus archive was closed and the one that was open now did only show things about the real Bauhaus archive building. I talked to one man that worked there if they had some information about the chess set. He said that they had one brochure, but unfortunately they didn’t had them anymore. Luckily I did found some information in the Bauhaus shop.

You could buy the chess set or even some spare pieces.. In the vitrine there was also a short explanation of the different shapes for each piece.

All the pieces also had one postcard with them. The postcard was a graphic design on the background it says: Joost Schmidt promotional card for the Bauhaus chess set by Josef Hartwig 1924.

In the shop I also found the book Bauhaus.typography. I think that Bauhaus.typography was for me the king of the search because this book let my see how in 1924 the work was being sold. There was one chapter about advertising for the Bauhaus. There was this one postcard again from Joost Schmidt that was made in 1924 with lithography. The postcard plays also with the shapes of the chess set. In this book it became clear that there was advertisement for the chess set in that time. There was also this other advertisement card for all the toys/spielzeug from Bauhaus, that was also made tby Joost Schmidt.

And of course there is also a queen the most important player in the game. The one with the greatest freedom of movement. The queen of all the books about the chess set is Das Bauhaus- Schachpiel von Josef Hartwig. Produced in 2006 by Bauhaus-archive. This books actually says everything about the chess set. This book is illustrated by some of Joost Schmidt his work.This book has 40 pages and explains the chess set both in Deutsch as in English. The book is written to Dora Hartwig, who is the daughter of Josef.

On the other side of the chess set are the black players waiting for there turn. In other words all the information you can find on the internet. This information is more chaotic some pages only show the basic information like the size of the chess et.

It also really depends on what you are looking up. You could say that the pawns in case of the internet is the language you look up the information. If you look it up in English the first website you get is the MOMA, this is the museum that has the original chess set. In Germany the first website you get is markanto.de this a site where you could buy a chess set for 270 euro. If you look it up in dutch you will chess shop in Amsterdam called “het paard”.  the chess set is more expansive there it is 480 euro. The looking up of the different language was my first set. And because of the moving pawns there was space to move the castles which were all the website with accuets and shops. Where the prices really change in case of how old they are.

If you look up images the first picture you get is from a shop that sells the chess set the last picture you get is from a site that I hope was a test or something because the purpose is really unclear. I think the images are for my also the pawns it’s a tool to find useful websites.

I hoped the Stedelijk museum or the Bauhaus-archive would have information on there website and be my black queen.. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case. There was not one photo, text or sentence written about.

Also site’s like Wikipedia didn’t give me much information the only thing I got was a really blurry picture of a drawing of the game. You could say that on this point that white was leading the game.

Under the picture there was this description:

This image is in the public domain in the United States because

• it was first published outside the United States (and not published in the U.S. within 30 days) and
• it was first published before 1978 without complying with U.S. copyright formalities or after 1978 without copyright notice and
• it was in the public domain in its home country on the URAA date (January 1, 1996 for most countries).

This file is a candidate to be copied to Wikimedia Commons.Any user may perform this transfer; refer to Wikipedia:Moving files to Commons for details.If this file has problems with attribution, copyright, or is otherwise ineligible for Commons, then remove this tag and DO NOTtransfer it; repeat violators may be blocked from editing.

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If you looked it up on the German wikipedia there was actually some information.

Youtube itself is also a pawn. If you search on youtube you will find videos some just about information, some as a marketing video and some just as an artwork.

Video made for people who love to play chesst. It’s only a slide show with really bad quality images.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfXQybuelz0
This is an video from an artist

This video was made for http://www.off.jesper-carlsen.com:

OFF.jesper-carlsen

the mistakes and the unfulfilled projects which do not fit the jesper-carlsen.com site

• This blog is a place for projects that do not fit on the main site jesper-carlsen.com because it is considered as an archive for completed artworks. It is experiments that has been abandoned or not yet found their final form. I think these experiments still bear some relevance as glimpse of the underlying practice. On a personal level it feels good to have a place for these projects and perhaps even set them free in a way. Then other might see an idea and develop it further. Its something that I would like to see from other artists as well because I think it may show something interesting.

