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Academic Development

Theorizing Yourself

Create a mind map of your life, considering home, work, hobbies & interests, exercise, friends and family, your favourite possessions etc.

Do you notice any connections? Do you interests connect to your work? Are there any relationships between your friends and hobbies?

Are there any particular themes or tropes that seem to emerge? (cultural, political, intellectual, social?)

How can these themes or ideas be thought through theory? Which theorists might be relevant? (Eg Joshua/Lacan)

Don’t start with theory!

What is the role of theory?

It allows you to ask why. 

Theory is all about the question “why?” The process of becoming a designer is focused largely on “how” ... -Lupter (2009)

Lissitzky was very interested in anti-authorizing. 

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Critical Review

Chapter 2 

Sourcing Material

In preparation for our chapter 2, we were asked to read 5 source materials and choose one particular text. Start from the text, chapter 2 is about make a visual essay which has our critical response to the text. I chose Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age by Kenneth Goldsmith (2011). The rationale of choosing the text was interest of narrative structure of the text; how the text show us the keyword -appropriation, authorship, and web. Especially how so many different works are unfolded under one narrative. All this idea come from the exercise of deconstructing one text. Breaking up all the connections author made and reconstitute in own way allow me to understand better of the text.

           Then I organised the text in a way I was interested in –narrative structure. Then I was interested in ‘hypertext’; In Benjamin’s “The Arcades Project”, he induce readers to choose what they want to read(non-linearity) and in “Issue 1” how anonymous writers linked poem and poets is linked to hypertext. So few questions arose in this stage. How the easy accessibility of digital information by hypertext has altered human behaviour and even our brain function? In digital age, does hypertext make people’s own choice important? By doing that does hypertext age admitting, at least acknowledging one’s individuality? So I started my research from these questions.

                 From the article, ‘Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming.’ (2014) from The Washington Post, and ‘Reading in the Internet Age’ (2014) from WYPR I’ve got to know that not only our behaviour is changing but also brain circuitry is adapting to the hypertext searching which is non-linearity way of navigating information. I think the ‘non-linearity’ allow us to choose what we want to see, so we are having completely different way of navigating information. The book “Hypertext in Context” (1991) by Cliff McKnight, John Richardson, and Andrew Dillon gave shape to the idea of pluralistic way of navigating information against ‘contained’ traditional linear way. This remind me that people are interacting with information, building their own background by choosing what to receive as their source.

      My first experimentation was about Navigating information. I believe they are choosing specific information which think is most important to them and this help us to make our own information archive. But through the group tutorial, I was advised that my whole work seems more interested in choice, jump into another, journey, and narrative rather than hypertext itself. Also hypertext itself is very old issue. Since then I tried to reshuffle what I’ve got but the hardest part was critical reflection of the text. Critical reflection means that make a judgement of the discourse? and then show the research as a visual essay? Or is this showing how I deal with this issue in graphic design field? How far I can go from the text? Does critical reflection can be very personal point of view?

                    I’ve tried different visual essay experimentation, but there were always the same problem. Coherence between statement and visual essay. So statement and visual essay was constantly changed until the end of Chapter 2. I think this was because I was obsessed by being against the text(critical reflection) and being close with the text. But for the visual essay I wasn’t really interested of what I’ve talked in statement. Then I earnestly concerned about what I am really interested in this text. What is the authentic response of the text. When I see the text, which is strongly talking about appropriation, I was more interested in how one appropriated content changed when they are sit on different context. In ‘Some Thoughts About the Significance of Postmodern Appropriation Art’ (2011) written by Kuspit, D, the idea of accumulating and disposing raw materials which had been broken up into its separate elements is essential part of creating a newness was intriguing. So I started to use this method to see my response of creating new.

               I chose a poem as a starting point because my project is about personal way of seeing one text as a visual. According to “Lyrical Ballads and other Poems” (2007) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William, there is objective and subjective poems, and subjective poems tend to write about subject matter which is supplied by the poet’s own thoughts and feelings. Subjective Poetry is personal. This made me think that interpretation of poem could be very personal. So the project is about visually-interpretating a poem. In future, I wanted to create generally comprehensible connection between each stage and find out understandable point while very personal choices.

Through this chapter 2, I get to more think about the word ‘critical’. What I get to think of critical is that it doesn’t mean against something, but individual’s own keen perspective on something. Also it was great chance to think about my interest from much failures of making statement and visual essay. I started to think about how I can narrow down one specific interest. At the same time, I feel the necessity of locating my work in current graphic design field.

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Critical Reading

Academic Development 03

Rachael Finney

     - Knowing what to read -> who? where does this text sits?

- Parameters of research (Knowing where to stop.)

