#commstudy

MIT LOGOS

MIT Media Lab made an algorithm that generated over 40000 variations of the same logo, and chose 1000 out of those for the staff and students to use. I found out about this design project only last week. In fact, this idea that seem so new and groundbreaking to me, was actually executed in 2011!! What’s more, since then they have replaced the logo in 2014, with another set of timeless and Bauhaus inspired glyphs. Times are moving fast, but is it a revolving door? You could have convinced me the algorithm generated logos were as new as last week, does that prove its timelessness or my naivety?

Another inspirational logo from MIT is the MIT Press logo. The lines extend just slightly, to hint at the letters “MP” short for MIT Press. This simplistic style pays homage to the Bauhaus movement, and feels like it fits in with the modern day minimalism trend. It is hard calling this type of design ‘inspirational’. It is so conservative and minimal, that it leaves little to no trace of its conception, no clues or footprints in which we could follow without plagiarising exactly. It is such a simple representation, you could argue anyone could have made it, but it is the thought and idea that is truly important.

Images sources: http://eyewriter.org/images/

https://www.reddit.com/r/bladerunner/comments/7wx0xw/blade_runner_2049_movie_barcode/

TECH AND ART

Last Friday we learnt about how technology and art are intertwining and even combining.

The eye writer helps people like famous graffiti artists Tempt1, who can only move his eyes due to ALS, to materialise the ideas trapped within his brain.

OPEN DESIGN

There are many benefits to 'open design'. The sharing of info is then spread via tech communities. This is cheap, available and all learning and code are shared with a global community.

DATA

By the time u get to my age (19 years old), you have generated enough data to read for the rest of your life. So what do we do with all this information?

what can we learn from these piles of data? Is it art, information or both?

Movie bar codes are these seemingly random colour lines, which are actually the result of every frame in a movie reduced to its average colour. The above example is a condensed version of Blade Runner 2049. We can analyse trends and summarise the colour choices corresponding to key moments of movies. As data build up, we may need to rely on devices such as these to assist us in comprehension, to prevent being overwhelmed.

ADOBE

ARCHITEXTURE

Finding letters and numbers within building structures.

I found it easier to find symmetrical and stable letters, such as H and T, as these play important roles in the functionality of a building. Letters like F and B could be ‘found’ if I play around with camera angles, whereas letters like K and Q were just about impossible to find. This task was a lot harder than anticipated, even in a colourful and dynamic campus like ours, upon closer inspection most structures were still made from traditional stable shapes.

"Dispersion" by Seth Price, 2002

Exclusive Nature of Conceptual Art

There is a lot of conceptual art that protest or contain elements of activism. Conceptual art focusses on the message, and it often does not look very beautiful or impressive. It can be seen as the opposite of traditional still life paintings, which are usually aesthetically-pleasing, time-consuming to make and “message-less”. There is an association between traditional art and the rich bourgeois class, as art in the traditional sense of the word used to be a luxury few could afford. Should that then mean, conceptual art is the art of the people? In a sense it does represent the voices of certain collectives, at times degrading the “upper-class” or the political system. However, in order to represent one group it can completely exclude many others. As in if you don’t understand the backstory behind it, not catching the subtle references, it can be just as elite and exclusive as the bourgeois paintings they rebelled against. 

Public vs Private 

When public art is distributed on a massive scale, when everyone owns a copy, it can essentially become private art. Seth Price suggests the definition of art could be linked to its spread. If that’s true, a popular album would be considered more ‘art’ than a forgotten painting in a warehouse. 

We are moving into extremely personalised private art. With the age of the Internet, the speed and spread of content is greater than ever. I think we can relate the question: “If a tree fell and no one heard it or saw it, did it really fall?”. If it is not shared and made viral online, is it really world-class art? In this way the value of artwork is becoming increasingly dependent on audience. Are we losing the ability to judge something independently? Frail s the value of art, at the face of unpopularity, in the age of essentially worthless yet priceless ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’.

"Dispersion" by Seth Price, 2002

Oh MAN this was one long read but I managed to get through all of it so here we are! Will split this into two posts.

Does a piece of work need a gallery exhibition and a magazine feature to be considered art? Why should magazines and galleries define art? Personally I think it is a fair and necessary practice. Especially when much of the art we encounter today are conceptual or abstract, it can be hard for laymen to distinguish purpose, or the drive behind artworks. Human attention is selective, we subconsciously filter out countless stimuli daily to keep our minds from going into overdrive. I think when art is placed into a gallery, by the presumably wise and knowledgeable curators and gallery directors, it essentially brings back filtered out stimuli for us to reconsider in a different and much more thoughtful perspective. I want to think of this as helpful, I don’t want to protest and jump on any opportunity to defy the system.

There is a lot of general dissatisfaction with abstract and conceptual art, many contend it is not art altogether. It will always come back to the question: What is art? Does art need to be understood by everyone? I think what art is, is stimuli that can be perceived in many different ways, by different people, yet all certain and true. We struggle with its definition because we as balanced creatures do not take kindly to change and can’t quite comprehend the changing and abstract nature of art.

There is something about placing an ordinary ready-made object into a gallery, it changes perception and value immensely. One of my personal favourite artworks is Ai Wei Wei’s milk powder can. Just that single can of milk powder, no visible sign of artistic interpretation, it is the same can as any found in a supermarket. Yet placed into a glass in a gallery, it is understood differently.

Price references Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’, the urinal that broke through the white walls of the gallery. In defence of the artistic value of ‘Fountain’, Beatrice Wood states: “He [Duchamp] CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view.”

Maybe art is just a decision or two, made to spark a new point of view. 

From the CommDesignStudies Reader:

“Week 6″

"Industrialization of Print" by Elizabeth WilhideIn Design Museum: How to Design a Typeface, pp 44-49

With the rapid technological advances of the Industrial Age, machines were created to meet the increasing demands of the commercialised world. This sentence applies to many fields, disciplines and markets in the 19th century, including those creating and manipulating typefaces.

Paper became cheaper and available in bigger sizes, as businesses utilised both this and thick slab-serif typefaces to fight for customers’ attention.

Previously we had the evolution of typeface creation from handwritten letters to systems where letters carved out of wooden or metal blocks could be hand picked and arranged to print with elevated efficiency. Yet with the invention of the Linotype machine, these blocks no longer had to be hand arranged, and one operator could type out letters on a keyboard and the machine would arrange it in the correct order. Increasing both accuracy and speed.