As part of the final exams and graduation show 2011, the Jewelry department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie “Het Sieraad” published a wonderful triptych.
A successful effort to put the work of the 8 graduating students in broader perspective.
This triptych consists out of 3 layers in which the students present 1] their visual inspiration material, 2] parts of their theses in relation to the works, 3] the works itself.
The whole publication is beautifully designed by Anna Hennerdal a graduation student of Graphic Design herself. She managed in a very effective way to visualize these layers and their interrelationships. Most intriguing in this publication is the transformation of all the material through the miraculous technique of cyclo-style printing causing an unique visual interpretation.
“1-2-3 Jewel”
a feel of the field / research & inspiration / final pieces
page 2 - 3 : chapter 1 / a feel of the field / index - Boris de Beijer
The 40 page publiation “1-2-3 Jewel” of which 200 copies were printed can be bought for € 25 at the Jewelry department or can be downloaded as pdf below.
This post is part of he subjective library project “Unopened Book” An assignment initiated by Corinne Gisel and Nina Paim[graphic design]
in cooperation with Henk Groenendijk and Matthias Kreutzer [supervision]
Intro part 1 /The Assignment
Assignment as presented
Select a book from the library collection based solely on its spine.
You will be given only a short amount of time to make a choice, you probably have to make a very spontaneous and subconscious decision. We will take your book away to make sure that it remains unopened. It will be kept together with the other unopened books in a vitrine in Rietveld Academy Building for the time of the assignment. Now rationalize your decision:
Why did you choose for this spine and not for another? What do you think this book is about? Write a Blurb on this Unopened Book and visualize that imagined content in a vitrine!
read all “Blurbs” and see all “Vitrines” imagined as part of this assignment, by selecting Unopened Books from the “Projects” Menu
Intro part 2 /The Lecture
Fernand Baudin Students Publications March 2012 was the first edition of a yearly event dedicated to students publications. It was an event dedicated to editorial productions by students in Belgium and connected to the international scene. The first year was an experimental, reflective and prospective one – engaging students, teachers and ‘professionals in public discussions on the practice of making and thinking books today. It was also a moment to think about publications (book fairs, book awards, book exhibitions, etc) questioning their relevance to the realities of students’ practice today.
As part of discussions and presentations, organized during this event, Nina Paim and Corinne Gisel gave a lecture presenting their 2012 graduation project Library Talk of which “Unopened Books” was a part initiated in cooperation with the Basic year’s Design/DesignResearch program.
This lecture is integral published in the book “Fernand Baudin Students Publications/This Is Not A Most Beautiful Books Award” and can be lend in the Rietveld Library [lib no: ]. Mixing different times and spaces this publication proposes another way to document that event. It publishes elements retracing its making, explaining its structure. It makes public what happened before and during the event –the pieces and the facts– but also what happened after and is still happening while those lines are written.
Lecture about "Unopened Books" by Nina Paim and Corinne Gisel as part of their "Library Talk" graduation project
“click on image above to download lecture [15 pages]
thanks to Nina Paim for permission to publish the lecture
thanks to Lorain Furter for donating a copy of the book to the library
Dialogue, Wendy, Robert, Anne" from Zara Zerny on Vimeo
about the movie: text in progress
[images Graduation Show, Zara Zerny]
The essay by Zara –as part of here graduation project– is an investigation and interest in approaching a method used in the moving image, film; the improvised conversation.