This is the real Jesper-Carlsen website: http://jesper-carlsen.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usFIpbXJm-w
This video is made for an exhibition. The video is from Fondation d’entreprise Hermes.This is an organitation who has world wide 5 exhibition spaces. I do think this video was a king the information is clear, but I do think that it’s a little bit boring especially with the gloves on her hand while she gets the game out. It’s still a game.

Articles about the chess set where the bishops for me the gave a way much information, but they where always written from someones point of view. Like the financiel times wrote a piece about the chess set and it’s really much about the cost of the game. I think this fits with the bishop because he only moves at 45 degrees and so doesn’t take over the whole chess set.

 One of the most interesting articles was from eyemagazine/blog/post/modern-games this the article is not really long, but I think really clear.

If I am being honest I don’t think the internet has one king or one queen, but what I do like from the internet is that when you have found some materials in books you could dig deeper with the internet, for example this back page of a Joost Schmidt postcard. Or this website that showed that Dora Schmidt gave big donation to the Bauhaus-archive in 2006, this also explains why they wrote Das Bauhaus- Shachpiel von Josef Hartwig to Dor Hartwig.

I was quite disappointed in the information I found on the internet, most of it were prices of the chess set and for the auctions. There was not a site specially made for the chess set, not like the one book from Bauhaus archive. I also have to say that I think the books are more reliable: they aren’t articles with one point of view, they aren’t website that try to sell the game to you and they aren’t blogs with one person behind it that isn’t a specialist. I also thought it would be easier because you just look up one word and you get tons of information, but what do you have on that information when it actually doesn’t say much?

Turn the page because it is Chess mate.

Aim: I need to combine two words which I found very different from one another: ‘system’ firstly appears to be very restricted while possibilities seem to be unlimited with ‘color’.

FIRST CONCEPT: Connect the situation in which you currently find yourself to music thanks to colors.

Process: You’re heartbroken and alone in the shower.
Find the key words: heartbroken, alone, shower.
Each key word is associated to one color: heartbroken = purple, alone = blue, shower = grey.
In the system, clic on the key words’ fitting colors « purple, blue, grey», it will send you a playlist matching your current needs.

Questions: How to realize the system? Do I use the computer or do I make it by hands? If computer, which site or application should I use? Need to select key words: how many, which ones and why? Do I use common key words or specific ones?

Issues: Want to use computer (better quality of colors, easier to extend the visibility and good way to classify data), I could find a specific application or website. I’ve been told by a classmate, who has studied computer science, that applications she knows are not for amateurs like me but professionals.

Conclusion: Because of a lack of knowledge and no skills in code I can’t bring this first concept to a successful end. I’m better to modify my system so I could create a new realizable one.
I still want to use the computer as my main tool.
However, I want to make this project more personal and subjective, meaning that I want the color system to depend on me. I will set my own rules.

Transition
I’ve asked to a friend of mine, a singer, if he was associating people with music, he answered he wasn’t and return me the question. Then I realize: I’m not associating music to people but colors. Indeed, when I paint someone the association of colors I choose come from what this latter inspires me, what he radiates out.
What if I would connect colors to something else than people? About me? (reminder: want to make this project more personal and subjective). I could write about my personal life? What occurred to me during the day? And connect this specific moment with a color?
From this developed the idea of my second concept: associate situations to colors.

SECOND CONCEPT: Connect a situation in which you have found yourself to colors.

Process: I’m going out of the cinema, touched by the movie I’m lost in my mind. Which color do I see at this current moment?
1) Visualize the color you’re seeing at the current moment
2) Find the color on internet
3) Save it on your phone
4) Give the color a name
5) Write a short sentence describing the situation linked to the color
6) Write the date and city

Questions: Want to use the computer but no code, what should I do? Where should I publish this system? Find a reachable application? Which application would fit the best?
 