- Time consuming

- How to use research

     How to make your note effective?

Don’t just write only direct text. Then you will forget why you write this. When make a note, try to make them in my own word. Why you think this is interesting. What do you think this means? ex. I think this means is because ~~ and then “cite”.

          You should read at least 3 times. 

1. Study forms of the reading. See the paragraph. How they are linked? Is there gap between two paragraph? What kind of language the author is using? 

2. Just read. Don’t take note.

3. Take notes! You have sense of idea. Become aware of the text. You already have idea of taking notes. 

          Where we read is very important.

Use desk. Do treat reading as a work. 

     Reading around the subject...some questions

- What do we mean by reading around the subject?  

          Reading around the field will sometimes help you to read one text.

- How easy or difficult do you find academic reading?

- How do you know what to read?

- How much should you read for one assignment?

          Try to use journal. Try to locate you on current field. Don’t ignore contemporary discourse. Where this work sits in current stream of your field?

          Critical Reading

- Why am I reading this? What do you want to find out?

- What are the authors trying to do in writing this?

- What are the authors saying that is relevant to what I want to find out?

- How convincing is what the authors are saying?

- In conclusion, what use can I make of this?

          Small exercise- Develop a critical synopsis of the text

- Affirmative- statement

- 44

- Use of spectacle

- why he is distinguishing between goods and commodities.

- does good means this? and commodities means this? 

                     This session think of me how to use your reading while you are working. All the time I find it hard reading. What to read? where to read? how I am going to use this reading regarding to my work? Also, when it comes to reading itself, how to read and digest one text? It is very hard. I always make notes when I am reading, but I learn more effective way of note taking. Always write in my word and cite the text as a support.

 Also use the text as positioning your work in the current field discourse was very interesting. When I doing self-initiated work, it is always very hard to find meaning, where this work sits in contemporary graphic design. It wasn’t enough to see only other designers work which is related to mine. Which meanings this work have in graphic design field was always very hard. And using journals will be helpful of doing this. 

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Evidently man wants to be more than just himself. He wants to be a whole man. He is not satisfied with being a separate individual; out of the partiality of his individual life he strives towards a ‘fulness’ that he senses and demands, towards a fulness of life of which individuality with all its limitations cheats him, towards a more comprehensible, a more just world, a world that makes sense. He rebels against having to consume himself within the confines of his own life, within the transient, chance limits of his own personality. He wants to refer to something that is more than ‘I’, something outside himself and yet essential to himself. He longs to absorb the surrounding world and make it his own; to extend his inquisitive, world-hungry ‘I’ in science and technology as far as the remotest constellations and as deep as the innermost secrets of the atom; to unite his limited ‘I’ in art with a communal existence’ to make his individuality social.       …Art is the indispensable means for this merging of the individual with the whole. It reflects his infinite capacity for association, for sharing experiences and ideas.       ...Tension and dialectical contradiction are inherent in art; not only must art derive from an intense experience of reality, it must also be constructed, it must gain form through objectivity.

Fischer E. (2010) The necessity of art

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For example, a picture of strawberry or many strawberries looks like a publicity image. However, when we make a portrait of each of the 34 strawberries and group the portraits together, we do not only see the uniqueness of each strawberry but the many different ways of being a strawberry.

Hans-Peter Feldmann, "One Pound Strawberries", 2004.

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Chapter 2, Unit 1

Source Material

1 November 2016

In the morning session, we were asked to organise our secondary research and make a map.

From this exercise, we can se how our secondary research linked to our text. Aim is to find connection between our text, organization, rationale and secondary research. 

Although I have a lot of visual researches that how other designers deal with the idea(hyperlink), it seems I am lack of reading researches that can extend my interest. Also it would be better if I add captions so I can see the connection between my research and the text(or key idea).

         Then we choose one of our image from secondary research, and at first, we should wrote factual information of this.

     - What is it?

     - What material is it made from?

     - Which field/area is it from?

     - date/place

     - author

Then we wrote our critical interpretation about the image.

                 Critical Interpretation

     - Visual effects are interesting. Because it is made of white sheet, black in and red threads. 

     - This make us to read book different way. Not just from front to back, left-top to right-bottom.

The feedback of my interpretation was to be more critical rather than descriptive. About the first one, why white and red is used. This is very typical usage of colour, and why? Also for the next one, think about why this is important. Maybe am I talking about convention of reading?

 After working with our own research image, we are asked to choose other’s image, without any former information, wrote about them. Factual and Critical interpretation. 

At this time, I kind of lost. Why do we see other people’s research without any factual information. Do we have to make a connection between our key ideas? Or do we just find out what we can find only from the image?

