Designblog

For my third book search I was trying to focus on the keyword ‘minimal’. I went to the art bookshelf and totally forgot about my word. I was so much enjoying all the different books from all these different artists. I just wanted to pick one which had nothing to do with any of my keywords. But then the teacher came and saw me struggling with making a choice. He kindly reminded me of my keywords so that made it much more easy for me to make up my mind. I only had to look for the most minimalistic book I could find. 

‘ALL EVENTS ARE EVEN’ from MARK BORTHWICK – PURPLE BOOKS is the name of the book. Which was another reason for me to choose this book because of my second word ‘Network’. 

The book is so minimalistic as a white A5 paper with only a few black letters on it. While looking at the inside of the book, I only saw black and white pictures of people dressing up and posing for the camera, smiling. I thought the book was very boring. I never would have even come across this book if it wasn’t for this assignment. But because it was fitting so well with my keywords and also becáuse I would never have taken it, it was perfect. 

Writing about a book that you don’t know or don’t need to know is difficult. But searching for a book in an art library that you never would have seen is super interesting. From now on I will only let my subjective opinion choose a book. Not only the content matters. But also the design. 

Bort 1

Network, collage and rebel were the keywords for my second book search. This time I found it quicker than the first time. I went up, walked to the fashion book shelf and grabbed the first book that I saw. The reason for me to walk immediately to the fashion book shelf is simple; because I am just more interested in fashion than I am in graphic design or architecture. And there it was, exactly what I needed and also one of the books that I considered taking the first book search I did a week earlier. 

The cover of the book appeared to be a collage. In my opinion not the most exiting collage I have ever seen because of the simple, minimal and grey colors. But also because of the words on the cover and the cutout of an outfit which is, on one half, not totally “finished” yet. Or they just didn’t want to show their opinion about the content of the book.  

While I was browsing through the book I noticed that my first association was my second keyword; network. First of all, because of the few black and white fashion images. And second of all, because for some reason I always associate fashion with networking. Probably because I live in a surrounding where a lot of my friends work in fashion, go to parties and show their faces in the most beautiful outfits. A topic I also spoke about in my first text.

I see a lot of similarity between my two chosen books. But only from the outside, not from the content. For instance they are both the same size, and the are both fashion related. But I also see a big contrast in the two books. Where one is more rebellious formalized, the other is, for me, more focust on the minimalistic graphics.  

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The first reason for me to choose this book was because of the form. The book had a strong appearance because of the size, compact but heavy. Also I loved the fact that it didn’t matter were you started. You could begin in the middle of the book but also at the end. The randomness where to begin was a very important part for me to choose this book. It didn’t tell a story but it gave you an impression of the time and subject of the book. The raw and tacky images were cut together and therefore intense to look at. It got my attention because, for instance, it gave me inspiration to make more collages. The book is very well designed for someone like me, very visual. I think allot in visuals in order to understand a concept or subject. The moment I took this book from the bookshelf and quickly looked through it, my hart made a small leap and so I knew that I had to take it.

As I was browsing through the book I immediately had an emotional relation to it. I thought about my mother. It felt like I was browsing through her student life, it had the same atmosphere as her stories about that time. Crazy parties where people show a different side of them or wear extravagant clothes, alcohol, drugs, sex. To provoke or really to be themselves? To create a conversation or to rebel against the “normal” society? To really want to be a part of something. Of course all these thoughts came after looking at the book and knowing more about the content. But also this was my subjective reaction to the book. I tried to relate these thought to myself and my surrounding. Am I living the design of this book at the Rietveld Academie? Am I experiencing life like a collage? Do I also have to dig in to the centre of this scene in order to be part of something? To show my face at every event that is taking place, to socialize and network? Or can my work speak for itself and be successful without people knowing me? 

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by Noémie Courtois

The Internet arrived like an ufo, bringing a promise towards the future. When it became accessible to the broad public, users started to play around and share their hopes, dreams and productions with  the global village in which their children will be living. The birth of the Internet created a specific utopic spirit and everybody was invited to the party.

‘‘And here comes everybody ; moms teens, celebs, goths, tots, gamers, nerds and artists’’. Everybody else, Cory Archangel, 7 [x]

The Internet changed a lot over the last decades, this utopic spirit began to fade and its users with it. Today, these webpages have been hidden and forgotten by everyone. Luckily, our digital heritage defenders do exist and are truly active ; there seem to be a resurge of our digital culture and artefacts.

In my thesis, I’m exploring the Internet in a sociological and archeological perspective. I’m developing the idea of a ‘digital folklore’ (cf Olia Lialina ) ; Today more than before, there is a wish to keep traces of our digital tradition. The defenders of our Internet culture are fighting against the forgetfulness of a material that henceforth belong to the past. This thesis is a contribution to save that part of history that went missing in the fast Internet evolution.

The first users of the Internet were the first digital tribes and they were living in a specific environment:

‘‘A structural, visual and acoustic culture you could play around with, a culture you could break. There was an ocean of options and one of the options was to be different. (…) It was bright, rich, colorful, naive, slow, personal, direct and under construction.
It was a web of sudden collections and personal links. It was the Internet of personal pages and personal collections. It was the web of indigenous and barbarians, the web for the amateurs soon swept by Internet experts’’
A vernacular web, Olia Lialina, p19 [x]

 
The importance of the first tribes lays in the spreading of the Internet architecture and culture. The shutting down of GeoCities (the biggest hosting service at the time) marks a shift in the Internet history : only a very small part of webpages have been saved,  there are holes in the shallows of the World Wide Web and pages are filled with dead links.

