Learning Agreement

Module 5.4

Oliver Rogers

I consider myself a graphic artist who experiments with the perceptions of design, working with a variety of formats and processes. I like to take inspiration from other places outside of graphic design; music and film especially have a big impact on me and my work.

Creating my own music helps me think about design in a different way, sampling and re-sampling work as well as considering similar themes and ideas in music.

Introduce Yourself

Self Portrait

1, Previous work based around the theme of kitsch and interdisciplinary approach to graphic design.

2, Looking at the works of Andreas Gursky, Helmut Smits and Jon Rafman. Especially interested in Smits’ ‘Real Life Photoshop’ series where situations are ‘edited’ physically rather than digitally enhanced in the Adobe suite.

3, I have already done some screen printing but i plan to maybe experiment with installation and projections as well as pursue a variety of printing techniques.

4, I plan to work around the kitsch theme but specifically the idea of Troplicalism/Tropicalia (a short lived Brazilian avant-garde movement in the 1960’s). I want to question the aesthetics and idea of ‘bad taste’ within design.

5, I want to question what ‘good design’ is, perhaps working with watermarks...viewing things with a fresh context...

6, Self-initiated - i plan to work openly around the theme of kitsch and tropicalism without a strict outcome in mind, partly how i worked in the process brief.

Brief-led - I will set my self some time a side and work on the Le Gun brief, perhaps attempting to make a short film piece with music.

An example of work you have already done that best represents your practice to date with a brief evaluation of

shortfalls and strengths.

I think my 5.3 poster submission represents my current practice, I was working with the theme of Orientalism, I was especially interested in the idea that it was the ‘western study of eastern cultures’, something I was not part of, I was an outsider looking in. In this piece I wanted to question the aesthetics of a watermark, so the entire poster was covered the project’s tumblr address written in comic sans. It seems ironic that I screen printed the watermark upside down after misunderstanding which way the Japanese text was, this was unintentional but I guess it emphasis the fact that I was not part of that culture.

An example of a creative practitioner’s work, who’s intentions you most identify

with/ admire/ aspire to.

At the moment I admire a lot of Emily Hadden’s work, I emailed her to find out more. Hadden works around the themes of nature and science using a range of materials and processes. She works experimentally, embracing accidents and allowing different processes to dictate the work, this is also how I like to work, exploring different mediums and applying the outcomes to a variety of formats.

Your Pitch: Image and Text Questions

An example of work you have already done that best represents your practice to date with a brief evaluation of

shortfalls and strengths.

I think my 5.3 poster submission represents my current practice, I was working with the theme of Orientalism, I was especially interested in the idea that it was the ‘western study of eastern cultures’, something I was not part of, I was an outsider looking in. In this piece I wanted to question the aesthetics of a watermark, so the entire poster was covered the project’s tumblr address written in comic sans. It seems ironic that I screen printed the watermark upside down after misunderstanding which way the Japanese text was, this was unintentional but I guess it emphasis the fact that I was not part of that culture.

An example of a creative practitioner’s work, who’s intentions you most identify

with/ admire/ aspire to.

At the moment I admire a lot of Emily Hadden’s work, I emailed her to find out more. Hadden works around the themes of nature and science using a range of materials and processes. She works experimentally, embracing accidents and allowing different processes to dictate the work, this is also how I like to work, exploring different mediums and applying the outcomes to a variety of formats.

“I tend to take inspiration from clothes, fashion designers, textiles, objects, furniture and interior design, rarely graphic design or illustration”

It is interesting that she looks at disciplines outside of her own for inspiration, for me music and fine art influence a lot of ideas. Although her personal work is very expressive and experimental she still manages to apply these traits to her commercial design work for b Magazine, after designing the (in)xclusion brochure this is something I feel I need to learn.

What processes (technical) you intend to use for your work - do you need to learn any new ones to do the kind of

work you have in mind?

I don’t plan to work specifically with one process, as I am producing an installation space I need to be able to work with a variety of processes for different formats and materials. I have been experimenting with screen printing in previous projects so I can now work more accurately with my ideas. I plan to potentially create a website and although I have a little bit of experience with web based media I may need to invest some time into this area.

What kind of content (theme/subject) do you think your work suits best?

As previously stated my practice revolves around the theme of kitsch and post-internet design. Holiday culture and tourism I think sits closely along side these themes, although the intensions in terms of design may be different e.g. irony.

What do you want your work to communicate and what impact do you

want it to have on an audience?

I want my work to make people question design, what ‘good design’ and ‘bad design’ is. A lot of work in the post-internet movement I believe uses certain design aspects ironically but I want to take it a step further and start using aspects in a positive way. For example the typeface comic sans is very popular and is used a lot without acknowledgement, it is then used a lot by designers ironically for humor but I want to use it positively with acknowledgement to its design context and the way in which it could be perceived.

