This week I continued by: Brainstorming, asking more questions, experimenting digitally and with Risograph to come up with an approach that challenges Riso.
Question development based on the last week’s feedback:
How to achieve an effect/ illusion of plasticity and depth in my Riso prints without using the 3D glasses?
And how to transform that into an approach that can be continued and developed?
The task for the third week was to develop 10-100 (or more) iterative experiments that challenge the chosen medium (Risograph) to do something that it is not meant to do. To achieve that we were challenged to think about the answers for following questions -> what it does, how it does it, or what it does it for.
Week 1 of the “Unit 1: Methods of Iterating” brief started with identifying a tool or medium that interests me but that I am not experienced with. Coming from my previous experience as a (digital) graphic and brand designer, I decided to work with Risograph. I have always admired the vivid colours and grainy touch of the machine, but never had an opportunity to explore it more. I took this brief as an opportunity to learn a new medium, lean toward my goal of bringing my digital work into physical form and challenge my skills.
The second task for the first week was to find an artist, that effectively uses the medium, and choose one of his works to replicate as accurately as possible for week 2. In my research, I was looking for work that already challenges Riso printing as a medium and will allow me to explore my own ideas.
After researching a number of artists, I found a Dutch graphic and textile designer Michiel Schuurman. His work specialises in typography and poster design, featuring a bold and fearless approach. He bases his projects on certain logic, algorithms or some historical or natural knowledge that he critically examines and challenges, which I identify close to my own practice. I got interested in a few of his print pieces from his 2018 book. Through his work, he pushes Risograph to its best, exploring ways to achieve 3-dimensional effects. His work already raised a few questions for me to begin with, mainly about movement, dynamics and depth achieved through the typical characteristics of Risograph.
Some of Michiel Schuurman’s works from his 2018 Risograph book:
After the first week’s class I started the process. To get to know the Risograph machine, I identified one of Michiel’s works that I aimed to iterate and I started in Illustrator to replicate the piece. That bit took me longer than expected, as the creation of the pattern was a challenge on it’s own. I have tried numerous tools and ways before I got the right outcome. The shadow was eventually created on iPad in Pro Create.
The piece I’ve chosen to iterate/ replicate (left) + my outcome in the digital ready-to-print version (Right)
Another step was preparing the files for print, exporting each colour layer separately in black and white and finally printing the work out. Through printing, I noted a few technical pointers down about working with the machine:
Written response (DRAFT 1):
The results that the Risograph produces reveal flaws in the print or texture, that are sometimes inconsistent or uneven. The graininess adds a handcrafted feel. And the bold and vibrant colours give the outcome an almost limited edition, one-of-a-kind feeling with a soul and character of its own. Yet the Idea of Risograph was to bring a way to mass production that is cheap, simple and effective. That raises a question of authenticity and almost fake realness in this tool that was meant for effective and low-cost reproduction.
The ability to layer and overlap objects bring a way to achieve new colours add depth, a sense of movement, dimension and a fantasy-like feeling of blurred motion and more things happening at one moment.
Working with Risograph as a medium raises questions of minimalism, and complexity hidden behind simplicity. How far can we take minimalism? How can we achieve complexity that benefits from simplicity? How far can we take expressiveness and emotion through Riso as a medium that is flat and has limitations? How to push the medium to achieve a sense of motion?
Before diving into further experimenting, I did a little brainstorming over goals and things I would like to achieve through the final version of the project.
I was thinking about the way how to allow the reader to engage with the concrete poetry in a different way than usual. (Usually in printed or digital form)
I sorted the poem by its rhymes and created a different piece of the concrete poetry for each of those parts. I combined a slightly abstract form with a more literal form to create a set of 9 pictures that can be layered into 1 picture. I wanted to mainly focus on a visual interpretation of the poem. The pictures try to visually represent the meaning of the poem – both literate and poetic, but also the emotions and feelings connected to the poem.
For the final outcome, I tried to create something that a viewer can engage with and think about. First, I tried to create a simple video (at the end of this article) by putting the 9 concrete poetry pieces next to each other and layering them onto each other. The layering was interesting to me, but I wanted to create something different from regular concrete poetry or the way people engage with poetry. Something that keeps the idea of the at-first hidden meaning and clarity of the poem. But also translates the poem into something new. That’s how a PROTOTYPE of my little transparent poetry book came to life.
THE TIDE RISES, THE TIDE FALLS
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The tide rises, the tide falls
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
For the third brief, I have chosen to work with a piece of poetry. The first thing I did with my poem was focus on personal thoughts and translation. Before starting the project, I didn’t know the poem, but it raised feelings and emotions the first time I read it. Some of them were probably the author’s intentions, but poetry always keeps space for a reader and their own opinions. I captured my own interpretation of the text.
The idea of my first experiment was to visualise the chosen piece of poetry using the letters and words of the poem, placing them into shapes to create a picture that translates the meaning of the poem, creating a piece of concrete poetry. First, I played around with simple shapes and then tried to create a whole complex picture that represents the meaning and my observations about the poem.
