blogos

It’s about the process, not the result… the journey, not the destination…

… even though a satisfying outcome would still be ideal.

Ithaca

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon — do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,

as many sensual perfumes as you can; visit many Egyptian cities, to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.

Without her you would have never set out on the road.

She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.

Wise as you have become, with so much experience,

you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)

chronologically inaccurate

Was trying to squeeze this in with some earlier posts but couldn’t successfully pull it off, so I’m just placing it here – suspended. It hypothetically fits everywhere, yet cannot practically be placed anywhere.

Visual triggers —>  bound to cultural myths, historical baggage, national identity, politics etc  < —

In researching my disaster, I inevitably came across images of what I now consider cliched, overused, misappropriated and, frankly,  bordering on kitschy. I am referring to images of classical Greek structures such as the Parthenon, whose rendering into a mass produced image (among other commodity forms) has now become similar to a tacky souvenir that ignorant tourists eagerly purchase in the midst of some kind of spiritual cultural consumption. Those images, to me, no longer bear any “real” connection to the past… they are merely attractors to the easily seduced and the easily misled.

I was therefore cautious in using the meander because its use can often become tacky. I did not want my logo to turn into a condensed equivalent of this tacky Greek house:

In any case, I feel as though an obligatory analysis (ala Macnab) is in order, so as to justify the image/shape I chose to extract from the montage/collage/ pastiche of images that has been created in my mind with the help of the Google image search engine.

Instead of choosing the most typical shapes characteristic of the three prevalent architectural styles in Ancient Greece (Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian order), I chose to focus on the meander-like shape that is perhaps a fusion of principles extracted from all of the aforementioned orders and -at the same time- a creative departure from all these styles and their functionality. The meander-like shape emerges from some recurrent shape/image-concepts in this blog, such as the labyrinth and the hypertext metaphors.

What is interesting about the meander is that it has made the leap from architecture (originally: Greek and Roman, e.g. used in temples) to art – from function and form, to aesthetics and conceptual design. Nowadays, the Key design is not only used in modern Greek design (sometimes to a fault, as in, for example, Greek restaurants in America), but also in products of other cultures (e.g. Mexican buildings).

Commonly, the meander symbolizes unity and infinity, or infinite potential.

Ironically (or, fittingly), a random snapshot of a meander reminded me of the swastika symbol. Not the spiritual and religious usage of the swastika, but the stigmatized version that is loaded with fascist overtones.

Of course, the meander-turned-swastika could be related to many aspects of the disaster, such as in relation  to concepts of anarchy, education, democracy, freedom, cultural myths, and progress.

In terms of my logo design, I wanted to transform and appropriate the meandering shape so as to touch on its classical undertones, but also transcend its overbearing significance.  However, with this transformation, some unexpected associations emerged that were unintended and beyond my control (see my aforementioned swastika symbolism).

In Decoding Design, Maggie Macnab cites the example of the swastika to illustrate how “subtle alterations [in design] can be used to influence belief and reconstitute the common meaning of a symbol.” She then goes on to mention how the positive associations of the swastika became overwhelmed by the propagandist appropriation of the symbol by the Third Reich. Despite Macnab’s assertion that an appropriated symbol can overcome its original meaning once it becomes redesigned and recontextualized (and, inevitably, de/repoliticized), I do not think the swastika can ever fully move beyond the negative signification it gained post 1920s.  These associations will continue to overwhelm the swastika symbol – at least for the Western imagination -  and no amount of amount of de/reconstruction and manipulation can help it surpass the baggage it is automatically associated with.

I am aware of this unspoken stipulation, and using it productively to stimulate my logo’s evolutionary progress and the branding of my disaster.

I-mage

Inauthentic Hybridity – is that all we can hope for?

“In a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum.”

– Marjorie Perloff, Radical Artifice

And with this inspiring remark in mind, I try to motivate myself to carry on designing…

Warm Up

NOTES: Fire as:

• recombinant force (in color theory, of primary colors red and yellow) – number 3
• an alchemical emblem because in its destructiveness, it also encapsulates the potential for re-generation and the resolution of conflict [see post about liquid/ Greek fire]
• mythical connotations: Prometheus as both the bearer and thief of fire
• The shape of fire as a triangle? the triad – religious connotations [Holy Trinity, conservatism, traditional & backward values and belief system].
• Triangle as a “metaphor for transforming destiny into choice, or repression into freedom” (Macnab, 95). This aspect of the fire could be compared with the energy movement of anarchy and/ or younger generations (at least the specific kind covered in this blog).
• But also: the fire’s energy movement as sprawling out of control, also manifest in the branching out of the distorted hexagonal heptagonal polygonal (?) shape of the crack in the wall.