For years improvised conversations have mostly been used in independent films, which have a different focus and storyline then a traditional Hollywood movie. It is often noticeable to the viewer when a conversation is improvised; a specific atmosphere appears in which the random is made possible in a controlled environment; fiction becomes infiltrated by reality. A director works in a different way, when using an improvised conversation. Instead of following a strict storyboard the director designs a setting that allowes the actors to improvise within restricted environments.
download thesis:‘Conversations and Design in Improvised Conversation’
[publication of graduation essay by Mila Lanfermeijer 2011]
Op een lichte dag, als de zon schijnt komen we overal spontaan onze weerspiegeling tegen. In winkelruiten, glazen, lepels en de ogen van anderen. Het zijn niet alleen spiegels die ons vertellen hoe we eruit zien. De wereld bij daglicht is een omgeving van eindeloze reflectie. Omgeven door glimmende oppervlakken kunnen we niet aan onszelf ontkomen. In de scriptie ‘tussen ruimte’ word een fictieve ruimte beschreven en onderzocht waarin zich een aantal van deze reflectieve oppervlakken bevinden.
‘Tussen ruimte’ is een aanloop geweest naar het werk ‘ Vanya en Lara’ een portret van twee zussen. Niet alleen in de spiegel herkennen de zussen zichzelf maar ook in elkaar. Het beschrijven van het spiegelbeeld als ervaring gaf niet alleen inzicht in de ervaring van het kijken maar ook wat het betekend om te worden bekeken.
[images Graduation Show, Mila Lanfermeijer]
Vanya and Lara are sisters with two years between them. The girls are similar in appearance, have similar ways, movements, habits. Yet they are not more similar than they are different.
The girls become a good point of reference for the artist who has a sister herself. To what extent does my sibling other function as a mirror? Will knowing how I differ from her make me know myself? Or will our similarities tell me who I am?
The girls are filmed on several occasions. The first time without directions at their mother’s house. At one point they are asked to re-enact each other’s movements until they become synchronized. They perform a sequence of small movements; they practice and watch each other. Eventually, in turns, they are seated in front of a mirror as a life-sized image of their sister is projected over the sitter. They look at themselves and are now able to see the other at the same time.
from the jury rapport: ...., you were the only student from the Textile department that did not present your work in one of the greenhouses in the park outside our academy. Our jury members noticed you and your work anyway, partly due to the professionality with which you announced your work. You chose Textile as a startingpoint but your work was merely a thorough research of both yourself as the outside world. The relatedness was omnipresent and for every spectator there will be another interpretation. Our jury members were impressed by it’s intimacy, it’s colouredness and it’s futuristic thought. The multi-mirrors in your work are smart references to a world in which we constantly mirror ourselves to others. You have told this story beautifully and therefore the jury was pleased to nominate you.
download thesis:Tussen Ruimte /thesis van Mila Lanfermeijer
As part of the graduation program at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, we were asked to write a thesis. I conducted a research into the early days of Modernism and Constructivism. One of the books on my list was the English translation of Die Neue Typographie, by Jan Tschichold.
This publication included an introduction by Ruari McLean, translator of the original, German version, who was also a personal friend of Jan Tschichold. On the first page of his foreword, McLean tells us that already in 1967, Tschichold asked him to translate Die Neue Typographie. McLean continues his introduction: “He planned it as a second, revised edition.” McLean states that he translated the greater part of Die Neue Typographie, incorporating all the revisions, but no publisher could be found. For the 1995 edition, McLean together with the University of California Press, made the editorial decision to translate the original text, treating it as a historical document.
After finishing the introduction, I was curious about the revisions Tschichold made to his original text. McLean tells us in his introduction that after the death of Tschichold, in 1974, he placed the draft of his translation in the St Bride Printing Library. So, the next day I called the library. It took me some weeks, to finally get hold of the document, but these weeks gave the opportunity to research Tschichold’s personal and professional life.
Tschichold transmogrified from a traditional, German trained typographer, into a “true modern designer” (his own words), to finally reform back into his old working method, a classical and traditional approach to typography. Over time, he became his own frenetic antagonist, with Die Neue Typographie in the center.
What I found out, is that Tschichold during his life, tried, but repeatedly failed, to publish a revised edition of Die Neue Typographie. Throughout his life – while criticizing himself and others, who were still confederated to Die Neue Typographie movement – he worked on this document, trying to mitigate his rather excessive statements from his younger self. This revised edition of Tschichold was now fragmented in different archives. As an archaeologist I started to recollected these sparse pages and revisions by Tschichold, and incorporated all my findings into a version, as coherent as possible.