What intentions do you have for self-initiated work? What intentions do you

have for brief-led work

For my self-initiated work I aim to produce work around the theme of holiday culture and tourism, considering theories of hyperrealism, tropicalism, the post-internet design movement and the idea of kitsch.For the brief led project I want to work openly on video piece based on my trip to Tallinn, Estonia. This brief will be completed in a stricter time frame, to contrast my self-initiated work.

For my self-initiated work I aim to produce work around the theme of holiday culture and tourism, considering theories of hyperrealism, tropicalism, the post-internet design movement and the idea of kitsch.

Initially I was focused around Tropicalism as a theme for my work but this seemed too irrelevant and distant, it was a movement that I was not part of, something I was never immersed in. The subject then turned to holiday culture and tourism, the aesthetics and their connotations. Although Tropicalism was a brief movement in the 1960’s I will still refer to aspects of it and apply the research to my work, Hélio Oiticica’s ‘penetrables’ are something that I am very interested in, works of art that encourage the viewer to engage with.

I believe that there are many similarities aesthetically between a lot of current travel and holiday design and the design areas I am currently interested in, it will be interesting to compare and mix all these attributes.

The Brief and Intentions

Self-Initiated

As I plan to work openly on my self-initiated brief I thought it might be useful to have a brief with more restrictions and constraints. I am going on a trip to Tallinn, Estonia and I want to let the environment inspire and dictate the subject matter of the work, however I plan to use my video camera to capture most, if not all, the footage.

This brief originates from the Le Gun brief, working with the idea of short stories however I plan to take it in my own direction and use moving image rather than illustration or collage.

Brief-Led

The Process Explained

Demonstration of Approach and Working Method

Content

Skill Based/Physical

I tend to follow on from things that have interested me in previous projects, things that I only briefly touched on which could be further explored, this inevitably leads on to more interests and ideas for future work.

Something that is common in my work is the idea of resampling work and taking it back through processes and stages it has previously been through, this is something I also do when I create music, taking sounds and samples and warping them to create fresh pieces.

The Work

The Simulation of Something Which Never Really Existed (publication)

I have written a piece making connections between university and an idealistic beach setting. This came from a friend talking about his time at university being a holiday, time away from jobs and duties at home, it seemed an interesting topic to explore and also relevant to other ideas I was looking into.

It takes the form as a folded slip containing the text and the title for the publication, and a folded sheet of A3 which contains quotes from the written piece amongst beach desktop wallpapers on one side and photos of the university’s studios on the other. I chose a thin paper stock so both sets of images are visible through the stock, blurring the boundaries between university and a holiday scenario. This gave me a chance to experiment with layout and publication design that is something my installation lacked.

A few of us on the course organized a trip to Tallinn, Estonia, I had the idea of doing some video work out there to satisfy one of the brief led projects. I didn’t have much of a plan when I went out there but I was hoping the surroundings would influence the work and dictate subject matter and style etc. I began filming our activities but then soon began questioning my reasoning and the values of the footage, I didn’t want to be filming things just for the sake of it.

I had been naive in Tallinn, although I did research the city in terms of design and places I wanted to visit (I had the famous Tallinn design map at hand), I was disappointed with what I had found or didn’t find...I was after open studios with zines and artist publications for sale, screen printed posters and discussions with graphic designers, but instead there were a lot of handicraft, jewelry and furniture design,

Myself and two friends were having a drink in a pub and a middle-aged woman kept on looking over at us. Just as we had finished our drinks and were thinking about leaving she came over and muttered something we couldn’t really hear, when asked to repeat herself she reiterated her intensions, “maybe sex?”, we politely declined and swiftly left the pub.

After looking so hard for something I wanted and failing and then getting offered something I wasn’t looking for and didn’t want made me realise my ignorance. This ‘disappointment’ in my surroundings and my video work then inspired something new, a video piece based around my expectations and intensions in Tallinn.

The Work

Intentions (film)

I have produced a film piece documenting the HyperTourism booth installation I created. I wanted to capture the piece while it was still assembled and as well as photographs, a film seemed like an interesting way to capture the conceptuality as well as the tactility of the project.

A split screen effect was used to further blur the boundaries between the real and the faux, sounds of waves and birds are also used to portray a beach setting. The video ends with the desk fan turning off along with it the sounds and music, thus suggesting the pseudo element of the project.

The Work

The Simulation of Something Which Never Really Existed (film)

The Work

HyperTourism(installation)

The idea of this installation was to explore the ideas of holiday culture and tourism in the form of a travel agents, I also wanted this to be a way to exhibit the work I was producing. The project began to perpetuate and ideas were feeding off the space and visa versa.

