Giant pastel colored sculptures reminiscence of long wiggling gummy worms and other weird shapes line the front of Tate Modern’s Switch House entrance. These aluminium lacquered sculptures by Franz West may confuse the audience at first glance – you’re not quite sure what to do with it, yet they exude a playfulness that invites the audience to walk around and interact with them. Inside the main gallery the exhibition continues, where the audience gets a first impression of West as a person through a short film, followed by a collection of his early works, where these sketches and paintings took a different approach to his latter works.

Moving on, we see the beginnings of West’s interests to abstract and interactive sculptures. Made from a variety of materials such as paper mache, plaster and plastic, these mostly white, small scale sculptures named “passstucke’ or adaptives were made to be played with and adapt to the audience. A video of the passstucke performance to guide the audience and a number of private spaces were provided for us to interact with the passstucke in our own time, which I found to be a fun highlight in the exhibition. However, I did not observe anyone else interacting with the sculptures during my time there.

Left : Replications of passstucke for audience to interact with, Right: My interaction with a passstucke

Selbiges 1986 

I found West’s larger pieces most interesting, such as Pysche, done as a response to writer Esterhazy’s piece. This dressing table / mirror combination allowed the viewer when sitting to see their own reflection multiplied and that of their partner thrice. For me, this piece encourages people to explore a manifestation of their own self, and their relationship with those close to them. This piece made an impact on me and showed how West was influenced by literature, philosophy and pyschoanalysis. This recurrent emphasis on the exploration of human behavior and relationship continues into his furniture pieces such as Eo Ipso, which seats are so far apart that the users are at an awkward position to communicate with each other.

Pysche 1987

Eo Ipso 1987

All in all, I found the exhibition fairly enjoyable. West’s choice of color palette and eccentric yet whimsical sculptural shapes made his work all the more approachable and at times it felt like I was taking a surreal walk in a world full of surprises. His works invoke curiosity and allows the audience to observe, confront imagine and ultimately come to their own conclusion as to what these works represent to them. The only downside was that most of the pieces were considered too fragile for the audience to interact with and thus for me it seemed as if the true intent of the artist was lost as these works were originally meant to be used. As an artist that was constantly challenging the norms of how art should be exhibit and with a strong desire to breach the separation between art and daily life, West’s exhibition at Tate feels somewhat formal. With most of the exhibits roped off and ‘user guides’ scattered around, it feels as if it’s somehow lost some of it’s original fun.

 

During this session, we discussed how algorithms and machines can be used to generate designs, music and other artworks, while raising questions on the role that designers play in the process of making generative designs, as well as debating the subjectivity and objectivity of generative designs themselves.

One of the main ideas that drive generative design is that design itself should be a rational process, reducing the creative process to an act of selection. As Gerstner notes (2017, p12), creative decisions are not made as prompted by emotional feelings but rather by intellectual criteria. Here, designing is seen as an act of picking out determining elements and combining them, one example of this being “Carro 64″(1965) , a set of 64 aluminium cubes for the audience to change and adapt. The process of generative design suggests a removal of  an author of design, by doing so, the design can always be reorganized, creating endless variations in itself. The design is generated according to a algorithm, a sequence of highly explicit instructions carried to transform input to output.

One topic of discussion that I would be interested to explore further is the question on how generative design transforms the role of a designer. In a discussion of Steve Reich’s musical piece pendulum music (1996), which only consists of a set of instructions as opposed to a traditional music score, the debate centered on who is the creative author of music. There were many other factors to consider such as the performers who dropped the mic, the mics themselves and perhaps gravity, as all these factors contribute to the final piece. In this sense, the performance seems more like an experiment, with a precise, mechanical approach to how the music might play out. As Reich notes, “once the process is set up, it inexorably works itself”  (Mertens, 1983) .This piece feels far more impersonal and devoid of emotion than the music that we are normally used too. We could argue that generative design removes the subjectivity and personal story of the author and lets the audience read into it personally. With no definite context other than a set of instructions, the audience would not be influence by it’s context before viewing it, allowing them to see it from an objective perspective and form their own personal, unbiased views.