While working out the manuscripts by Tschichold, I tried to find out in what physical form, Tschichold wanted to present his revised edition. In correspondence with Piet Zwart, he speaks about presenting it in A4 format, a format he later labeled as: “devils format”. Die Neue Typographie was set in either Aurora Grotesk, or Akzidenz Grotesk. The choice of typeface, was decided by practical circumstances: no other sans serif font was available in an amount large enough, to set a whole book. I took this opportunity to design my own sans serif font, called Takhir. The shapes of Takhir were drawn, to tell a story about Modernism. But, it is too bumptious to appear, as pure, as Modernism would have wanted it to be.
This whole project resulted in the revised edition of Die Neue Typographie, containing all the revisions I collected in my research. The publication is introduced by a foreword, that I wrote as my thesis [presented as pdf at the end of this post], in which I present the historical background of Die Neue Typographie movement, and the publication by the same name. Beside all the revisions Tschichold made to his text, he made a number of personal comments, which reflected or criticized the content. The combination of these two, are really important for me, because it shows Tschichold’s difficult relationship to Die Neue Typographie. In one hand he rewrites its whole content, but he no longer agrees with its tenor. In the final publication, these personal comments are presented on errata’s, placed on the corresponding page of the content.
The whole publication is set in the typeface Takhir, which was finally created in two weights, both with Italics. Printed digitally in an edition of 50 copies 157 pages on 110 grams silk machine coated paper with a silkscreened cover, for sale at San Serriffe Bookstore [x].
text by Maarten Kanters [graduate student department of Graphic Design 2011] : more www.mrtnkntrs.nl
This essay by Elki Boerdam is about a new type of image: the still. A stopped movement. A scene frozen in time, a paused frame.
Its a mysterious image. Filled with references, context and suggestions. You feel there is more to see than that one frame, that there is a story. And that this is just a flash out of a bigger thing.
Its a type of image that requires intense participation from the reader. It asks questions about recognition, relation and reference.
This investigation explores this new kind of image. Trying to define it by placing it in an art environment. Could the still be seen as an autonomous artwork? Is the context the still gives us really important for the meaning of the image? And does a still always needs to stand still? The still is a sort of image not to be overlooked and that is getting more and more importance every day. For normal users as well as artists and designers.
download thesis:STILLS, Het Vastgevroren Beeld download reader:STILLS, In Text [Reader] publications will be translated in english soon. Use 'comments' for english request
This thesis by Daniel de Zeeuw won the 2011 Rietveld Thesis award. The Jury rapport said: “a very thorough research on internet and its relation to notions of conspiracy. A text in which everything is so well connected and hangs so good together that the reader starts suspecting a conspiracy. Daniel has such a complete knowledge of the field he is writing about and has such an extensive grip on the vast amount of literature he has handled that the text sometimes starts looking like a PhD dissertation“.
You could hear voices no mainstream media would ever dare to speak
With the rise of the Internet, a special realm of being has exploded and taken on enormous proportions. Between the mass-medial hermeneutic machines and the sub-medial everyday is now another world-historical playing field: below the thresholds of newspapers and television stations, but broadly distributed and encoded through visual formats nonetheless: a self-replicating and self-distributing of the General Intellect, including the infectious diseases that torture it. We are all potential witnesses and accomplices to what is going on anywhere, anytime, or so it seems. The structure of the Internet is like a conspiracy theory.
Download this thesis:Something Is Out there! Networked Encounters of the nth Kind: The Art of Conspiracy
[images Graduation Show, Daniel de Zeeuw]
from the jury rapport: Something Is Out there! Networked Encounters of the nth Kind: The Art of Conspiracy is according to the jury a very thorough research on internet and its relation to notions of conspiracy. A text in which everything is so well connected and hangs so good together that the reader starts suspecting a conspiracy. Daniel has such a complete knowledge of the field he is writing about and has such an extensive grip on the vast amount of literature he has handled that the text sometimes starts looking like a PhD dissertation.