The second experiment was about visually translating the poem through a new language placed on the grid. This translation uses a new system of an alphabet, exchanging letters for positions on the grid supported by using dots, symbols, lines etc., creating diagrams/graphs like visualisations. I ended up with a visualised translation of the whole poem. However, after finishing this experiment, I knew that was not the right way to go, as it leaned away from the whole meaning of the poem.
In the third experiment, I focused on a moving image and a way to transfer my poem into an animation. The animated sketches in the video below are exploring the text being translated into a moving image. It is based on the narrative of the text, on the cycle of the tide, life and death, the darkness and light, but also my own understanding and feelings.
The thoughts I wanted to work with when creating the final project for unit 1.2 were:
For the final outcome, I selected 50 colours sorted from the Digital Botanical Harvard Collection. I set the Flowers 3D space to create a digital garden as an augmented reality experience, allowing the viewer to interact with the collection, being able to focus on details, a single plant separated flower beds or see the collection together, almost as one big garden. Find below a video of an interaction with the garden in a 3D space. It is also possible to place the garden into space as augmented reality.
THE OUTCOME: https://link.jig.space/Giun5K0Atub
For the second brief, methods of cataloguing, I have chosen to work with one of the Harvard Digital Collections: Botanical Illustrations. The original collection consists of 4147 items, including paintings, drawings, and illustrations from the early 1800s to the mid-1900s. I have selected the first part of the collection featuring 82 plates with various plant hand illustrations.
The first week of the brief was about experimenting with the collection using different methods of cataloguing, such as: sorting, taxonomising, classifying, captioning, framing, recontextualising, adding, subtracting, stretching, compressing, hijacking, subverting, exaggerating, etc.
In my process, I first started by cutting out all the plant illustrations to make it easier to manipulate them and use them in my experiments. That was followed by sorting the plants into five colour groups and experimenting with the idea of using a single unit as a part of “mass” by layering the items.
I also focused on the shape of the bloom and identified four different sections represented by simple geometric shapes. For my second experiment, I used those shapes and masked them over the blooms of my chosen illustrations.
The third experiment focused on distorting & mirroring the plants, creating patterns from the illustrations, and giving them a new meaning and visual style.
Another experiment used the organic plant shapes to rearrange them on the canvas and give them a new context. I focused on the connection between those plants and us people, and through positioning, distorting, sizing and subtracting, I rearranged the collection to create faces. However, I noticed that this experiment was not the right way to go, and I knew I wouldn’t continue with its development.
The last experiment was hijacking the images, as I noticed a lot of the blooms looked like faces or had humane features; I focused on that connection and illustrated simple faces onto the flowers.
Unit 1: Methods of Investigating
Written response
When speaking about everyday objects and places, the purpose behind them is often straightforward, and one would not think about deeper investigations or observations. However, when investigating the ordinary through the lenses of a graphic designer, new perspectives can create ideas, reveal hidden patterns and spark inspiration. This written response identifies similarities between my project and the work of Agnès Varda and Georges Perec. I will describe the connections between their works and the process of investigating my chosen place – one of the fountains on Trafalgar Square.
To find a starting point and begin with the whole process of the project, I got inspired by the book “Species of Spaces and Other Places” written by French novelist and writer Georges Perec in 1974. In his book, he describes the objects of his investigation with notable realism and incredible detail. On page 50 of the book, he notes down his observations of the street “Slowly, almost stupidly” (Perec, 1974), writing down what is “most obvious, most common, most colourless.” (Perec, 1974). I adopted his approach when visiting the Trafalgar Square fountain for the first time. I noted down everything about the place in the closest possible detail, focusing on the first-sight boring and unimportant details such as trash. The same way Perec did in his book. That sparked the inspiration for further steps in my work.
In my project, I tried to visually capture the diversity of people engaging with a site that was originally meant to have a decorative role in the space. To be able to do that, part of the process was collecting “proofs” of people engaging with the place. I managed to gather a number of items, mainly pieces of trash and used those things to create a set of prints and patterns that have been turned into a diagram-like collection. I have seen similarities between that particular idea in my project and the film from 2000 created by a French director and artist Agnès Varda called The Gleaners and I. Varda (2020) in her film follows creatives who use recycled and collected materials to produce pieces of art. She explores the idea of creating new forms of art by using items that seem to be already useless and belong to the trash. In my project, I have worked around the same idea using worthless items to come up with something creative, giving a new life and meaning to pieces of trash found in and around the fountain.
To conclude my writing, I can see the relationship between both mentioned creatives. Perec’s book inspired me in the method of noting and describing the place in the littlest detail. Moreover, I can see a similarity between Varda’s idea and the topic of the film and my approach to collecting and re-using unwanted items.
Resources
Perec, G. (1974). Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. London: Penguin.
Verda, A. (2000). The Gleaners and I. Directed by Agnès Varda. France: Ciné -Tamaris.