Designblog

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

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And again repetition. It’s also ironic, to repeat a search for repetition. But this time it’s different:
this time it’s art;
this time it’s pink;
this time it’s really big;
this time it’s Sophie Calle.
But still it’s repetition

A letter, over and over again, but the same letter. 30 women from different ages, professions, layers read it, interpretate it into what they think is the content. Now suddenly it seems not to be about the same letter anymore, but it is!
Repetition in language apparently is different than repetition in forms and shapes.
Language has a personality to it that by the slightest (miss) interpretation or (miss) understanding, the content seems to change. So now it’s not a repetition of the same letter 30 times, it’s about 30 different letters.
I get confused now, because I seemed to think that our interpretation of forms, prints and products would be more alike for everybody. Because a form is a form and a product is a product. Because we learned a cup is to drink from, we see a cup to drink from.

We also learned the meaning of words, but somewhere through life these meanings seem to form itself into (slightly) different ones.
Our idea about forms and products are also changing through life, but it somehow seems to me that there is more of a conventional thing to it, or al least a less personal one. At least the function.

cat.no. -call-2

keyword: repetition

…While thinking about repetition and about the idea that practically anything could become a pattern by repeating it over and over again, I came to think of industrial design.

Where repetition in a pattern becomes this new image that, in a way, is stronger than the pieces apart. Repetition in products doesn’t really make it stronger. It makes the product less original en less valuable.
Unless you only plan on making a few of the same product, than the product suddenly becomes a collectors item or special edition.

Well, this second book was about industrial design…but also about language. Funny how these two subjects work together. Because through industrial design it becomes possible to have the same products all over the world. So for new products, new words have to be invented. A lot of products are called after their function, at least in Dutch they are. But wouldn’t it be an idea, to have international words for these international products? Ikea is already using this concept, so now people all over the world start having their own strange Swedish vocabulary of really silly words. Does that mean that in ten years every person, from Singapore to Munich would know that a LILLÅKER is the thing you rest your mattress on?

I think this book gives a better solution to this language problem, by just learning the different words.

cat.no. 772.9 cat 50

keyword: repetion

It expresses alternative .It is graphic design it does say many things but it’s a chaos .Other levels of thoughts ,the same point of discussion .No solution,just view to a protocol of becoming machinery that doesn’t want one.
From philosophy to corporate identity…Corporation is considered as a person in eyes of law. Lets use psychiatry to make simple conclusion based on analytic view of behavior of this already established individual in society.

High ambition.Although there are some basic rules of behavior that you have to embrace.
Smile means –fake
devastation-chance
offer – manipulation
improvement – tactic
wealth – private property
choice – marketing
necessity – money

770.6 vos 1

keyword: invention

This letter I want to attach to my last message about national identity present in a street signs in different cultures. For the second time I’m using this book, which you can also take in a library. This time I’ve made a selection of posters made in different countries, but for the same movies. My thought was about the possibility of existance of different schools of postering. This posters, that you can find below, were made in the time when there were no internet for sending files with information and a designer or an artist had to improvise making a new masterpiece for the public. But this problem had made movie presentation even more interesting in different countries. Each country had added something special, non cliche. So, enjoy!

cat. nr: 754.1-keh-1

keyword: identity

I will start with a beautifull sentence that has inspired me often. ”standing still for a moment, is actually a big step forward. So I stand still the whole day”. This sentence is a complete overview of what slowness is for me. But is this in connexion to any kind of design or art? For me in some cases this standing still adds a big layer in looking at things. By looking at objects and art for more than an hour and from the same perspective, it gives a new strength. But is there a way to make other people expierence this power of standing still. What could design/art add to this?

For the last time I visited “The Student”, this time busy hanging prints and getting all the little things ready for the exposition. ‘Is this it?’ I asked,

‘No’ she replied, ‘it needs the projection to really work’.

I felt I was taking a look in my own project, as I had been busy for 2 weeks on an installation that was going to project images of Rietveld students on the visitors of the Open Day, giving them the chance to be, for a moment, a Rietveld student.