Shot(picture?) of one of the many digital ruins, where images have been replaced by the icon "image not found".

They work as a religious triptych and are inspired by traditional construction : The birth, the life and the death

They are the remains of the first digital tribes : structures that were once complete and have fallen into a state of partial of complete disrepair. These digital monuments became places of worship, places where you can remember this specific time where movement and construction were the core of the online activity.

This specific idea lead me to my graduation project:

« Incidentally they’re all gone,
well not exactly gone… more sort of… absent… »

The 3 tapestries were part of the graduation show.
They work as a religious triptych and are inspired by traditional construction : The birth, the life and the death

The tapestries pay tribute to a web that is gone or -say- hidden. They work as a religious triptych and are inspired by their traditional construction : The birth, the life and the death. The idea of making tapestries came into my mind quickly while writing my thesis. Initially, tapestries were made to educate illiterate and uneducated people about subject of war, religion and so on. Whilst contributing on saving the history, they were also made to make a space warm and welcoming (such as the first webpages). The connection between the Internet archeology and tapestries was really straight froward; they also recall the computer screen and pixels.

[click on image] to download this thesis by Noémie Courtois

all rights to this thesis are property of the author © 2016 http://courtoisnoemie.tumblr.com/ [x]

Structure of library and structure of textile.

It’s all about information and network.

First of all what is a structure ?

1. the way in which the parts of a system or object are arranged or organized, or a system arranged in this way
2.  the arrangement of particles or parts in a substance or body  ex: “molecular structure”
3. the relationship or organization of the component parts of a work of art or literature

I get interest in the structure of materials, and in especially structure of fabric. Then I looked for the definition of fabric.

1.  structural plan or style of construction
2.  the basic structure of something
3. A distinctive, complex underlying pattern or structure:
   contexture, fiber, texture, warp and woof, web

I decided to assimilate information to threads which are connected to each other in an interweaving organization and which need each other to create a textile and here a complet knowledge.

Then, I considered the book not as an object which is part of a shelf but as a composant of it. As the equivalent of a thread in a piece of fabric. The library couldn’t exist without books as the textile without threads.

A book is already subject to an organisation and structuration : composed of letters making words, sentences, informations on a theme.

Paragraphs, pages, chapters, subjects. All the elements are accumulated and are mixed.

It’s the same in the library. All the books make links to other ones : by there subjects, the movements, the contexts they deal with, or the references they make.

An artist is part of a movement which combines several artists. Thus we already acquire new information to organize.  We also have to take in count that a movement is included in a period of time which makes echoes to events and context.

Thus, HOW TO ORGANISE BOOKS IN A LIBRARY ?

First, I decomposed the notion of book and the notion of textile in the form of a web in order to understand and make a link between Textile and Book. I realized this two approaches shared the notions of Web-work and Information. Then, it came the bas e of my concept.

This structure made of links, interweaving of subjects, shared thematics is the base of the organisation I would like to try.

I took a book by chance in the library and decided to put it in the center of a « web » made of criteria and information.

It was a book about Marina Abramovic’s works and I made a list of the criteria which were related to this book.

Criteria

-Artist book : Marina Abramovic

-Categorie : Conceptual art

-Technique : Performance, video

-Subject : Body, pain

-Collection of the book : Museum of Modern Art Oxford

As we could expect, this book is already linked to many others in the library and we can look for books which the same criteria.

This way of selection and organisation let us the possibility to associate information on a subject more efficiently. The research we make can be more detailed and in depth

Thus, this tidying of books is undertaken through a web, a kind of tapestry of knowledge.

But many criteria can be considered and we could even use tags for each books :

Marina ABRAMOVIC’s book :

#Marina Abramovic

#Artist book – Monograph

#Conceptual Art

#Performance

#Body

My first idea was to take one tag # for one thread. And thus, to consider that the tags are representing by the warp strings, and each book by one weft string.

Now, let’s take the same book as above. We have this book about Marina Abramovicwhich which refers to five tags and thus, refers to 5 strings in the warp.

All these related words can complicate and confuse the organisation we try to make. But what is interesting, is the fact that each tag # is also linked to another one, so linked to another book in the library.

But before, I would like to introduce briefly the principe of warp and weft :

The warp threads are held in place by the loom while the weft thread travels over and under the warp threads.

Books are related to each other because of the subjects, themes and notions they deal with. I chose three books in the library,  that I’ve represented by colors weft threads in the weaving :

Colors of the threads in the photo below :

Marina Abramovic book

Marcel Duchamp book

Joseph Kosuth book

Indeed, we remark that two of the books I’ve chosen share some notion. For instance Marina Abramovic and Marcel Duchamp’s books broach the notion of performance. Thus, in the weaving the weft threads which correspond to them will be weaved on the warp thread that correspond to “performance”.

With this way of thinking, the organization of books lets appear a pattern and create a weaving.

A tapestry which reflects how the books are organized.

However, this research of layout and combination reminded me the Jacquard Loom and its mechanism.

Then, I get interest in the paper tapes constructed from Punched Card  made for controlling textile looms in the 19th century.

I choose to represent the thematic and subject tags by the horizontal threads (the weft strings) and the technics/medium used tags by the vertical threads which correspond to the warp strings.

Then appears a kind of pattern, created by the different locations of the book in the “weaving organisation”.

Each blocks of colors corresponding to a book, I transposed them is a uni-color pattern.

Then, by combinations we can put the books in a “web”. And as the punched cards, each marks (here in black) contain information and their positioning in the structure correspond to the way their will be tidy.

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.