Architectorial anxiety.
Can I design a space that uses my experience of fear to design the perfect safe zone? How can I shape a space which gives one freedom and privacy but which is not enclosed?
Shields and Shelter is a design for the grounds of the public bath – Flevoparkbad [link] – in Amsterdam. For the Rietveld graduation exhibition 2010, I realized a 1:1 detail of my design on the lawn behind the Rietveld Academy.
above : a 1:1 detail of my Flevoparkbad design on the lawn behind the Rietveld Academy.
In Shields and Shelter I applied step by step the guidelines that I have developed to achieve safe and comfortable zones using my own fear experiences. These guidelines involve architectural concepts like shielding and view, shadow and light, flexibility versus rigidity. The perfect safe zone to me is a flexible space which gives one freedom and privacy but which is not enclosed. As basis for the design drawings I used an aerial photo from Google Earth of Flevoparkbad. From each towel, I constructed lines of sight from 120° angle views. Through shading these 120° triangles a map emerges with different degrees of surveillance. The darker the area, the more views. At the darkest areas the view must be blocked. Therefore I developed shields, which can be slided along rails that follow the lines of sight. This allows the bathers to adjust their exposure to others according to their own wishes.
tracing the 'feel' zones and the emotion lines and reproducing them in a real situation.
From the jury rapport : Kristin Maurer’s installation outside is a whole new interpretation of space. Space can be created by shadows as well as materials. This is what struck our jury-members. Next to this the technical realization of the work is stunning and therefore our members of the jury wanted to celebrate this piece of work.
etchings at graduation show
The etchings in the thesis, presented as part of the graduation show, are ground plans of remembered fear spaces. A scheme of lines of sight in train, Kristin Maurer, 2009 [etching]
Download thesis:Architectural anxiety. the perfect safe zone
This graduation essay by Mrova Zub covers research on open-ended forms of participatory interaction and tactical involvement of individuals / groups that do not solely operate within one discipline, but by overlapping disciplines and by constantly rethinking employed tactics, manage to transgress the presets, even if its only for a short moment. In preset regimes of coding and decoding (subjectivation), mutation is a crucial tactic in avoiding interpellation. Upheaval can be stimulated in an act of flight, a drift – a deliberate betrayal of rules and orders. Through constant actualization of connections, new energies are being released that help creative and tactical evolvement. Inter passivity as the result of a constant call for recognition from institutional and governmental systems is a tactical mutation that transgresses the limits (constitutes de-subjectivation).
The essay was presented in the context of the banner archive / workshop presented at the 2010 graduation show of Interaction Design-Unstable media)
download this thesis: Towards Tactical Interpassivity, from submission to subversion
I find, first of all, that I pass from state to state. I am warm or cold, I am merry or sad, I work or I do nothing, I look at what is around me or I think of something else. Sensations, feelings, volitions, ideas – such are the changes into which my existence is divided and which color it in turns. I change, then, without ceasing.Henry Bergson
Being Motion is a graduation thesis by Charlotte ten Raa, and won the 2010 Rietveld Thesis Award. It consists out of different texts. They circulate around the subject, the self; as a movement with the possibility to reflect. I wanted to bring the subject motion close to yourself, so close as to our consciousness. How we see the movement of a train passing by as well as how we can see our consciousness as one constant motion. How the self makes up stories from what it sees and how we form an image of yourself, seeing yourself as a subject and as an object. How there are different perspectives on time and space, looking from the starting point: the self.
Our way of being in the world is very much about predicting what’s going to happen, taking tiny fragments and putting them together.William Kentridge
The jury was unanimous in its decision: Because it is a thesis that involves the reader in an interplay between form and content in an amazing way. Because it is very well written, keeping a careful balance between the personal and the objective, between anecdotal and philosophical, between thinking and doing. Because it shows that it is possible to deal with a very complex theoretical problem in a very light way.