Them Sophie came to me, and said: don’t use any further information, just use the image and guess what it is saying. So then my interpretation of this image start from colour. It is black and white, with highlighting bold lines. Why did they use bold lines? What they want to say about the image?

Maybe I thought this process is about our selection and interpretation. Why do I choose this particular picture? and what I first see in the image? How I interpret an image? Also I thought that this is throughout the Chapter 2. Why did I chose particular text? and why do I chose those particular researches? How they are related to the text? What is your interesting point from those connection? Why you choose particular 2 images to interpret? All this questions can be shown as these keywords. Selection, Rationale and Connection.

               What is next?

Identify my interpretation.

     - What is I want to say?

     - Why?

What we’ve done before is 1. Rationale, 2. Secondary research(expand knowledge). So what we should do now is 3. Inquiry and Development. (From where I wanna talk?)

“Find interesting point, and deal with them!”

When choosing a topic and make a statement, don’t forget the chapter2 brief.

     - design a critical response in the form of a visual essay.

     - visual essay must articulate an informed and argued position in response to a key idea/s from my research.

     - include a visualisation of the connection between my chosen source material and the references I have selected for the Annotated Bibliography.

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Chapter 2, Unit 1

Source Material

28 October 2016 

The graphic designer’s role in shaping, dissemination and authoring perspectives on and for the world is a critical and complex activity. This chapter invites you to explore how we, as designers, can begin to formulate a critique and articulate a position through design.

             In preparation for our chapter 2, we were required to read 5 source materials. From those texts, we were asked to ask some questions.

In the class, we started to deconstruct the text as a group. At first, we start from the text Axis Thinking(Brian Eno, 1996). 

             1. Describe the tone of text

2. We were asked to assess its content; dates, places, people, movements, organisations, institutions, concepts and ideas.

3. We had to analyse the textual structure; titles, subtitles, headings, subheadings, wordcount, paragraphs, sentence length, footnotes, images, captions and pull quotes.

4. We were asked to visualise a narrative structure that represented the text.

These four exercises showed a few of the various ways that a simple text can be analysed. We can understand better by deconstructing the text by typical subjects.

                 Following the exercises, we were asked to make 3 or 4 members of reading group. Then share our responses to the prompt questions what we were asked to answered before the session. Also capture the commentary and any other further questions, and thoughts. Then summarise the key points of interest.

               These are what our reading group done from the exercise. We chose Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age(Kenneth Goldsmith, 2011). 

This exercise made me more understandable of the text. Also some ideas arose; How each stage is linked to the central idea “appropriation”? How the keywords -appropriation, authorship, and web- are linked through the text? How the text show “Web(hyperlink, hypertext)”? How author makes reader to understand and think about the text?

At the end of the class, we should choose one text and explain the rationale.

     What I’ve chosen was Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age(Kenneth Goldsmith, 2011).

Rationale: The narrative structure of the text was interesting. How the text show us the keyword -appropriation, authorship, and web- was very interesting. Keywords are sometimes explained by examples, or hidden under the text. Also a small subject which author used maybe for explain something big issue, itself make a narrative. This all kind of narrative structure was like a hyperlink which is also appeared in the text. So I thought this text’s narrative structure is like a hyperlink.

          For the next assessment piece; a visual essay. Using one of the five texts, I am to:

- read my chosen material thoroughly, I am to design a critical response in the form of visual essay.

- through careful selection and editing of content, choose appropriate media and development of style and format. It should be an informed and argued position supported by contextual research.

- The end output should be in the form of a visual essay. As a printed piece it should be 8-12 pages, or in a screen format as 1-2 minutes

- Images in the visual essay may be taken from the key source or elsewhere; an image collection that is already available, images that have been produced for the essay, or images collected as research data

- Text may include a maximum of 100 words throughout. The text may be written by me, or I could quote from readings I have done throughout the research. The text should be the interaction between image and text which encourage the viewer to think about how image and text relate to one another. 

- Annotated Bibliography should be a maximum of 500 words. This is made of two elements: a. Citation of chosen references using Cite Them Right; b. A brief description and evaluation of each reference.

- I must also include a visualisation of the connection between chosen source material and the references I have selected for the Annotated Bibliography.

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Any explanation or logic that explains everything so easily has a hidden trap in it. I'm speaking from experience. Somebody once said if it's something a single book can explain, it's no worth having explained. What I mean is don't leap to any conclusions

Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami

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I've always been fascinated by optical illusions. Regular structures like this hardly have anything to do with the book's content. They were my own investigations. But curiously enough, later on people will find meaning in them, saying it's fantastic. So you don't need to worry, as long as people are sympathic.