The artist Jean-Christian Bourcart at some point also thought “It needs the projection” and made the great series “Collateral”

Maybe you find it puzzling that this posting about Helvetica and Wim Crouwel starts with an image of Paul Elliman’s “Bits” Alphabet.

Extremes can sometimes meet when you least expect it, and this fascinates me. It became apparent again during the investigation by the FoundationYear C group, into Gary Hustwitt’s Movie “Helvetica” and our consequently visit to the Wim Crouwel exhibit last month at the “van Abbemuseum”.

left: Bits by Paul Elliman, right: Objectified by Build (click images for blog info)

“Bits” was developed by Paul Elliman in the mid 90ties and published in the 15th (Cities) issue of Fuse’s conceptual Font Box. quote: “Language moves between us and the world on patterns of repetition and variation, and a mimetic example of this might be something like an alphabet”
Later, in 2004, it was included in the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial N.Y. which made “concept type” part of the established design world.

Gary Hustwitt’s new documentary “Objectified” takes design, and as a matter of fact “Bits” too, one step further by making it popular in the same way as he did with “Helvetica”.

Modernist thinking, or even constructivist-, lays at the base of the “Helvetica” concept and the work of Wim Crouwel, as this first movie on typography has him stated. As a true Dutch graphic design icon Wim Crouwel illustrated this through work, presented at the library exhibition of the van Abbemuseum, celebrating his 70th birthday. A small but beautiful display of catalogues and posters made for both this and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

pages by Crouwel versus pages by Jan van Toorn from publication “Het Debat”

Extremes met in person when Crouwel and Jan van Toorn celebrated their life long controversy with a recurrence of their famous 1970 debate. Functionalism versus engagement. Jan van Toorn succeeded Crouwel as a designer at this museum under the directorate of Jean Leering to manifest in an inspiring cooperation what that leads to in terms of exhibition concepts and graphic design (“Museum in Motion” at the library). Jean Leering also closely work together with Jan Slothouber (read part 1 of C group’s research) at the TU-Delft where the published several internal essay’s on the philosophical and social consequences of design.

80/20/100 © Nijhof&Lee booksellers – Laurenz Brunner, final exam poster

More research was conducted to explore related content or work approach of other designers like, Laurenz Brunner’s “Akkurat”, his successful contemporary remake of Helvetica, Experimental Jetset convicted users of Helvetica, the cooperation “8020100” between Vivid Gallery in Rotterdam and Nijhof&Lee Bookstore in Amsterdam. Context was created by turning the focus on Adriaan Frutiger, designer of Helvetica’s conscientious alternative “Univers”. To further explore the relation to language and image we further focused our investigating efforts on the visual legacy of Charles & Ray Eames, the “El Hema” exhibition/store and Massin‘s timeless publication “Letter and Image“.

With the inclusion of Belgian artist Guy Rombouts the full circle of our focus on type design was completed. The investigation into his visual language concept “AZart” will be presented soon in a separated part 3 C_group posting. This was part II of the C_group research
All researches linked in this posting can be downloaded in A4 format and are also available as hard copy research prints at the ResearchFolders available at the academy library

Last week I wrote a posting about a student in the middle of a project, of an exchange of her and other peoples ideas, all seeming fruitful and full of inspiration. This week I visited her again, anxious to hear new developments. She was stuck.

Many artists experience this during the process of making something and a walk around the basic year revealed many tactics in getting back on track:

• Have a beer

• Be hungover

• Go to a junkshop or flea market

• Make all kinds of small things related to your project

• Analyze all different parts, what do you want, what does it mean etc.

• Talk to someone

• Do something else

• Find things that are completely non-related.

• Or just keep on going, stuck is just an idea in your head.

Or do some Automatic Writing, which happens to be also an album of a great band.

Here’s a jam from them, featuring some pictures of your typical inspiration-seeking person.

