Having been told we were moving onto a self-initaited, personal project, I began to think about my area of interests. Both within the context of graphics and outside of it, I am fascinated with technology, more specifically, how we interact with technology and how that’s changed over time. I find it fascinating that there a resurgence in popularity of old forms of media such as cassettes, vinyl records and retro games. There is a tactility and a interpersonal connection that these pieces of hardware inspire that we is perhaps lose in the digital translation. Some of my earliest childhood memories are watching my older cousin play Crash Team Racing on the original playstation.
There was something about the bright garish colours and clunky blocky 3D graphics and more so the fact that he was controlling it all that had such an impact on me. A piece of design that I’ve found very influential both in its aesthetic and context is April Grieman’s “Does It Make Sense?”, a poster for the magazine “Design Quarterly”.
“To start a serious conversation about computers, Greiman had to expose their potential. The perfect opportunity arose when she was invited to design and edit an issue of Design Quarterly (No. 133) in 1986. Technically, her issue did not resemble a magazine at all. It was, instead, a 3-foot tall fold-out poster. Using MacVision, the designer generated an image of her naked body and a variety of graphic symbols, all under the title, “Does It Make Sense?” For many it did not, but the first step toward the digital transformation of graphic design had been taken.”
https://stories.readymag.com/greiman/credits/
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/april-greiman-is-still-ahead-of-the-curve/
Being exposed to artists and designers such as Grieman has helped me formulate my interest in digital design and more specific areas within it such as creative coding, digital art and generative Design. During my foundation I explored the digital breakdown of images using analogue and digital processes to corrupt and then animate a family photo. I learnt this could be considered glitch art:
I think this interest, both on a purely visual point but also to a more speculative degree as my understanding of the subjects and themes improved, was somewhat formulated from an early love of films such as Bladerunner and Akira, both of which were shown to me at a young age and had a long lasting emotional resonance. I linked digital art to the aesthetic of the cyberpunk genre. I find the idea of the mass proliferation of technology leading to an overall de-evolution of the human condition incredibly poignant. The notions explored in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” and “Neuromancer” are really powerful to me. The bleakness of the future is lit by a lurid neon glow. I find the series Blackmirror really hard to watch, it’s frightening to me that some of these futures in my mind could definitely become reality. Documentaries such as “The Great Hack” on netflix and news articles about the state of ai and its moral implications – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/07/lost-my-faith-in-tech-evangelism-john-naughton only propel this reality further into existence. I have always felt slightly uncomfortable using social media for its intended purpose of public image and data sharing and I think I’ve found it incredibly beneficial for my mental health to not use my phone for long periods of time. I think to a degree modern technology and the internet is alienating and the speed at which technological advancements are made has gotten out of our hands. However, despite this, I still find myself so drawn to the digital. I love pre-internet technology such as old computers and the graphic language of obsolete software and code created on screen information. It is a visual language that highlights a more equal interpersonal relationship with technology before we had such a reliance on it.
Over summer I went to Stockholm to visit all the galleries the city had to offer. After seeing an exhibition of Arthur Jaffa “A SERIES OF UTTERLY IMPROBABLE, YET EXTRAORDINARY RENDITIONS” at the Moderna Museet, it was then interesting to see another artist who took this idea of image collection and photo banks further utilising ai algorithms. ” Refik Anadol’s Latent History takes the viewer on a journey through a beautiful, yet thought-provoking work projected on a 55 metre-wide by 3.5 metre-high screen in Fotografiska’s large exhibition hall. It’s a never-before-seen portrayal of Stockholm, as envisioned by machines, using algorithms revealing the hidden history found in archives and old photographs stretching back 150 years. Latent History is a journey in time and space – and one that also challenges our imagination as to how different things could have been if only”.
https://www.fotografiska.com/sto/en/news/refik-anadol-latent-history/
I did some further research into Anadol’s work:
He has an interesting twitter page where he gives glimpses into his projects:
http://www.k-blogg.se/2019/09/12/latent-history-a-machine-dreams-of-a-stockholm-that-never-was/
I was excited by his working method showed cased in “Latent History” and looked into how pictures can be inputted into algorithms etc which changes their identity and truth. Refik Anadol utilses animation to show the merging shifting nature of his data created imagery. I came across an article show casing similar technology being used but with video instead of static images. The moving images created become even more fluid and changeable.
This led me to research ai and machine learning in a visual context more:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/17/googles-ai-write-poetry-stark-dramatic-vogons
More recently, I was made aware of Trevor Paglen by my course tutor Marcus which was a nice lead on from this.
“Artist Trevor Paglen’s new Curve commission takes as its starting point the way in which AI networks are taught how to ‘see’ and ‘perceive’ the world by taking a closer look at image datasets.
Paglen has incorporated approximately 30,000 individually printed photographs, largely drawn from ImageNet, the most widely shared, publicly available dataset. This dataset is archived and pre-selected in categories by humans, and widely used for training AI networks. In some cases, the connotations of categories are uncontroversial, others, for example ‘bad person’ or ‘debtors’, are not. These categories, when used in AI, suggest a world in which machines will be able to elicit forms of judgement against humankind.
Discover how the advent of autonomous computer vision and AI has developed, rife with hidden politics, biases and stereotypes.”
https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2019/event/trevor-paglen-from-apple-to-anomaly
This reminded me of an article I read recently: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/amazon-ai-sexist-recruitment-tool-algorithm-a8579161.html. I’m planning to visit the barbrican and see his work when I attend a workshop “Sonifying the Data-Set”: Join artist and PhD researcher Matthew Evans to learn how to build a programme that correlates sound with images, creating your own pieces based on the data-set images in the exhibition.
https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2020/event/sonifying-the-data-set
However, as this workshop is in late January, I may need to go earlier.
This workshop reminded me of John Maeda, a particularly inspirational thinker in this field who stips computational design down to data and code, celebrating this in his graphics.
https://twitter.com/johnmaeda?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Douglas Gordon is a video artist the way he edits films would only be possible using digital technologies. Video and on-screen image become related to digital working methods. It reveals how different scales can be explored by utilising the digital, data can be viewed and interpreted in different ways.
From these bits of research I’ve developed some thinking points that I could begin to formulate around my position brief, below are some rough notes:
generate an interaction between a person and a computer, How interpersonal digital interactions are created by graphics, The importance of graphics in human digital interactions. How a computer can be creative – tell a story, create an image…
Simple computer programs that you interact with but the escape they create… just by being within the digital environment – immersive
ai text based adventure game
Computer but more specifically designing using computers – which all comes down to code
We interact with computers everyday, generate a new method of communication and encourage a different human – digital relationship.
Cameron Aitken Graphic Design 