Designblog

Hi Luna,

So let’s make a resume of what has been discussed and where did the direction go. 

 

What does differentiate that from classic handwriting? Well, because in handwriting, the constant of the shape is not equal: the movement of the line needs to change for creating different symbols and letters. So let’s take this as a focus of research: what are other systems of one movement fonts? How do they work and why did the designers decide to create it. Why would it be attractive to create these type of font? And how this repetition implies the body – after all, these repetitions of movements for making a font with a thread come from a body movement.

I found this guy on the internet yesterday, his name is Kosuke Takahashi, have a look at his twitter.
It’s a bit different from our first trough but in a way, his work is still around our question of movement and repetitive font. He’s trying to make a font relating Braille alphabet and “visual” alphabet (the international one and the Japanese one).

Tell me what you think about!

Love xxx

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Hey Agathe, 

 

I think its super interesting topic, I feel it’s a deconstruction of writing into a smaller concept, somehow like if the letter was an atom, and then we go from there to the electrons, I feel the construction of the atom by the constant movement of electrons resonates on the construction of a letter based on one repetitive movement. Kosuke Takahashi looks very amazing, a new idea of integrating both alphabets, finding the common link between them.

I also thought about the performative movement for language and got into morse code as a performative alphabet. It all is based on repeating one movement, constantly. Found out two Spanish cyborg artists, Moon Ribas and Neil Harbisson have done a performance with morse code, just speaking by biting. Both of them had a Bluetooth tooth, which vibrated on the other’s mouth. I find it pretty interesting how morse code could be taken to other levels of language nowadays. Also here you can find more information about their other cyborg art.

Not only with technologies but also in other artistic fields, I was investigating about graphic design and looks like there’s also a visual co-relation to the dashes and the dots of morse code when it comes to visual arts. There’s an alphabet that visually explains or adds morse to it, maybe it could be a way to represent morse code in a graphic design way.

 

L, L.

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Hello Luna,

I really like your comparison between Takahashi’s work and the formation of an atom. It also completely relates to Morse code,

see this panel: from hither to thither

So this tree explains the formation of the translation of a letter to morse code, constructed step by step from an element with another to articulate a sign, which will articulate a language with other signs. Like cells, let’s say? In the field of art, precisely in music, it reminds me of two things.
This first is a bit famous, Glenn Gould. He’s mostly known for his interpretations of J.S. Bach’s. Goldberg Variations. If some find his way to play piano extremely cold and mathematics, I actually found his play a clear way to “ear” a partition and understand the composition of the music. I don’t know so much about music, but he seems to me “cutting” the sound in different states that I can visualize better the written language the sounds come from.
For being honest, he’s the musician who made me understand music in general and appreciate contemporary electronic music. And probably not by accident : In contrary to most classic interpret at that time, he decided to work his play for the recording more than making concerts, implying on the fact that people who would listen to his music would need to manage their radio and sound at home, and in that way, his public would need to participate in the music to make it each time their own.

Another example is this partition for Jean-Philippe Rameau, La Poule (The Chicken). He’s a composer from the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century who made this research of repetition in music. As you can see the partition, the notes are constructed (as we said on the morse code and Braille alphabet) in a repetitive way while creating a system. Visually, it seems extremely repetitive, and quite modernist.

But the result is playful. Let’s say that creating an organized system of codification does not involve making something serious with it, haha. Here is a video of the performance by Grigory Sokolov, I really enjoy watching the movement of the body around this play.

Xx

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 Hey.

In general, all these elements that are summed up here have in common the fact that they are all performative, or better said, all the research comes to a common field which is the performance. Not only is it about reading or writing anymore, but also about acting. The movement becomes an essential part of all of the elements. The typography is not anymore about reading/writing communication but also about expressing it with other parts of the body, some of them not vocal, or even with external elements. 

 

After researching information about different color systems, I realized that all the systems try to approach questions of color always in relation to something. Color in terms how we describe it in language, color as light, color as pigment, color as sound. As for the color in relation to human body there is a Chakras system. But it is all fixed, and doesn’t explain movements of the body. I see human body as a constantly changing system, it is changes every second, and I wanted to develop during this project I wanted to create color system which describes movements of the human body into the color, in the real time. I wanted it to be really interactive and visual.

So I split whole process into two steps. First step was to find a sensor which will “read” movements of the body. There were several ideas possible, but after some try outs with heart rate monitors, ultrasonic motion sensors, I ended up using HC-SR501 Passive Infrared Motion Sensor (PIR) sensor. The module features adjustable sensitivity that allows for a motion detection range from 3 meters to 7 meters.  The device will detect motion inside a 110 degree cone with a range of 3 to 7 meters. I was using raspberry pi computer to program reactions of the sensor.