 Answers: Instagram

+ Concept: share simultaneously what you’ve done with your followers.
+ Design: matching the concept (edit an image, description bellow, location, share…).
+ 1 Square 1 color: focus on the main theme ‘color’, interesting visual aspect (variety of colors).
+ # ‘hashtag’: to be seen and share data.
+ Follow or be followed by similar accounts

Ideas to complete:
1) Account’s name: ‘What i saw while’ = @whatisawhile
It refers to which color I’ve seen while a daily situation occured to me.
2) Profile picture: The color I identify myself with.
3) Short sentence to describe the account’s theme: ‘I associate everyday situations in which I find myself to colors’.

4) Description bellow image: for each image the description will start the same ‘What i saw while’ to give the account a rhythm and an identity and for the viewers to remember the account’s name.
Always the same plan for each publication: 1 color as an image – 1 title as color’s name – 1 sentence to contextualize – 1 date – 1 town – few hashtags.

FINAL PROJECT

WANT TO SEE MORE OF WHATISAWHILE‘S COLOR SYSTEM?

GO follow @whatisawhile on Instagram to discover other stories hiding behind the colors!! 🙂

Organizing.

Some people hate it, some people love it, and some people just don’t care. Our assignment was to find a new way to organize a couple of hundred books. I myself see organizing as something relaxing, and as something that should clear your head. Like a game, organizing is a puzzle. Making everything right and finding the perfect place for every little lost piece.

But what about objects and books that are hard to place somewhere? Books that look insignificant. How can you make them fit in? When I was scanning through all the books in the library, a nude colored book caught my eye, the cover didn’t give me any clues what it was about. There were no letters on the cover and no pictures. The way it was standing there made it look very lost in this big pile of loud and screaming books. All the books looked like they wanted to catch your eye and get the most attention. But this book didn’t seem to care that no one would ever take it out. Like a shy girl that always sits in the back of the class. But being shy and not wanting to be seen doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve some attention from time to time.

Games are a good way to make an interactive system for books, books have so many aspects that you can play with. Titles; the name of the Author; the year and of course the publisher. And even a book with nothing on the cover can have so much aspects that you can play with. All these aspects reminded me of the dots on domino dices. But instead of connecting the dots on the dices, you can also connect the titles, authors or the aspects of the book that for you has the most value. Then I remembered this game that I used to play when I was little, me and my dad would sit in the sun and play this game endlessly to help me learn how to spell words. He would start with a word and then I would come up with a new word, the first letter of this new word had to be the last letter of his previous word.

MONKEYS – SAUNA – ARTWORK

It is not a new fact that we like these kind of games, the oldest confirmed written mention of dominoes in China comes from the Former Events in Wulin (i.e. the capital Hangzhou) written by the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) author Zhou Mi (1232–1298), who listed “pupai” (gambling plaques or dominoes) as well as dice as items sold by peddlers during the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of Song (r. 1162–1189). This shows that the human being has always enjoyed making connections between things and objects. These games survived and renewed itself for centuries. I don’t think we will ever get bored of them.

With the domino and word games in mind I started with just connecting the titles of all the book on one of the shelves, this shelve consisted out of 49 book. After trying to find the perfect way of connecting them I found out that when i would only just play with the titles I would only be able to give a spot to half of the books, the other 25 were waste and would never find a place. Where would these books go? Would no one ever read them again? Or was there a clear solution.

What if you would see the library as one big puzzle of domino dices. Those dices don’t just have one connection point but they have three. Of course this system could also be applied on the books.

Here you see what happens when you don’t just give them one connection point but as many connection points as they allow you to make, all the dices start to create a new pattern and once you take one dice out you can put it back after at a new spot where there is no dice yet. It is a constantly changing pattern of organization.