Another question to debate was the fear of how the reliance on artificial intelligence would eventually overpower humanity. However, I felt that humans would still hold authority as ultimately we are the ones who would program these instructions. In an interview with Dezeen, Zomparelli (2017) compares generative design and computer algorithms to “a new kind of material”. Others such as Phillipe Starck (2019) sees their working relation with algorithms and artificial intelligence as a partnership,describing the process as “having a conversation”. As Greenfield argues (2017, p213), the dynamism of algorithms allows it to refine its ability to detect changes in patterns and act on that insight, leading to “machine learning”.

In conclusion, generative design could drive innovation in the design industry. Instead of seeing AI as a threat, it should be seen as a new means of evolving our design process and design thinking, changing the way designers work in terms of writing a generative process as well as relying on them to allow us different ways of exploring design outcomes and options.

Bibliography

In this session we were introduced to semiotics, exploring key terms such as denotation and connotation, icons, index, symbols and the arbitrary relationship between concept and sound image.

The main idea centered on how language is part of a system of signs. These signs consists of two parts, concept (the signified) and sound image (the signifier), and that there is an arbitrary relationship between the signified and the signifier. Furthermore, the value system of a term is solely based on a wider agreement or simultaneous consensus in society. As Saussere notes, language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results “solely in the simultaneous presence of others”. (2003, p 36) These concepts are negatively related with other terms in the system. This concept is illustrated in Rene Magritte’s The Key of Dreams (1930) which disrupts the audience’s learned associations by incorrectly pairing up text and images, confusing the audience by having them relearn and reevaluate these predetermined relationships.

What I found the most interesting was how there were different ways to perceive a sign, which was affected by the audience’s connotation, the rules and convention in which dictates the underlying meaning of something in a particular context. The question is centered on how denotation and connotations are actively used and being manipulated in advertising. Barthes (1994, p176) argues that by using this double message, advertisements successfully reintroduce the “dreams of humanity” into consumers. Thus, we can argue that advertisements offers a double message in terms of introducing the product into consumers mind, in which its success depends on the ability of the message to retain its “double character”. Another debate centered on how brands make use of storytelling to create ‘myths’ – a mythological environment for the objects that they a trying to sell. These objects become symbolic and speak for itself, lending positive connotations to a brand. Asbury (2017, p55) states that brand storytelling became popular and appealed to consumers because of its emotional aspect. We could argue that the word “story” in itself holds a positive connotation and reminds consumers of their childhood, or something that is steeped in history. Thus storytelling provides brands with a narrative in which to “rebrand” themselves in the eye of consumers.

In short, understanding the notion of semiotics and how it works is crucial to us as designers in order to successfully convey our intended message to the audience.

Bibliography

Asbury, N (2017) Creative Review. 

Barnes, R (1994) The Semiotic Challenge. Los Angeles, California: University of California Press

Crow, D (2003) Visible Signs. London: Thames & Hudson

 

 

 

This lecture highlights the importance of design from a socially responsible standpoint, with the debate centering around how design could be sustainable, ethical and most importantly, raise awareness towards certain social issues as well as having an impact on society.

The First things first manifesto published by Ken Garland argued that the priorities of designers should shift towards more useful and long lasting communication such as their education, trade and culture instead of consumer advertising. Questions surrounding the social responsibility of a designer was something that I found interesting and hoped to explore. As McCoy argues (2003, p.2), designers play a crucial role in using their skills to raise the awareness and participation of the public towards social issue. Designers ” cannot afford to be passive” and should take a stance in “shaping society”.