Take One:

Integrating smaller concepts to a larger whole.

Take Two:

Adding value by cutting out distraction (e.g. easier to remember and reproduce)

Using paradox to discover unexpected connections –> Macnab asserts that the paradox allows for the possibility of resolution (in this case, also visually) between opposites.

Take Three:

Back to Basics

In Decoding Design, Maggie Macnab’s experience as a practicing graphic designer has provided me with some tips on how to get the logo-designing process started. Putting aside my tendency to overanalyze signs and overly interprete symbols, I simply let myself photoshop without any perfectionist expectations. Here are some of Macnab’s tips of  easing into the process and forming a relationship with the brand identity. Taking cues from Macnab, this is what I instruct myself to do, in no particular order:

• Start simple. Break down a concept into basic components. The starting process does not need to be visual at first: it can consist of abstract ideas and proposals.
• Ask yourself: what is the core of the disaster’s identity? In this case, what do you think are the [human] values that lie at the heart of the disaster? Visualize them by breaking them down into signs.
• What is the archetypal image(s) of the disaster-as-brand?
• What is an interesting way to draw these images? [Marketing considerations aside, I still think that an aesthetically pleasing design would be ideal]
• What is the most graphically interesting way to render this shape, so it will reproduce well? [Of course, my logo will probably never need to be reproduced into other media, but it would be useful to have remediation and adaptation in mind at a later stage]

These considerations seem straight-forward enough. But applying them was much more difficult than I had imagined. I basically created the opposite of what I had envisioned…

From graphic:

To something that is closer to a logo but not yet a logo:

Flower Thrower

Envisioning the image as  “a complex configuration of visual, verbal, and aural signs….it is manifest not only in films but in all kinds of media texts” (Richard Dyer).  To me, the hardest element to weave into a logo is the aural aspect.

“The time has come to bring back more symbolic marks whenever possible and appropriate because we’ve been over-saturated with abstractions… the best communication is something recognizable that people can relate to”

--Steff Geissbuhler

TRIGGER: Finding inspiration in nature, man-made constructs, and art as fusion of the man-made, the natural, and the in-between (the digital?)

Without consideration, without pity, without shame
they have built great and high walls around me.

And now I sit here and despair.
I think of nothing else: this fate gnaws at my mind;

for I had many things to do outside.
Ah why did I not pay attention when they were building the walls.

But I never heard any noise or sound of builders.
Imperceptibly they shut me from the outside world.

“Walls” – Constantine P. Cavafy (1896)

Bansky decorations on the Palestinian side of the controversial West Bank barrier in Israel (9 in total)

The Affect as Part of the Experience Economy

How does the affect find its way through the logic of the general economy? One example of the affect being used as a “brand” or a marketing tool is the emphasis on the consumer’s product experience. Experience commodified; experience as capital.

Product researchers such as industrial designers associate product experience with affective experience, and often use these terms synonymously.

Cultural, social, and personal experiences interfere with, affect, stimulate and often guide a consumer’s product experience. Of course, this depends on the kind of product as well.

In reading marketing research surveys and analyses, I noticed that the affect has become an emblem of consumption. The affect is now used for branding consumer experiences, and thus assumes a material form – in more ways than one.

No, this is not enough, yet too much. Let’s just call it affect for now.

Affect

“[M]y body is not only an object among all objects, . . .but an object which is sensitive to all the rest, which reverberates to all sounds, vibrates to all colours, and provides words with their primordial significance through the way in which it receives them.” – Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception

Affectivity = the potential for experience ?

” … affectivity names the capacity for the body to be radically creative, that is, to be the agent of a framing of digital information that generates images independently of all preexistent technical frames.” – Mark B. N. Hansen, New Philosophy for New Media

Hansen’s argument has been contested, especially in the ways in which he implicitly privileges vision over all other senses, and in the inferred attributes of the [largely asexual, non-gendered] body he envisions. Nevertheless,  Hansen’s approach is  useful because it points out that the requirements for perceiving new media (not just new media art) are new. Affection/ affectivity, in this respect, is not quite synonymous to the Deleuzian understanding of affect as “pure quality”, and does not quite designate a “particular modality of perception”.

Vivian Sobchack’s essay, “What my Fingers Knew: the Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh”, calls for the affect in cinema. However, her approach is limiting in the sense that she mostly focuses on embodied experience and -like Lev Manovich- on the cinema’s mimetic potential. Nevertheless, Sobchack’s essay is yet another example of the intellectual inquiry that the [affect/ the visceral/ whatever you want to call it] stimulates… and another example of the “fact” that the affect escapes interpretation precisely due to its very “essence”. [words are inadequate]

Pie chart: We can’t help but rationalize the affect, albeit in a cognitive way