Design of the year 2012 – Design museum London

Every year the design museum london holds an exhibition of the best design of the past 12 months. This years exhibition had a wide range of graphic, product and environmental design; including a redesign for an ambulance; multiple different types of table and chairs; and a re-branding for a business magazine.

While walking round the top floor of the design museum I wondered why the chair had to be redesign so many times. There must have been 10 separate designs for chairs, some made of recycled materials and some that could change shape depending on how many people wanted to sit on it. Sure they were inventive, I just don't understand the need for quite so many in one show.

My favourite piece from the show was the Bloomberg Businessweek magazine design. Considering I don't understand or care much about business, I would consider buying this just for the design of it. The re-design uses clean, bold covers with well balanced, justified text to give an easy to read article around the generously sized graphic images. The design of the magazine is on par with that of Time magazine and Filter (a graphic design magazine based on quality over regularity).

One of the curious entries was the Stanley Parable which is a short story played out within a video game (Half life 2 engine). The story is narrated by an omnipotent voice that explains what your character is doing as you do it. The voice seems to be able to say what your about to do and where you will go. Following this path you are lead through the world (mainly offices) and shown how trapped and controlled the character was before the start of them game and thanks to your intervention is now free from the control of those higher... or are you? By disobeying the narrator and going deliberately against what he says, the story changes. Depending on what you disobey and when, you get a different ending and a more complex path. Some ending in your death, some in your mind falling apart as the world falls down around you. I think it's a brilliant example of voice acting bringing a story to life as the narrator seems quite friendly at the beginning but as soon as you go against him, he switches to a vindictive over watcher. If you don't want to play it yourself, there are videos on youtube going through every eventuality. After doing just that myself, I realised I had missed so much on my play throughs. I think the stanley parable questions our sheep like behaviour and our willingness to do as we are told because we think we a free to choose. I enjoyed the show but I was disappointed that it was such a small space.

Though I did hear the V&A show which covers 50 years of the same such thing was worse...

Printmaking Exhibition 2012 - Part 2

Printmaking Exhibition 2012 - Part 1

Prints by Charlotte-Maëva Perret

Pick me up 2012

Pick me up is an annual contemporary graphic arts fair held at somerset house (since 2010) that showcases the work of up and coming or popular graphic artists from the UK and overseas.
This being my second Pick me up, I knew what to expect and wasn't surprised by the walls of printed A2 work with the ocasional hand drawn piece dotted about the place. I was equally un-shocked by the possibility of making my very own silk screen t-shirt with a nicely drawn something or other on the front. These are things that happened last time. True, you don't get that at the Tate or the National Gallerie but it's not exactly ground breaking either. Maybe I'm being cynical and not revelling in the popularity of my field (graphic printmaking) like Amelia. She refers to the collection as "a fabulous preponderance of screen prints and risograph images", saying that these methods are beloved because digital imaging is so wide spread. Could print making even be comparable to impressionism as a response to photography? or has it reached the level of being kitch? The techniques used are often fairly old and the visual styles are the same as if they were digitally printed, so what makes them different from that? After all riso prints are basically richer colour digital prints.

I did have a strange feeling half way through the show when I realised I had seen a lot of the pieces before on websites like tumblr and ffffound. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this. In one way it's a good thing as great work is shared around to people that can't make it to galleries every week. But then, when I go to a gallery I want to see something that I can't find on the internet. Or at least if you can find it, it hasn't got the same quality of image (texture of paint on canvas for example). When all the images are mechanical prints to start with, the digital or book prints aren't far enough away from the originals quality for the original to be worth visiting. The only saving graces are the prints that are done by hand like the few etchings and the single small room of hand pulled screen prints. I think I should just buy the books and not go to the shows in the future. I doubt the images will loose on feeling from being printed in a book and on the off chance that there is one piece that I feel I need to see in person, I can always pop in for it.

Andy Lino Print

Jeremy Deller

Jeremy Dellers “Joy in People” at the Hayward Gallery feels very much like a retrospective. It embraces it hole heartedly and makes no apologies. You start off in his teenage bedroom with his paintings and photographs on the walls. Cuttings from newspapers and little things he's made (like post cards and beer mats) in cupboards in draws. There's even little toy stereoscopes with a skylight like a true 80's bedroom in an attic. The rest of the show continues in what I assume is the chronological order.

Some of his text and image pieces are quite interesting. Especially the screen printed posters for galleries and pop events. Deller felt the need to make more interesting posters than those already in use and stick them where they might not normally be placed. These prints have a distinct visual style compared to much of his other work. The colours for example are a lot bolder then anything else he's done (bar the clown at the worlds fair but I'm not sure that counts).