This awareness amongst designers occurred because industrialization and the mass production of goods, had led to a rise in consumerism. In Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936), we observe how workers in a factory become almost machine-like. The repetition of the same movements in front of a conveyor belt, lack of rest and harsh working conditions are critiqued in this film. There is a sense of detachment from the workers as they only work on one part and are alienated from the end product. Morris echoes this sentiment in his quote : “We need to do away with the toil which makes a thousand and one things which nobody wants.” (Morris, 1882) Meanwhile, the Bauhaus school embraced the machine aesthetics. Focusing on functionalism and geometric forms, they wanted to create a modern and progressive environment.

As advertisements became more sophisticated, design was used to market a fantasy of consumerism and convenience. As Ewen noted, design is used to “establish corporate identities firmly in the public mind” and to motivate the development of consumer markets. (Ewen, p193) Packard also criticized the use of consumer motivational research and psychological techniques in advertisements to manipulate consumer desire and expectations.

On the other hand, designers also created material that articulated social realities, including topics such as AIDS, homophobia, sweatshop labor and corporate power, such as Babara Kruger’s Untitled (I shop therefore I am). A greater emphasis was also placed on inclusive design and ecological awareness, with campaigns such as Friends of the earth’s litmus paper billboard on acid rain highlighting the planetary crisis.

Another concept that I was interested in exploring was Design Justice’s Network Principles emphasis of “citizen designers”. This priorities the users over the designers / makers, hence the role of a designer is to empower communities, while being mindful of design’s impact on a community. It is interesting to see the way that the uses for design have evolved over time, and I personally felt that Design Justice’s emphasis on collaboration and sustainability were more in line with today’s times and needs, as we are living in the age of digital technology and globalization. As Resnick noted (2016, p.12), the argument is that designers should be “professionally, culturally and socially responsible” for the impact that their design has on citizenry.

In my opinion, social media has enabled consumers to be more aware of social issues happening around the world, and good design is no longer limited to only the elites in society. Designers should adopt an open minded and problem solving approach so that everyone can contribute to design. In short, design should aim to create solutions or awareness towards social issues, empowering communities and fostering collaborative relationships.

Bibliography

Mirzoeff begins by introducing the Zapatista rebel army and their use of media to spread political concepts. They saw changing media and politics as two parts of the same process and invented “hacktivism”, activism online that seeks to disrupt the operations of government or corporate websites. The Zapatistas envisage a world where there is room for many worlds, that can be one and diverse. This approach argues that there is a new form of representation in the globalized world. Here Mirzoeff defines representation as : 1. the way we depict events and experiences in other forms, and 2. a representative system of government. The Zapatistas’ participatory media events were an example of the world that they hope to create.

Global cities have also become places of unrest, where the young, urban and networked majority are questioning existing forms of representation. Argentina’s revolt after it’s financial crisis in 2001 turned the global city into a rebel city. These movements for self representation tried to find new means of representation, with its participants acting both as individuals and as ‘the people’. Social media has also allowed people to stop unseeing the crisis, acting as a catalyst for social movement. This is evident in the Egyptian uprisings of 2011 in Tahrir Square, where ‘Egypt’ was redefined and recreated, with street battles seen live via the Internet and reported on al-Jazeera. Tahrir Square became a space of active resistance towards dictatorship, giving a new concept to public space and creating the possibility of political action. It was a new form of visual representation and a claim to be politically representative. Graffiti also reclaimed public space for discussion, such as those in Cairo that drove political debate and open new possibilities up until General Sisi’s coup. Self labeled contingency artist Ganzeer sees this as participatory art, art that participates in dealing with the immediate concerns and struggles of the audience. The wall on which Ganzeer’s Tank and Bread is painted on became a place of visual conversation. Online counter-archives such as Mosireen has also created new means of engagement, with their activities centered on documenting and visual activism, showing others what was happening in Egypt in the face of domestic censorship. Social media was combined with street protests and online archiving to create a new form of visual culture activism.