It might be called a special coincidence that this thesis and its excellent understanding of the philosophy of Henri Bergson has been written in the spirit of our theory teacher Raoul Teulings [†2010] who we all miss very much, and in whose memory this first Prize for Best Thesis is given.
THERE ARE RULES BEHIND COMPLEX AND ORGANIC CIRCUMSTANCES
This is the opening sentence of “Rules” a graduation essay written by Ayumi Higuchi in which she investigates the impact rules have or can have on the process of cause and effect in the creative process. A story that drags you into the exiting process of research where every question or statement leads to two others.
Using interviews as a platform to ask questions and create interaction, she involves Jan Groenewold (physician-chef), Luna Maurer and Jonathan Puckey (graphic designers), Snejanka Mihaylova (philosopher-writer-artist) and Peter van Bergen (musician-composer) to talk about the subject from the perspective of their specific discipline.
Look for yourself how she illustrates this story with many images and quotes dragging you deeper into the matter every page, creating in depth understanding. Munari, Wittgenstein, 9/11, John Cage, mixing politics with art and science with nature to get her point across.
Ayumi visited us in April 2010 to present a workshop in which she planted the seed of understanding using Bruno Munari‘s observations; […] We can establish a rule of growth: the branch that follows is always slenderer than the one before it (Drawing a Tree).
Providing us with a trunk and applying two simple rules to it: The branch that follows must be slimmer than the one before -and- the tree must be symmetric, it quickly became clear that there are many rules behind complex and organic circumstances.
download this research essay:“RULES”, there are rules behind complex and organic structures
Conditional Painting is truly happening in the van Abbemuseum Eindhoven! They call it the Vitruvian Paint Machine.
As part of “Take on me (Take me on)” /Dutch Design Week 17 to 25 Oct 2009, Luna Maurer and Edo Paulus executed a mural painting on pre determined conditions based on the proportions of the body and visitor interaction.
The act of designing is based on rules they say. So Luna and Edo, together with Roel Wouters and Jonathan Puckey, created a manifesto of explicit rules for design.
Visiting their lecture, as part of the “Take on me (Take me on)” event, they made it clear that setting strict conditions does disconnect you from subjective standards and creates awareness in the process. A beautiful time based movie of their “machines” made this crystal clear.
download this research essay: by Jules Esteves: “Conditional Drawing, Conditional Painting” questioning the practice of Conditional Design.
What kind of object is a book? How can it be used and how can its user relate to it? Co-auteurs of ‘Titel van dit Schrift:’ (translation ‘Title of this Notebook:’) marked traces in the publication, leaving layers of reactions and transforming the previous edition.
left edition 1 booklet present at 'Acting the Script', Graduation Show Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam 2009.
After writing my Bachelor thesis in 2009, I am now interested in how this material can be interpreted in speech and voice. This i have investigated through several dialogues and performances. From these events, quotes and words have been selected. With the residues of the booklet, i composed a musical performance for solo voice which will be presented live at Vondelbunker, Amsterdam, within a new setting during the ASCA exhibition 28 March to April 1st 2012. Listen to my interview
Download this thesis:Titel van dit Schrift [dutch language]
On request of Gray Magazine #5 (yearly published on the occasion of Rietveld’s final exams show) 40 students of the Foundation Year, guided by Henk Groenendijk and Tine Melzer, unleashed a two day project to create a new context for a highly varied 20.000 slide images archive. André Klein, now chair of Fine Arts and Sandberg Applied Art Dept, compiled these slides over his 25 year long career of art history teaching.