After being inspired by Lynne Ramsay’s ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’, I installed a desk fan into the booth. The fan attempted to recreate a sea breeze as well as gently blowing the it’s surroundings like a cliché daydream, echoing the pseudo nature of the project. Also contributing to the booth’s artificiality were two clocks mounted on the wall, both displaying random times however one didn’t even move.

I added some photo frames onto the walls containing edited postcards I had picked up from Mallorca a year or so ago. These postcards were images of really busy beaches, to me it seems like an odd thing to advertise so I chose to ‘photoshop’ out all the people and touristy things I could, the quality of the image was then disrupted by the amount of people etc on the original. I printed out the images and mounted them on old screen prints and shimmery paper before framing and hanging in the booth.

After creating this faux environment it only seemed natural for something to happen within it, a performative element. This led onto creating and running a website by which viewers could book a fake holiday to their ideal destination online, or come and visit me in the booth and I would book it for them, this was made more interesting when participants attempted to find destinations on the warped map up on the wall.

www.wix.com/broadcastingplace/hypertourism

Making Connections and References

Critical Study

I have been working around the idea of holiday culture and tourism and I believe that it links heavily with what my practice embodies at the moment (kitsch, post-internet). The image was drawn on a laptop using the track pad and then screen printed onto the towel, I think most people have attempted to write or draw using pencil and brush tools on computers and I am interested in the aesthetic that this creates, you get a sort of wobbly quality which I think can relate to the post-internet movement I am looking at, it physically displays the process, embracing it as part of it’s appearance.I chose to print onto towels to echo the idea of beaches and relaxation; this is a similar process to what American musician James Ferraro went through;

“Ferraro’s original plan had been to release the 16 tracks as ringtones. It would’ve been the most logical format for Ferraro’s latest excavation of popular culture”(Saxelby, 2011)

The idea of format puts his work directly in the context he wants it to exist in, “the ringtone being the ultimate pastiche of music,” the work becomes totally immersed in it’s intended commerce. Experimenting with materials and formats is always going to be unpredictable and this is something the process brief taught me, because towels are quite fibrous the quality of the print wasn’t perfect but this is all part of the experimentation.

I want viewers to try and see more positives in design that might be seen as ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’, to try and see things with a fresh idea of context. Socially as a graphic arts student I am surrounded by rules and theories about what should and shouldn’t be done in design, I don’t want my work to fight against these ideas in a counterculture sort of way, but to work along side them and acknowledge them.

Culturally my work could be seen as accessible, the towels take on an aesthetic that could appeal to an audience interested in travel and souvenir gifts, but they also work with the idea of hyperrealism, an interesting contrast between two areas that could be considered as low and high art.

Far Side Virtual is an album by James Ferraro released in 2011. I first came across this album a few weeks ago through my brother; I see this album as a representation of the now in a zeitgeist sort of way, I see it as a piece of art as much as I see it as a piece of music.

It consists of 16 fairly short tracks; made up of mainly synth strings and brass instruments, but what sets it apart from other albums is the use of modern technology and devices within the music, throughout the selection we are bombarded with snippets of Satellite Navigation instructions, iPads and Skype loading noises. The music is very visual, reflecting our technologically driven and obsessed culture; I get connotations of busy web browsers and gifs, connotations of post-internet design.

The work I am currently doing is based around the idea of thinking about design from a fresh perspective, seeing things that may be considered as ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ in a more positive way whilst acknowledging their design context, I believe Far Side Virtual works with a very similar idea, questioning the regular, however I am unsure to as whether this album is a positive or negative reflection upon society.

There are moments in this album where hooks and chord progressions seem well considered and genuine, the production and mastering seems very formal in comparison to some of Ferraro’s other projects, the overall vibe of the album seems pretty uplifting, however it can sometimes be difficult to take this album seriously, with waves of Nintendo Wii and Windows shutting down sounds, perhaps Ferraro’s intentions are more dystopian then utopian?

Regardless of Ferraro’s intentions I see this album and a positive piece, reminiscent of what I am trying to create with my travel agents installation, a blurring between the real, hyper real and the artificial. Far Side Virtual shows us a glimpse into the future as well as heavily reflecting today’s culture and society, embracing new methods and processes to push the boundaries of music to new places. A lot of people will see his work as ironic, poking fun at the world’s over commercialized future but to me there seems like there is too much care in this record for it to be a joke.

Analysis

James Ferraro – Far Side Virtual

Jean Baudrillard

Alain De Botton

Emily Hadden

Hélio Oiticica

Evan Prosofsky

Samara Scott

Baudrillard’s theories of Hyperrealism have really inspired the direction of my installation as well as initiating my written piece about university as a hyper-real utopia.