Second step was to find the way to represent the data from the motion sensor. I wanted to work with light. There were some ideas to use projectors. But in the end I was using Philips Hue lamps because they have open API and it is easy to program them.

There were some challenges with Philips hue lamps. They do not work by independently. If you want to communicate with lamps there is a physical device which called a bridge. . The Philips Hue bridge is the heart of the system. When you are programming, your are not communicating with lamps directly, you send commands to the bridge, and the bridge sends messages to lamps so they know, which hue and saturation apply to the lamp. Problem is that this bridge should be connected to wifi network. In school wifi network is secured, so you can not that easily add new device to it. This lamps are meant for use at home, and not really designed for the usage in the public locations.  So basically the solution to this problem was to create my own network. Raspberry pi computer became dhcp server and was assigning IP address to the bridge. It is very important to know IP adress, because than you know where to send your commands in program. So the whole system do not depend on the network connection and know can work on any location.

About the transformation of the movement to color. I built the whole system and tried it on the spot in the school. Originally it was working from the simple lamp. I installed the lamp in school and was observing people behavior how they react on the lamp. First setup was like this whenever someone pass by or approach the lamp it will switch on and start changing colors. This was clear, I noticed that once people realize how it works, they lose their interest in it. Like puzzle is solved. And usually it take 30 seconds for them to realize and they move forward. And also there were not so many people who will notice it in the first place. So I added blinking to get an attention of the passing by people. And once they approach lamp it will start changing colors, but with 5 seconds delay. After this changes there were more people discovering the work. And they spend way more time with it. Puzzled, and trying understand what action trigger lamp.

Next step was to put everything together in one container. So the whole system can work as portable device and can be shown in different locations.

As for the next steps I think it would be interesting to add more sensors. After some tests in library, I realized that people want to touch the object. It would be nice to add one more reaction to touch. And make more tests in different spots: Library, cafe, train station.

 
Guy DEBORD - Concept of "Derive"
How could people renounce to act, to move into a defined space?

“Follow the line. Walk. Turn left. Straight on. Turn right.”
Everyday is the same way. Wake up, go to work, one way. Finish work, go back home, same way. Same streets. Same sidewalk. Same hall. Same way to move into a defined space. I’m bored. I have the feeling of being programmed. I walk as an automate. The way I’m moving is determined by the space. A space, which has been built to create a certain kind of movement. Movements chosen by the hand of the architect.
I’m bored.
I want to derive.
I want to EXPLORE.
I want to be excited.
Let’s break the routine.
Let’s take the chances as a guide.
Let’s follow the chances.
The derive is defined by Guy Debord (a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International) as a fast technical way to go through different atmospheres. It is deeply linked to the space and to how people recognize it. The right words are “the psychogeographical thought”.

The human being evolves during his life through different spaces. He is acting, moving because of his feelings but also because of the space he is in itself. If the space is small, without windows, just made of walls, he will turn around in circles like a wild beast, searching for some space to explore. Put him into a wide space, with no walls, maybe he will run, maybe he will walk but he will have the freedom to explore. The space, thus, determines our behavior.
The chances has an important repercussion on the derive, even if the mind and feelings about the space, are still the elements which affect your choices. You’re walking in the street without any goal, you want to get lost, to explore. To your left, there is a narrow passage, it seems calm and quiet. To your right, there is a big street, noisy and full of people. Which one would you choose? Which path will attract you the most? Your feelings will help you choose.
The derive is something you can do by yourself, alone, but it has more impact in a small group. People can help you discover different places you don’t know, they can help you appreciate it. Also, a group of 4/5people maximum can create a different energy than if you were just by yourself.
 

 
The exploration supposes a kind of calculus which helps you to know where you are going. That’s what the map is for. In your daily life, you just know the streets you need to take to be at specific places. Take a map and start to look at what is around you will help you to understand how the city is built and how you can play with it.
“What if today, I decide not to turn left but I chose to go right, to get to my office?”
A small change of your routine can have a very positive impact on you. Your attention will be different so you will start to feel the pleasure of the unknown.

First cover Guy Debord’s book

In architecture, the derive creates new spaces, new ways to go, to move and to determine the space. 

Everyday you take the lift, go to the 3rd floor and open the second door on the left to your office. No excitation. Tomorrow, you will climb the stairs, try a new way to move and you will rediscover a place you thought you knew.