We could only guess after the motives and meanings that bound these images together in a dynamic process of ever changing contexts and wonder what new context of relation they would have in the eyes and minds of the basicyear students. The uninhibited existence of a ‘democratically’ selected 1000 reproductions, registrations and images was given new meaning through a process of retagging with subjective keywords. In the 2 day process new contexts and connections were created, processes where discovered, and results presented in a physical display of image related tag-lists and monumental alphabetical (key)word lists. I am a kid
I burn
ice
ice cube
iceberg
ice cream
Iceland
ideal
IKEA
ill
illusion
Illustration
image
imagination
immigration
imitate
imitation
immaterial
impale
imperfection
impossible
impression
in scene
incest
inconvenient
increasing
identical
India
India
Indian
industrial
industry
infinity
influence
information
ink
inner space
innocence
inquiry
insane
insect
insecure
inside
insides
installation
institute
instruction
instruments
integrate
intellectual
intense
interaction
intercourse
interest
interference
intergalactic
interior
intertwine
intimacy
intruder
invasion
invention
invisible
invitation
irresponsible
island
isolation
it
Italy
itch
Awareness surfaced about the relation between content and image and word and form and content in the contexts of our own terms. Tagging images uncovered these relations
some of the question we asked ourselves were:
The mechanisms of images and imagination on one side and the mechanisms of names and naming on the other – where do they both meet?
What is the link between what we see and how we call it?
What is the process of agreement with the other(s) to find relevant and appropriate names?
Is tagging also a kind of ‘baptizing’? Or rather an act of memory and memorizing, how things are called?
What is the level of interpretation when we have to give an image a tag?
What is the relationship between tag and image, word and view?
: download Gray Magazine # 5 [this is a 44 MB document] :
For more information on this and other lecture projects based on the same archive, read Gray Magazine #5. Get your own hard copy from the Library
Rietveld graduate (2008 TXT) Marie Ilse Bourlanges visited the Slow Design research class on Thursday 12 February to present about her graduation project, ‘Decay,’ a collection of sweaters exploring complex relationships of time, the body and materiality. By taking the class through her project from concept to final product, Marie Ilse revealed the deep and mindful processes of research, design development, experimentation, and production that enriched her project. She talked about sources of inspiration: the work of writer/biologist Midas Dekkers, the concept of Time in the work of Belgian fashion designer Martin Margiela, the symbiotic relationship of crumbling architectural forms and the natural forces that overtake them, patterns of cellular growth and decay, and the hidden treasures of a threadbare teddy belonging to her niece (among others). She also described the evolution of her pattern, which derived from capturing subtle, everyday body movements and subsequently was subjected to fractal geometry, while also providing instructive detail about her various stages of experimentation with materials and techniques. Marie Ilse’s project is a beautiful example of Slowness as a process of designing, and also Slowness as a more engaged and reflective experience of a designed artifact. Her work on this project demonstrates how Slow Design tools and persepectives were supported and enhanced by the atmosphere of the Rietveld, and it hopefully was reminder to the Basic Year students about both the opportunities and intrinsic responsibilities of creative education.
download this thesis: ‘Decay’ by Marie Ilse Bourlanges was
The International Institute of Social History (IISH) is the world’s largest documentation and research centre in the field of social history. Since its foundation in 1935, the institute has dedicated itself to the collection, preservation and availability of the heritage of social movements worldwide.
Situationist Pamphlet 1967
The publication “Reviewed Printed Matter” is the outcome of a review assignment which was part of the theory program Critique & Actuality in the graphic design department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, 2007. The eleven-day program was compiled by Kasper Andreasen and was based on studying and understanding different methodologies of reviewing and analyzing printed matter; selected posters, pamphlets, cards and books from the archives of the Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.
Nieuwe Realisten Poster 1964 - poster archive - Letter for Iris- Number of silence
The International Institute of Social History holds over 3,000 archival collections, some 1 million printed volumes and about as many audio-visual items. The available Collections are accessible through an online catalogue, an online index of archives and inventories. The IISH is also home to a number of other documentary institutions, most notably the Netherlands Economic History Archive (NEHA) and the Press Museum. Both offer supplementary collections and services. Their material is included in the IISH catalogue. Visitors can consult the collections for reference and research in the reading room.
download this research reader: Reviewed Printed Matter