Being a Javanees is a very greatfull feeling. That is what this “tribe” wants to do. His name is Marlon Trimo Kromojodo, but he like to call himself Trimo. Why that, because he want to hold in mind the second name of his grandfather who also is called Trimo. He got an idea to create with natural material the cloth of the “tribe”, but he does something different and creates the Javanees cloth.

This is how Trimo wants to look like. It is really a Javanees style to decorate yourself with natural material. That is the identity of being a Javenees. Like the folding leave and decorate also on the head. So Trimo create his “tribe” in a Javanees style, because it is also looks different.

Look at these: www.javanenvansuriname.info or www.picasaweb.google.com

Usually your body decides what kind of clothes you will wear, but what if it would be the opposite way – that the clothes would form your body? If a woman without curves would wear a dress made for a curvy female, there would be empty spaces between the body and the dress. What Anniek Mol thought of, was to design an insert to, in this case, fill the holes with. The idea is to be able to adapt your body to the clothes you are wearing. In addition to that it would change the way you look, you would also move and feel differently. This all started from Annieks uncomfort concerning her body, the question is though – would there not be a greater uncomfort with her design? Or is it after all the same principle like the push-up bra?

Link: Nagi Noda

How does all this work come into being? It is, of course, the product of the autonomous genius that is the artist, exploring depths where no mind has gone before and bringing back ideas that are completely original. Yeah right.
Most assignments, especially in the Design department involve a lot of research into existing artworks and other media. For instance, the picture above is an in-between work that started with the title of a book “Take my eyes and through them see you“, by Cerith Wyn Evans.
This made the teacher come up with the idea to have the students exchange clothes.
The photo’s gave a student the idea to cut them up and recombine them by hand.
In versions to come, the student said that she might combine it with the 7 sins, because of those sinful Dolce & Gabbana adverts. It made me think of those Magnum commercials from a while ago.
We’re all truly original…

posting by Arthur Perdijk

links to Centraal Museum and Viktor & Rolf

posting by Merel Woudwijk

The room is dark. In the speakers is heavy breathing. In the far en of the room is a black tent, it is moving from within as if something is trying to get out. On the floor is twenty white parallel lines leading away from the tent and branching out into a labyrinth. As the breathing stops a heavy beat start to pulsate. Out of the tent comes, one after the other, strange figures in costumes, they look as if they were characters walking out of a Bosch painting. This is the beginning of a performance that was the result of a Design class in word and image. The performance makes me think of the finnish artist Riita Ikonen who uses costumes in her performances but in a more playful way.

posted by Emilia Bergmark

It al started with a confusing assignment, or was there even an assignment?

An inarticulate happening, which nobody can define, but it does have all the aspects of image and language. Control-able vagueness including ideas about social subgroups. Collaboration with a confusing problem that was created out of nothing. Or was the problem there already? Is it complete chaos or efficient harmony. If this “class” has a name, we don’t know what it is. But we don’t know if it needs a name. And where are the boundaries? Are there boundaries? Do we need them? link to: perspicuity.net/paradox/vagueness

posted by Vincent Knopper

A big theme “Photography” as a starting point, but worked out in a straight form….
Find a collection of photo prints in a way you think they fit together (no glamour or arty once)… present the series and, of course, discuss a lot with the group…
What can you see… What is going on there…
What is happening with the relation between the pictures…
Next step… think further and create a “Photo story” with some more found pieces…
Of course discussion…
The last one should be a reaction, in anyway, on one photo out of the story…
Yeah… Discussion… yeah…

posted by Lena Hendlmeier

Let me tell you something about Jesse Muller.
Jesse has a social handicap. She is a perfectionist.
She wears a suit – I call it the ‘what-I’m-not-supposed-to-look-like-but-want-to-look-like-suit’. – Jesse is part of a tribe that can not function in society because of their social handicaps. This is why they only come out at night.
If you ever come across any members of the tribe – who I can tell you are pretty shocking, have you ever seen a man with six arms? – be sure to move out of the way.
Somewhere there is a book about this mysterious tribe. But I am affraid that – just like the tribe – it only comes out at night

posted by Charlie Bakker