Karel Martens

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Personal Tutorial 01

28 Oct 2016

with Paul Bailey

On 28 Oct, Paul and I had a first personal tutorial. Maybe not the first, but officially the first. Before start of the tutorial, I was bit scared. Because before the tutorial, I had a short conversation with Paul, and I think I wasn’t be ready to talk with him. So I feel like I am a dumb.

This time, I prepared for what I want to talk about. First I wanted to talk about research subject. Individual project wasn’t begin yet, but I was worried about how I can be more specific in selecting my research project, and also is my interest can be a possible research subject.

Overall, I talked about three things.

Does the subject has to be related to social, cultural, or political issues?

Can very visual ideas be my research project?

Is it possible for non-EU students to get a job here?

1. Does the subject has to be related to social, cultural, or political issues?

For the response of Paul about this question was quite interesting. All the actions we do are related socially or culturally or even politically. What you think and what you produce is made in social context. My subject might not has to be issues of politics, but it is very dangerous to say my work and interests are apart from social context. Even it could be related to politics.

When Paul told me this, it raised many thoughts. When I think about what did I do before, my work was even produced by the social context. It is hard to define right now how these are related. but every single thoughts that I make is came from social, and cultural context. Even the fact that I am not interested in politic problems can be related to social context. I may keep this idea for later and think more about this.

2. Can very visual ideas be my research project?

This question is what annoying me the most. Not just for the MA GMD research project, but for my personal goal. I am a person who is more interested in how the contents is visualizing, rather than making contents; story. I love Karel Martens, and Raw Color. It seems like they have their own interest in colors and materials, and present it visually.

What I find it difficult is the starting point and the rationale of doing that. How they get to start these kind of works? and why? Paul advised me that I can start from that point. Why I do this things? Why I like them? I feel like what I have to do is just “do it.” And maybe these questions can be my starting point. That is to say, I am curious about how they get to start the work, so I should look up for other designers, why they get to begin these works. And then next question, next question, and so on. Also he said this is the goal of this course; finding specific area, where you are interested in. Make you specialize in the very particular area.

Roma Publications, and Hella Jongerius were what he told me that I might find interesting. It was also very very helpful!!

      3. Is it possible for non-EU students to get a job here?

This is also what I really want to achieve from here in London. I know that for non-EU students getting a job in London (by getting sponsor by a company) is so much difficult. Also this area was not he is engaged in. For the visa, I have to ask for international office, because every time the rule is changing. But what he suggested me was ArtsTemps. I can register from the website, and I can find temporary works. This was also very much helpful since I really want to do something practical and commercial works. So I should try for the breaks!

Also we talked about other things like Student Service, Academic Support, and blog. He suggested me to make a blog and record everything. Before the personal tutorial, he showed us Rebecca Worth's blog in the Design Discourse 01, and I realized that I already put her website in my bookmark! Also her blog was very impressive. How she record her insights was amazing. So I already made a blog and started to write. I am going to write everything there.

I found it very much helpful from the 20minutes personal tutorial. I get confident about research subject, also I get confidence about the course. What is important is the more I do, the more I get! Also I feel more comfortable to talk with course leader, Paul. Before it was quite scared about talking with him but now if I have any questions, I feel like I can talk with him more comfortably. Thank you!

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Design Discourse 01

From here to there, and then what? Paul Bailey

12 Oct 2016

Before this discouse session, we are asked to watche a video which is lecture of Alice Twemlow held in 11 May 2016. Alice Twemlow is a writer, critic, and educator in graphic design, and she is a co-chair of SVA MA Design Research.

Below is linked to Alice Twemlow’s lecture.

Exploding Footnotes: The Role of Research In and About Graphic Design

This lecture was about Graphic Design Research. “What it could be and for? Who is could be for?”

After I saw this video, still I was confused about Graphic Design Research.

‘Then what is graphic design itself? Graphic design research is for who? Graphic design research subject area is from where to where?’

In the class

In the class, Paul showed us some video’s that make us to think about what today’s graphic design is. As society is changing and there is not much history about graphic design, our role in this current society is very flexible. That means our field is still moving and we are stand in the start point of graphic design history. Does graphic design matters only aesthetic subject? Are we a designer who makes logos, books, and posters? Is these jobs are what only we can do?

Then some doubts arose in my mind. Is our job only restricted to visual output? As society changes the field that had been graphic designer’s own is disappearing and then what we are going to do in the next generation?

I still can’t explain why do we need Graphic Design Research and what is it. But increasingly something different that our own field has to be built. Through design research, graphic designer can take a social, cultural and political role. And I just thought that it is quiet natural that I am still confusing and even professional graphic design researcher is confused about this field. Because it is growing discipline. Sometimes we have to do something that you don’t completely understand but after doing so we will get to know how this was indispensable.