Designblog

It’s funny how quickly people can learn something. Maybe learning isn’t the correctly chosen word in this case, perhaps it should be adjusting, or ‘changing’ or maybe even unlearning.

I say this because i noticed how the third time in the library my way of searching a new book in the way that is expected of us, was easier then the times before. Of course the day, the other influences in life itself has a big influence on the way you search and look for a book in an objective way, but it did feel like the new ‘insight’ was there a bit.

I noticed it by the feeling I had. Being sure of my choice, during the whole process. Walking in to the library, taking my time to stroll along the books, not being impatient or unsure about the choice I will make.

Looking at the backsizes of the books instead of the cover. The two previous books I had were both a bit odd in terms of size. The first one was longer then a4, but thinner, the second book was longer then a4 if you had it in a landscape position. So I decided that for the third book I wanted an ‘off’ size as well. This made is efficiently easier. With a filter I walked around, feeling like I had a direction I knew I had to follow. Starting in the lower part of the library, flipping through some books, not finding the right one, then, after quite a while I decided to walk up the stairs. Starting in the corner where I had found my first book, about textiles, I spelt made my way to the right, and saw a yellow cover. I had touched this book before. I had seen it, flipped through it already, I realised as I was holding the square book with a yellow coloured cover I didn’t like. But even though i enjoyed the book. The simplistic tattoo designs fitted well together with the square simplistic pages. I didn’t read the small sentences that were written down. Although I didn’t read it, I did notice how contradictory the font fitted with the designs. Simply by the round lettertype and the sharp drawings.

What links this third search to the others (especially the first book) is the instinctive search and the listening to what felt right. Besides this, the contradictory of the outside and the inside of the book was very present, just like the other books I had chosen.

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Searching without an objective search criterion in a library seems to contradict the way a library is organized. However, after deciding that it is exactly this intellectual approach that I need to abandon, I decide to approach the books basing my choice on feelings and preferences alone.

1. I like graphic art

2. I like vivid colors

I notice a book that is a faded neon pink. I recognize it, because I have it at home, twice. Living with my boyfriend has caused some books to be connected with a twin, and our copies of ‘Een teken aan de wand’ are standing next to each other on the shelf, looking beautiful.

Should I choose this book? Isn’t it too obvious, seeing that I know it, have read it, used it in projects and above all, that it concerns some of my favorite topics: feminism and human rights? Yes I should, neon pink looks even better times three.

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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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