For example I would take a book out which is about Van Gogh and the person before me thought the date of publication was very important, I will find the book at the point where the date is coupled to a different date, after reading this book and getting to know it better I decide that I personally find the Author much more important than the date, so when I would put it back in the book matrix I would find the perfect point where I can couple the first letter of the Authors name to a previous book. But of course there are maybe different things on the cover which have the most value to you, maybe it is the color, or what is showing on the cover, or maybe its even a little sticker that no one noticed before.

This way of organizing creates an opening of looking at books in completely new way. It is no longer seen in this known way of ordering them on category, subject, artist or country. This gives you the opportunity to make new connections between books and their covers. By getting rid of books shelves and opening up a space for a more playful way of organizing.

Making new connections helps you realize that there are always new possibilities in things that we already know so well. We tend to get bored or tired of things that never change, and there is only one way to avoid that boredom, to have a system that will change forever and that tells a lot about what is important.

who inspires you?

she asked

who?

I thought…

what?

I thought then…

meet this person and get inspired

make a work out of this experience

she said

and so I met a fashion designer

young man

very pretty

he said that fashion is like a colouring book

we have certain outlines and we have to fill the ´surface´

and then he said a lot of other thing, too

and made me pay for his coffee

and then, biking through Albert Cuypstraat, I was thinking of the colouring books

and about what it is, that we are filing the given shape with

finding:

Yamaha

Pepsi

24

N-power

Avis

I love sport

Fedex

Virgin

Bronx NYC crew

Alpinestar

nike just do it

WELLA PROFESSIONALS

keep calm and swag

avatar

dr.Oetker

clothing is a billboard

I understood

a display which is touching every single corner of our lives except the shower corner

and then I thought further what makes us want to proudly wear a company logo on our chests and how could we make a use of this display that we are constantly wearing

and then I did not know what to do for a while

and then I knew again

I made a plan to make a comfortable universal sweatshirt which will have a displaying function beside the warm keeping, protecting and covering one

what would I fill the surface with?

what surface?

I wondered

and so I bought a surface

blank, grey sweatshirt

I decided to make a use of the existing shape of the sweatshirt and challenge the idea of temporary and replaceable advertisement on it

but how?

I thought

Removable sleeves?

but how?

adding a zipper?

or a velcro?

zipper

and so I added a zipper on the sleeves and by doing so, I allowed the printed advertisement/ promotional element to be easily removed or replaced by another one

I made a list of small businesses that I really truly want to support and promote

I gathered the logos of all of them

the print will come on the sleeves

I made another decision

but how?

screen print?

okay

the screen print studio works on the base of appointments

you must discuss your idea with the screen print assistant first

then an appointment is made

attention: it sometimes lasts over two weeks

you start printing with the assistant

hopefully you can work independent later

costs

yes costs…

no

I am not going to screen print my logos

what else can I do?

transfer print it

of course

I printed my logos onto a specially coated transfer paper

then they were applied onto textile under the heat press

and there it was

logos on my sleeves

I looked at the sweatshirt in my hands

I wanted to wear it immediately

and I did

and it felt good

but it did not feel good enough

so I took it off and looked again

and after some time I wrote down

70cm metal zipper standard + another sleeves + velcro pocket question mark

and then I went to Jan

and made another pair of sleeves

black

I put transparent, removable pockets on them

and I like them a lot

and then I looked again

they told me I have to look and reflect on my work during my process

so I did

I reflected

and I asked myself

what is it that I have now?

sweatshirt design?

yes

and what else?

and then I started my analysis

see here: video

When we got an assignment to contact a person that influences and fascinates us I got lost for a moment. There are simply too many people whom I would be curious to meet and ask about their work and inspirations! After a couple of failed email conversations with hard-to-reach professionals I decided to try another way. My inspiration came spontaneous as a follow up of my daily curiosities. I personally find it very stimulating for my own working process to make a step aside from the main route and see what is it there behind the corner because you never know! Following this simple idea I went to a butchery I have been to recently. I already had a short encounter there with a butcher Mike and a video of him slicing slaughtered pig. Therefor we met again and I had a great opportunity to spend some time at the butchery with the best butcher-guide! During that meeting I discovered the world of modern dutch butcher and afterwords continued on searching for the best object i could make to tell the story of this meeting. In the text below you can find all the process steps that led to the creation of the final piece- OBJECT of CURIOSITY.