Why not create a place where the owner could remove the walls to make the space bigger or smaller? A place where he could be his own architect, a place where, he has everyday, the possibility to create his own space. For example, in 1955 a building was built in New-York in which three four room apartments could be turned into a big twelve room apartment thanks you moving walls.
Also, one of the most famous architecture of De Stijl movement, the “Schröder House”, illustrates very well this idea of transformable space. The Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht was built in 1924 by Dutch architect Gerrit RIETVELD for Mrs. Truus Schröder-Schräder and her three children. She commissioned the house to be designed preferably without walls. It is visually very simple with its use of primary colors and geometric shapes. The outside-inside boundaries seem to blur, thanks to its many windows that open up completely to welcome nature indoors.
 

 
This house is a great exemple of a home you could easily transform to suit the weather, your mood. The simple and straightforward house was made using long-lasting, affordable and standard materials like concrete, glass and wood, with floors made from rubber and even some small cork areas in the bedrooms, for standing when getting out of bed. A doorbell and a long horizontal window that only open a small area to receive the post straight to the working desk inside. Upstairs, three bedrooms and a living room area around a central staircase and fireplace can be dynamically turned into a open big open space when opening wide up the sliding the walls.
The whole idea of derive deeply echoes Constant’s work. After WW2, the artist saw the destroyed cities as a possibility to rebuild them in a different way. He started to think about a New Babylon, a city that would offer to his citizens a new way of life, a new way to explore the space. Stairs, ladders, open spaces, light… Everything in his mock ups gave the user the possibility to create his own space, his own movements, his own rules. On a certain level, we can say that Constant wanted to give us the possibility to derive. This idea echoes Guy Debord ’s sentence, “One day, people will build cities to derive”.
To my mind, i think that with or without those utopic cities, we already have the possibility to derive. As human beings, we are building our own limits. If we decide to see our everyday life as a playground, if we push ourselves out of our landmarks, out of our comfort, we became the actors of our derive. The main problem of derive is finally how we accept to deal with the notion of freedom, the freedom we are giving to ourselves.

The thesis of Olya Troitskaya “Virtual walking” studies a gesture of strolling in physical and cyberspace.

It looks into the history of a “deliberate walk”, starting from the concept of the flâneur developed by Charles Baudlaire, its degradation by capitalism into the figure of the shopper, its later radical political update coming with the concept of the “dérive”, its development through a notion of “Psychogeography” with Guy Debord and Situationist International and its popularity later in 1990s in artistic and academic circles, building up psychogeographical praxis in various ways.

Louis Adrien Huart / Physiologie du flâneur

Further the thesis draws a parallel between these historical processes happening in the real space to the ones taking place in the cyberspace.
With the development of capitalism flânerie becomes increasingly restricted. Is it possible that Cyberspace, that can be looked at as an update of a personal, bodily and architectural space, would become a more popular place for flânerie?
If in the 1990s “cyberflânerie” is associated with a free “strolling through information space, taking in the virtual architecture and remaining anonymous”(1), then in 2000s it doesn’t seemed such an intriguing activity as in the early days of the Web.

The processes happening to the internet in 2000s can be considered similar to ones happening in 19th century Paris, lead to the change of its original, playful identity.

Cao Fei / China Tracy, 'Live in RMB City'(2009) Video
: Courtesy of Artist and Vitamin Creative Space

Various artistic practices are being developed around a cyber stroll. Will they react to the changes happening to the figure of cyberflâneur and challenge its appropriation by capitalism, similar to Debor’s challenging capitalism’s hold over the city? (x) http://www.ceramicstoday.com/articles/051998.htm, last accessed: 06.09.2013

What is the future of the cyberflâneur? Is it possible to learn from Situationist’s example? Where to look for the “dérive” in cyberspace?

text by Olya Troitskaya [graduate student department of Graphic Design 2013] : more www.olyatroitskaya.com

Download this thesis ”Virtual Walking“

Probably the most fascinating part of the work of fashion designers Niels Klavers and Astrid van Engelen, is the special role given to the deliberate choice of material as the main ingredient of the design, which influences and shapes the garment (as they describe in the short video/interview Dutch Profile: Klavers Van Engelen). And what particularly fascinates me is the material referred to as the decisive factor of the final product and I will try to describe how the fabric becomes such a strong and inspirational object. The Designers` concept is based on this approach and it is evident that they want the fabric to get its own independent life when it is worn by the model. It moves and creates its peculiar visual  spectacle. That is why the designers Klavers and Engelen said that one cannot capture the whole of the design in a still picture as there is way more to see beyond the precise recorded instance of a shot. And there I can insist on the importance of those few minutes (ephemeral but also intensively documented) of the fashion show as the playground where the garments can perform. However, the shots are essential as they represent the source that the wide public can see. The selected audience that get the chance to attend the show, is thrilled by the wild appearance of the fabric while it is exposed in its most adventurous moment.