In New York, visual activism also resonated, with the 2011 Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement being given as an example. This was originally launched by Adbusters, a not for profit organization known for ‘culture jamming’, satirically playing on mass media to make viewers question what they see. Participants of OWS did not claim to be or represent all people but rather the 99%. This stems from reports stating that the wealthiest 1% in America continue to benefit despite creating the recession that the US is in today. OWS reintroduced discussions of inequality into mainstream American culture. Protesters used handwritten signs, the signature object of Tumblr, successfully conveying the authenticity that mass produced signs lack. These signs served as an invitation to a conversation, stating how everyday life was often experienced during the recession. It was a reclaiming and reimagining of representation, an assertion that there was something to see.

Finally, Mirzoeff discussed how a meme of the use of pepper spray on protesters acted as a catalyst of social movement. In the past, television had exposed the violence of the police, which later moved on to new media. However, Reuters agency took and distributed Women in Red which showed an unthreatening  women being sprayed by police in Turkey. This showed that what had previously happened from within the social movement was now orchestrated by mainstream media. There is a pattern of mainstream media reporting unintentionally reinforcing what is being covered because the audience are adept at sharing and disseminating its contents. Thus visual culture activism can be seen as involving creating, performing and disseminating memes in public spaces and on social media to involve, extend and create a political subject.

Mirzoeff begins the chapter by emphasizing that the global majority is urban now, and that this has created new global megacities or metropolitan areas such as Beijing, Tokyo and so on. These differ from older concepts of city limits in which they are a region in themselves, often associated with being intensely polluted, conflicted and dangerous. Global cities also have more in common than the classic city of the imperial period which was highly distinctive. Mirzoeff explains that three city forms – imperial city, cold war city and global cities have shaped the world over the past centuries.

The imperial city relied on keeping certain people and places out of sight. Street photographers acted as the unseen observer in cities such as Paris and London, presenting a nostalgic view. The imperial city was characterized with a wealthy core surrounded by people living in informal housing. The center of the city was where all modern types came into being, seen by groups of tourist whereas the latter was kept out of sight. The modern city gave rise to the flaneur, the “man in the crowd” way of looking which was later incorporated into photography. There was a fascination with leisure and consumption,  the flickering city lights and the urban observation of the flaneur, which was depicted in impressionist paintings. In the global cities, malls with artificial lighting and the merger of cinemas have become the place of consumption. Unseen observation has become another commodity in the modern city. Nowadays, imperial cities are separated by ethnicity rather than class.

During the cold war, cities such as Berlin became divided and the Berlin Wall created a social fact of segregation. In America, citizens were also divided by the color line, with signs indicating different entrances for ‘whites’ or ‘colored’ . In 1960, students in Greensboro, North Carolina participated in a non-violent sit in protest, raising the issue that segregated owners preferred prejudice to business. This countervisualising was successful and now the Civil Rights Movement is seen as a symbol of America. Racial distinction was also hypervisibly enforced in South Africa with the apartheid system. Mirzoeff uses the photographic works of white South African Goldbatt and black South African Cole to show how these contradictions were visualized. Goldbatt’s A farmer’s son with his nursemaid explored the apartheid at home, showing the dominance of a white child over his black African domestic laborer. Cole’s Pass Law showed the indifference of white Africans towards the treatment of their black counterparts in the city. More recently, Israelis and Palestinians are divided by the Occupied Territories of the west bank.

Global cities are seen as a place of simultaneous erasure, division and expansion. Zones of fake spaces are incorporated, for example there is a replica of Eiffel Tower in Hangzhou, China, while others carry fake Louis Vuitton bags or wear fake Rolex watches. This peculiar mirroring of fakery epitomize the way of seeing in the global city. In China, there is also a massive rebuilding of the city,  as Leong’s History Images show, picturesque low rise buildings give way to new developments that are dense and uniform in style. China is also portrayed as a contradictory modernity, combining a strong state which limits personal freedom with managed economic liberalization. It has also become increasingly difficult to own a home in global cities with their escalating rent prices.