As strange as it is to say of a 3 minute video made in 2 days, “Exodus” is probably the best experience of 3D I have ever had. When I first heard of him making a 3D video of bats (on the culture show Feb 2012) I was sceptical as to if it would work and if the 3D would add anything special. I redact my scepticism. I can't imagine watching this in flat 2D. When the front plane is full of racing bats and you can look through them to see a swarm on the rear plane swirling and warping around the sky is quite simply magical.

Putting Duchamp to bed

or The end of post modernism

Lino print on cartridge

Prints of the new year

2 Lino cuts and a screen print

Marshall McLuhan - quotes

We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us

The medium is the message

Art is anything you can get away with

PressPausePlay

Having just watched this fantastic documentary on technology and the creative process, I am just astounded at how far we've come in 50 years. the acceleration of new technology and advanced techniques made simple is astounding. Art follows the technology of the time and we've got a whole lot of tech.

New lino cut

Completely forgot to flip the text so this will print backwards…
Granted, I did draw it free hand (parr the rulered guidelines) so I think I can be excused for not realising, right?
wasn’t thinking yesterday :(

managed to stab myself with the tool on almost, but not quite with, the very last stroke

21st Century Gentleman

Song lyric project.
Line from Royal Republic's :21st century gentlemen

so whats all this lytro then?

This is a camera that does not focus. That is, it has no focusing element. It's focus range however is actually rather good (1m-25m or so) ... but how can that be?

They made an entirely different type of sensor, thats how. It catches light from every possible direction (or every focus distance) at the same time. Then with their software you can choose where you want the focus to be. Then share the photo on facebook so your friends can change the focus too.

All amazing, new and damn scifi.
But I foresee some issues.
first, the camera itself has very few features. great for the general user but for those that like to change exposure times and aperture, it's a bit restricting.
second, the software doesn't really allow any retouching. so if your photo is over or under exposed, you're stuck. unless you want it as a 1080p still (1080p is just over 1MP, half that of my old phone)

Looking forward to it's release but I'll wait for it's great grandson before I would get one (or until someone hacks the sensor out of it and writes some video code for it :P

Susan Hiller - Tate Briton

I'm told that these things in the box used to be paintings. The canvas damaged and unwoven. Bits chopped off and strung into a book of sorts. All I see is cream wool with faint blue dye in spots. The wall to my right has the same thing again but bigger and stretched onto the wall. Another box has veils containing the charred remains of the same such paintings. She seems to be remarking on the death of the canvas. How it has been hung, drawn, quartered, flayed and finally cremated. If this is the case then I see what she's saying but it's done with such a mundane attitude that it looses anything truly interesting from a visual perspective.

A wall of waves stretched before me. Hundreds of postcards from the sea. Every one different but so many the same. Only in the detail do they differ. A different angle, a different wave, occasionally a different town. They all look the same. The same dreary hotel. The same battered peer. The same worthless postcards.

Towards the back of the exhibition she has shards of a great archive. Small veils of this and that. Boxes of interests. Cases of odd objects. Seems more like a library in a science university. I was half expecting to open a draw full of dead battles...

Dangling saucers nattering an alien language with a thousand voices. Each clamouring for attention. In a room of shouts, only the closest is heard. Short stories of mundane life. It is a very odd feeling but somehow familiar. Overhearing conversations on the train or walking through a light crowd maybe.

now that's how you advertise a University

Little treat

I've got a nice treat for my printmaking friends :D
And all thanks to a graphics brief :D

full creation image set coming soon

The future

ok so first thing first,
lytro is bringing out a new camera that doesn't even look much like a camera.
why? because it works completely differently.

It does not focus.

nothing much right? you can then change focus afterwards on the camera
or on your laptop
or on your phone
or on facebook

here it is: http://www.lytro.com/

Second, IBM made a computer that can work like the computer in startrek

i.e. it can guess questions from answers or understand meaning in sentences.
that is outstanding
communication with computers without scripts or man made prompts.
this computer can form it's own sentences that will add to conversation.
It won an american game show called jeapordy (not as hard as chess for us, but extremely complex for computers)

this is it: http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/what-is-watson/the-next-grand-challenge.html

welcome to the beginning of web 3.0
- where you can take a photo in 1 second and not have to worry whether it's in focus
- where computers can respond logically to your questions or quires
- and where content is shared instantly over the cloud with everyone you want it to be, and no one you don't

excited? I know I am :D