First Reaction: Right after the meeting I decided to quickly summarize what had happened and what material I have now. I had a sticker with all of the information about the pig Mike was slicing and loads of videos documenting almost the whole meeting. I decided to make a list of tags which would describe that meeting.

First tryout: My first idea was to make a fan with sharp knifes used as blades. I thought it would be a funny metaphor for the meeting. Chilling plus being dangerous.

Second tryout: Understanding that the fan idea is too flat I decided to try to make something what the butcher could use. Here is a sketch of some kind of logo/identity proposal.

Third tryout: After talking to my teacher and classmates I decided to go away from my direct design solutions and think more about what was my experience like, what made this meeting so special? The experience was unexpected, though the location of the meeting suggested some narratives, and the main conclusion I made was that my own curiosity led my towards this happening. I started sketching to figure out what object can look common but yet carry something surprising in it and trigger peoples curiosity at the same time.

Final idea: To go further I decided to ask my friends in what situations they feel the most curious? Receiving their opinions I understood that all of them were naming the situations where the communication with other people involved. At this point it became obvious for me! That now I want to make something that I can give to others, something that will become something else when used by people. And here came the idea to make some kind of lottery ticket called OBJECT of CURIOSITY. It will help people to create their own Object of Curiosity and at the same time will be object that contains the curiosity in itself. Here is the first version of it.

Final design: To make it look more like a lottery ticket I made a design for the object and used special techniques by applying scratchable lines on it.

Final move: To finish my project I asked two of my friends to test OBJECT of CURIOSITY and sketch their own Objects of Curiosity. Here below is what came outcome.

OBJECT of CURIOSITY is a lottery ticket to the greatest trip of your imagination! In this object I tried to combine suspense with excitement, make it open and closed at the same time and, above all, interactive. This is a metaphor for the process of my work and a useful tool for others.

!BE CURIOUS!

#STICKY #SWEET_SMELL #MUSELS #VACUUM #MAFIA #BLOOD #SLAYERS #DELIVERY #FRESHLY_SLICED #HASH #FREEZER_ROOM #SALTED #DRIED #EX-ANIMATOR #GANGS #JEW_BUTCHER_FROM_30s #AIR_CONDITIONER_IN_A_WARDROBE #WINNER_OF_2013 #CLEAN_EVERY_WALL_EVERYDAY #BUBBLES #SHARP_KNIFE-THE_MAIN_RULE #STAB_YOURSELF #CHILL #FAMILY_BUSINESS #CUSTOMERS #BACTERIAS #SALAMI #HOOKS #HAIR_STYLING #VAN_PERSIE #FOOTBALL #DRUNK- AGRESSIVE WOMEN HARASSMENT CHILLED MEAT TO TASTE BETTER #YOUNG_MEAT- NO_TASTE #TEENAGE_MEAT #CUT_CLOSE_TO_THE_BONES

Typefaces always seem to be facing the wind, two feet on the sheet of paper, unmovable. Like a silent army, arranged according to there ranking, there are ready to take a new formation. This traditional and almost absolute arrangement tends to make us forget how those typefaces got there, what is there personal journey, what and even who shaped them like that.

Karl Nawrot seems to be privileging this particular journey i am talking about. So to say, his typefaces carriers are far from being all traced beforehand. Moreover, he seems to be having even more fun in creating devices and means to form those letters than in the final presentation.

By using tools he creates himself, he lets the door ajar to imagination, not exhibiting the letter as a final assertion but as a possibility. Stamps, enigmatic stencil disks, collages celebrate as much the process as the result.