Finally, Mirzoeff notes that it is no longer a simple thing to view a global city, and there has been a new way to map it with the invention of the GPS. Those who have access to GPS can precisely locate themselves without requiring technical skills. Databases such as Google Maps and Google Earth provide us with a rendered visual representation, giving us the ability to ‘see’ a particular place.

In this chapter, Mirzoeff begins by explaining that the human eye retains images for an instant after perceiving it, thereby resulting in an illusion of movement if more than 12 frames are shown in a second. In 1895, the Lumiere brothers developed the world’s first moving images, allowing us to see the world as moving pictures on screen ever since. Mirzoeff states that the railway networks which enabled the Industrial Revolution interfaced with cinema to create this visual world. For example, the Lumiere’s The arrival of a Train at La Ciotat and Workers Leaving the Factory showcased factory work and the railway, both a product of the industrial revolution.

In that era of modernity, railways were seen as world changing, creating a new economy and ultimately leading to the invention of moving images. The way people lived changed when uniform time zones were adopted in order to produce accurate railway timetables. Factories also changed the way people work, creating a ‘work day’ with people travelling back and forth from their homes to the workplace. These changes created an abstract order of time and space which was captured in cinema. Later on, the train and the cinema merged in the form of tracking shots, where cameras were mounted on a dolly. Trains became a place of modern spectacle, where ‘seeing from trains’ made a new visible world.

During the cold war, trains became the central point of action, acting as a metaphor for closed worlds as cinema moved to being set on trains, with Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train bringing these themes together. In 1967, Godard’s La Chinoise also featured the train in a jump cut to show a leap in time and space, creating a closed world in the train. However, trains are seen less in western cinema today as it’s cultural significance has changed after world war two. Trains are no longer associated with modernity but are seen in association with their transportation of millions to their death during the Holocaust. The train is connected to modern European violence and is used in Holocaust cinema such as Sophie’s Choice and The Reader. By contrast, trains are still highly featured in Asian cinema due to it’s popularity as a mode of transport and advanced technology, such as Japan’s bullet trains.

Television has also enabled global visual culture on screen, broadcasting the same content to a wide global audience, marking a collective viewing experience in a ‘global village’. Murrow’s use of a split screen in his live show See it Now demonstrates that it is possible to put different spaces into the same frame. McLuhan on the other hand noted that this medium of conveying visuals required the audience to reconstruct and develop the message themselves, and that ‘the medium is the message’. More recently, we have switched to ‘narrow casting’, which is centered around content rather than form.

Mirzoeff also introduces the concept of total noise, a tsunami of available fact, context and perspective. We have access to so much information through the Internet, with the screens we look at becoming increasingly private rather than public. Screen directed vision has become a paradigm in the computer age. This is demonstrated through the information packed view of a gamer, who has to learn how to navigate the game by vizualizing and coordinating hand to eye movements, requiring people to anticipate the unexpected. Society is also now centered around controlling and defining key parameters. New technologies such as Google Glass exert significant control over us, creating a ‘view’ that is carefully policed and filtered.

Here is a summary of notes that our group has come up with after watching the film Objectified.

This chapter introduces the idea that those in political power have always claimed to be able to see differently, this was demonstrated as leadership in a battlefield at war. War was seen as a way to achieve political change, where visualized tactics were used to bring political results. Generals had to visualize the battlefield as a whole, seeing the world from an aerial viewpoint. This was done by trying to see from balloons and then aircraft, then making maps from photographic or technical images to share that view.

During the 1885 Berlin Conference, mapping as a form of war reached the peak in terms of ‘politics by other means’. This claimed all land in Africa that was not being cultivated by European techniques to be seen as empty land, available to the first taker so that they could cultivate it. This form of unseeing led European powers to believe that their division of Africa was legal and beneficial. Here, the actions are seen as war by other means in order to achieved their desired political result. Shonibare’s The Scramble for Africa depicted the colonists as headless mannequins in a response to show that they do not have the ability to visualize.

