representation

JM12

The potential for irony—and humor—is fundamental to the idea of the designed gap. A single, dramatic disconnect is particularly satisfying when it violates traditional audio–video relationships.

Nick Park interviewed the British public about ordinary topics, and repurposed the recordings for his clay animal animations. Unlike other kinds of ironic gesture, his technique continues to sustain and build on our engagement beyond the initial punch line. The juxtaposition of audio and video— somehow both incongruous and apt—isn’t a method for him to remain aloof, commenting on his subjects from a higher plane. Instead the gap resides within the work, structuring a playful whole that nevertheless takes all of the parts seriously. The first interview here is with a circus performer and the second is with staff at a science laboratory.

In a broad sense, graphic design always deals in gaps: every project requires some negotiation between type and image, intention and interpretation, and representation and reality. These videos are good examples of what I would call productive ironies: the layers of meaning they contain are separately intelligible, but the distance between them—their unawareness of each other—constitutes the voice you hear most clearly. So this is what I’m after in graphic design: not just a way of deploying evocative type and image, but a method where the gaps between elements— whether manufactured or discovered—come to the fore. After all, if we look at the nature of time, of typologies, or of irony, gaps seem to have “come with the place.” Design can make them an active player in the construction of meaning.

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JM10

We think of three-dimensional space as continuous. Here the construction of a stitched panorama is betrayed by duplicate people and incongruous shadows. Since the joins in the representation are artificial, perhaps there is an honesty in letting them show. Similarly, Thomas Demand’s photographs reassure us with their familiarity just before revealing themselves as paper sculptures. His images are calibrated to oscillate across the gap between real and fake. As photographs of sculptures, they stand at two removes from reality, but those removes serve to incorporate our perceptions into the work.

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JM06

For example, can the gaps bleed into the representation? Is the serial quality of live theater made more real by collapsing two iterations, a day apart, into one image? In this video by Mike Mills, dance becomes a series of held poses, cut together. Fluid movement is discarded for the sake of a different kind of rhythmic expression.

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JM04

We read sequences differently from compositions. Since the act of narration requires editing, the divisions between temporal moments define the rhythm of the representation. Our eyes and our minds are so well trained to fill in the gaps that we do so involuntarily.

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RW05

Godard’s contradictory impulses are representative of a postmodern critique of the authoritative voice. His ‘clear’ versus ‘vague’ approach attempts to open up interpretation while his relationship to appropriated image and language is central in his attempt to develop new modes of representation.

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RW03

A designer’s role is to create meaning out of this ambiguity.
Pop art resulted from the realization that all modes of representation were ideological constructs.

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MV06

diagram They compel us to question the relationship between representation and reality.

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YS12

The Ryugyong Hotel – Wallpaper Can the idea of representation changed through intervention? If a magazine like the Wallpaper, a product of the capitalist west, sold the Ryugyong(REE_YOU_GIONG) Hotel as a cool architectural destination. Would the meaning be construed by the audience?
In praise of chance Let’s reverse the role a bit, lets bestow the power of meaning upon the viewers. A game of participation and decision-making. A form of applied intervention using the inventions created by other people. A study of possible chaos, a “Lord of the Flies” experiment or much like giving unrestrained freedom to a 3 year old in a Toys R Us. These experiments seek to give viewers and readers independence in forming their opinion. To achieve these results, I plan to stage narratives by implementing new hierarchies through inventions, mechanical or artistic. These projects explore the use of deliberate interruption to increase the prospect of new forms of creation.

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YS06

Does the separation of the tree artificially from nature — presenting it on an immense white ground taped crudely and conspicuously into the landscape questions the concept of representation, reality, environment, art and perception?

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YC12

For example, Defamiliarizing banal objects in order to perceive things differently.

The sense of alienation that we feel while looking at Thomas Demand’s high-definition photograph of 3 dimensional paper models, in other words, the representation of the representation, encourages us not only question this particular photograph, but also suspect what we think to be true only because we see it.

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RB35

The first, called Space, illustrates how processes of concentration result in gaps between representation and reality.

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JB04

Where do the parts come from? That’s what I like to see. JODI.ORG is about revealing the hidden parts that lie beneath the smooth surface of the web. It’s an assembly language, a symbolic representation of parts, and an uncontrolled virus that forces us to recognize structure however complicated or technical. Perhaps what we are seeing is simply not legible without hearing? I’m looking for both the representation of structure in the invisible – as well as the materiality of the visible.

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