Thereby the designer does not hesitate to present those tools, such as the stencils disks, also through a series of posters, respecting somehow the presentation of typefaces. By creating a parallel in the presentation, he builds up a clear bridge between the making and the result, putting them on the same level of importance.
Through this interstice he offers us, one can let his imagination grow about what could be the final arrangement.

But is it not the definition of children games ?Making use of the possibility of the material and playing around it more than gathering all the forces to the final result. Indeed he does not only create his own tool, he also documents the process by making use of stop-motion movies.
Once again the use of this device to present his work makes it really fun. The videos or clip-arts that can be found on his website, www.voidwreck.com , are, according to me, by no means instructions for the proper use of those tools but once again a celebration of its inner-possibilities.
Thereby, in a interview he gave to the blog Manystuff.com in January 2011, he gives his definition of what a good design is. He declares : ’’A good design gives you the feeling of a piece stuck between past & future.’’

Playfulness is definitely the word I would use to describe the work of Karl Nawrot. However focusing on this aspect would maybe undermine the importance of geometry in his creations. Indeed if there is space for game and ‘’abruptness’’ in the realization, there is a clear rigor in the fabrication of the tool. On the one hand the Stamps Box conceived in 2005 and 2006 has a clear connection to childhood but on the other hand the rubber stamps consist of drawn geometrical patterns of the same size. Even if Nawrot limits himself to four simple geometrical shapes (rectangle, line, triangle and circle), he succeeds in generating 150 different stamps : the result of an intense research in exhausting the possibilities and combinations of shapes.

Still Karl Nawrot is not only experiencing with typography, he is also an illustrator but those two interests tend to meet again through the approach he uses.

Indeed the letters he draws seem to peel themselves off, falling into pieces. But the movement could also be interpreted in a reverse manner : the letter getting slowly their final shape under our eyes. Once again Karl Nawrot creates the ambiguity, describing physically this in-between he invokes below, ‘’between past and future’’.

Background :

Karl Nawrot attended the graphic design school Emil Cohl in Lyon, France. He was accepted at the Werkplaats Typographie in 2006. He is now established as a graphic designer and typographer in Amsterdam where he lives.

De gehele expositie ‘monumenten voor de toekomst, El Lissitzky’  trof mij als warrig, misschien mede door het eerst kijken van het theaterstuk, waar hij aan had meegewerkt, uitgevoerd door Amerikaanse theatermakers, lang na zijn dood.
Theater is een ding, experimenteel theater een ander en een video-regristratie van  experimenteel theater nog een stap verder van mijn bed. De bedoeling van de tentoonstelling is om te laten zien hoe dynamisch Lissitzky was, zijn werk is dat ook, vaak onaf, vol ideeën over de toekomst. Maar de meeste dynamiek die ik gevonden heb, zat in het kleinste kamertje van het Van Abbe Museum, het was ook de laatste ruimte die ik nog niet gezien had. Het was een video spel, geprojecteerd op een groot scherm met een comfortabele rode tweezitsbank er tegenover. Het was het spel ‘Proun‘ van Joost van Dongen, mede geïnspireerd op Lissitzky. je was een bal die voortstoof op een buis, je kon vooruit en draaien om de buis. onderweg waren er enkel geometrische vormen die uit de weg gegaan diende te worden, er was geen boven of onder, geen einde, enkel abstractie en zeer veel dynamiek. Wat het Van Abbe probeerde te bereiken via het werk van Lissitzky, is hen gelukt via een video game. Hier raakt de expositie aan de toekomst, en aan dynamiek, de kunst kan nog veel groeien en ontdekken in de wereld van de nieuwe media. Games, web-art, conceptuele kunst op je I-phone van alles is daar mogelijk. Jammer dat hier verder geen aandacht aan is besteed in de tentoonstelling. Het doel was immers een tentoonstelling te maken die lissitzky in deze tijd plaatst. bij het spel stond ook niet van wie het was, waarom het er was of dat het er überhaupt stond. een klein gemis