‘The Art of Travel’ was recommended to me after giving my pitch. During my trip to Tallinn, Estonia this book helped me redirect my project idea.

Hadden creates some really interesting textual and compositional work, applying experimentation practically to the commercial world.

Initially I was working around the theme of Tropicaliá, Hélio Oiticica created ‘penetrables’; pieces of art the viewer could interact with, not dissimilar to my travel agents.

Evan Prosofsky’s ‘Waterpark’ is something I have only recently discovered, some beautiful cinematography.

Samara Scott is another artist who I got in contact with. I was shown her work ‘Cafe Chateau’ in a crit session and it really got me thinking about how far I could take my project, inspiring me to explore more formats and consider a performance element.

Daily Mirror SPORT – Monday 30th January 2012

This paper was released on the last day of the English transfer window, so it is not surprising to find it talking about last minute deals and potential signings.

After a closer look we find that the ‘Football Spy’ section is in association with Renault, of which a fairly large advertisement takes up the bottom corner. I feel Renault’s puns such as “Forget the big 4. Here’s the big 3.” are feeding the football fan stereotype, this is only cementing the idea that football enthusiasts are

van drivers and pie eaters. To me this seems like a wild assumption to make, however culturally it seems like there is a negative slant towards football fans, films like Green Street and Football Factory focus on the hooliganism and overall negative aspects of football.

Renault also states “ You might not be able to afford a Premier League footballer…but you can arrange to test-drive a Renault”, and although Premier League footballers are expensive this is assuming the social class and wealth of the audience, the article is trying to play towards the mind-set of the reader.

I think there is a lot of theatrical elements in this article, words like “cheeky bid” and “steal” sit next to Renault’s advertisement, the text and content of the football transfers seems to be working as more exposure to Renault’s products. To me “…the January transfer window slams shut…” commutates ideas of sliding car doors and boots, semantically suggesting the idea of a big, manly van.

Zeitgeist

Renault also states “ You might not be able to afford a Premier League footballer…but you can arrange to test-drive a Renault”, and although Premier League footballers are expensive this is assuming the social class and wealth of the audience, the article is trying to play towards the mind-set of the reader.

I think there is a lot of theatrical elements in this article, words like “cheeky bid” and “steal” sit next to Renault’s advertisement, the text and content of the football transfers seems to be working as more exposure to Renault’s products. To me “…the January transfer window slams shut…” commutates ideas of sliding car doors and boots, semantically suggesting the idea of a big, manly van.

What I find interesting about newspapers and magazines is you only really ever see celebrities placed alongside large text, or on a glossy stock. This seems to almost celebrate their status, exaggerating it further with bright colours and capital letters. I have been looking at hyperrealism in my work and I don’t this strays too far from that, I have chosen to draw an image from the article to see if pencil has any similar effect, a bit like Andy Warhol’s pop art work from the 1960’s.

Bibliography

Books

Baudrillard, J (1994) Simulacra and Simulation, The University Of Michigan Press

De Botton, A (2003) The Art of Travel, London, Penguin Books

Kendall, A (1981) Real, Really Real, Superreal, Texas, San Antonio Museum Association

Margolin, V, Carroll, P (2002) Culture is Everywhere, London, Prestel

Olalquiaga, C (1999) The Artificial Kingdom, London, Bloomsbury Publishing

Rush, M (2005) New Media in Art, London, Thames & Hudson

Websites and Films

Cotter, H (2006)http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/13/arts/design/13trop.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Ferraro, J (2011) Far Side Virtual, Los Angeles, Hippos In Tankshttp://soundcloud.com/hipposintanks/sets/james-ferraro-far-side-virtual

Hadden, Ehttp://emilyhadden.com/

LVL3 (2011)http://lvl3.tumblr.com/post/8733477422/artist-of-the-week-samara-scott

Prosofsky, E (2012) WATERPARK Official Tralierhttp://www.indiegogo.com/WATERPARK-Sound-Design

Ramsay, L (2011) We Need to Talk About Kevin, London, BBC Films

Saxelby, R (2011)http://dummymag.com/features/2011/12/16/12-albums-for-2011-james-ferraro-s-far-side-virtual/

Where I Work

Having enjoyed documenting the HyperTourism booth by film I would like to perhaps do more work like this. I made a mocumentary last summer and this is something I very much enjoyed, cinematography is something I find fascinating. I will hopefully develop my practice even further, defining stylistically.

I will also be continuing my production of music as this is something that I may pursue after university, I think design and music can work of each other perpetually.

abesmusic.bandcamp.com

The Future