Later on, visualizing was seen as a technology at the service of military leadership. Photographed battlefield images made the human visualizing of war redundant, where these photo maps and 3D topographic maps made a new speed of war. From then onward, all war became air war, with the control of air determining the outcome. This is demonstrated in the Cold War, where pictures taken from a spy plane showed a Cuban nuclear missile site. Although negotiations were already underway to arrange a deal, these pictures made Kennedy seem like a leader, granting him major political gains.

The ‘war of images’ came after the cold war, where images were used in a war of ideas. This can be seen when the videotaped executions carried out by ISIS that prompt the US to see it as a major threat and declare war against them, mobilizing the world’s largest army. Annotations were also used to dominate photographs, such as Powell’s presentation of Iraq’s mass weapon ownership to the UN in 2003. By doing so, Powell claimed to show what we could not see, distinguishing ordinary seeing from specialized vision, thereby outweighing public opinion during the Second Gulf War. The Internet has also enabled asymmetric media distribution, where an exchange of gruesome images regarding to violence take place in order to claim victory.

Recently, war has gone back to the air with the use of drones to detect a target and eliminate it, successfully decapitating a resistance by eliminating its leadership. Zones of surveillance are established to move beyond official conflict areas, as demonstrated by the unannounced targeted assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Obama’s refusal to release a photo of the assassination gave notice that the asymmetric ‘war of images’ was over. Currently, visualized war are drone fired missiles, controlled from home territory and based on sovereign decisions. However, this poses a problem of misrecognition due to low quality images that are hard to analyse, resulting in civilian casualties. Drones have also spread to the amateur and commercial sector, epitomizing a new moment in visual culture.

This chapter introduces the notion that seeing the world is not about how we see but about what we make of what we see. Seeing is changing, and our understanding of the world comes from making sense of what we think we know and what we already know. Mirzoeff states that we see with our brain instead of with our eyes, quoting Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”. Descartes produced a diagram to show how vision was mathematically possible, solving the problem of how large objects could be seen and interpreted by our “sense of judgement”, making it one of the earliest understandings of how vision was possible. This marked the importance of seeing in modern science, centered around observed experiments.

Simons and Chabris’ ‘Invisible Gorilla’ experiment in the late 1990 showed that there was ‘inattentional blindness’ in seeing, where we are unable to see outside information when concentrating on tasks. However, we are able to change ourselves based on our interaction with the outside world, becoming more visually aware. Today there is a change in the way we make use of visual information, where we prioritize the ability of multi tasking, this has helped us change to pay attention to distractions. Neuroscience has also helped us understand vision in terms of seeing the brain in action. An MRI scan shows us that seeing is a complex and interactive process,  where our brain ‘lights up’ rapidly in different areas, creating a back and forth exchange. This shows that seeing is a mental process that occurs back and forth in different areas of the brain, showing vision as a set of feedback loops instead of merely happening at a single ‘place’.

Mirzoeff likens this to Mondrain’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, which depicted the dynamics, drama and vibrations of a city. Setting aside the notion that an image gets relayed from the retina to the brain, seeing is actually a spontaneous movement where our eyes are always ‘boogieing’ back and forth. The image we sees stays still because the brain computes it in this way. Painters such as Boucher captured this ‘blinking’ vision in his paintings, while neo-classical artists like David effaced all flickering, insisting that what we see is what is there. This would later be imported into photography as the ‘correct’ focus. Others like Mitchell were prompted by the rise of digital visual culture to propose that all media involved every sense, this claimed that perception was not a single action but carefully assembled in the brain. Known as ‘body maps’, these showed our sense of who and where we are, although not always in sync with the actual state of our bodies, such as when anorexic person perceive their thinness as affirmation. This is because there are two streams in our brain, one for action and one for perception. Vision is constantly being learned and relearned.

Lastly, Mirzoeff states that sense is experienced not as individuals but as commons. Our mirror neurons allows us to not only see from our point of view but to see it from the point of others. Vision is seen as multiply processed, analysed and subjected to feedback from other parts of the body, rather than just a individual ‘sense’.