/ / / / / /Herding
Cats
Graphic Design is curation– we co-ordinate and arrange that which is not our own. Like the engineer, we author nothing; we are simply ‘technicians and caretakers’ of one another’s work. To paraphrase Michel de Certeau, there is no such thing as a blank page– the territory is always given, we simply re-organise it.
Take this familiar script. You are trying to explain to your Gran exactly what it is you do. You pick up a magazine by way of example and the conversation goes something like this.
‘Did you take that photography?’– ‘Uh, no’.
‘Did you write that copy?’– ‘Uh, no’
‘Did you make that font? – ‘Uh, no’
‘Did you draw that picture?’– ‘Uh, no’.
‘Did you make that paper?’– ‘Uh, no’
‘Did you print it?’ – ‘Uh, no’
‘Then exactly, what is it that you do?’
‘I organise, I arrange, I manage— I’m a “visual engineer”,
Gran. I’m a bureaucrat!’
This is the world of ‘postproduction’ and it is populated by ‘semionauts’ and bricoleurs. The ‘cultural landscape marked by the twin figures of the DJ and the programmer’ (Bourriaud). Ubiquitous computation has incarnated post-modern thought and digital sensibility reconfigured the soul forever. The current ‘prosumer’ buzz around ‘2pointO’ is only the latest deployment of liquid thought. The whole of the last century was peppered with recombinatory logic, be it Duchamp’s radical accenting of context with the urinal, Barthes’ murderous exultation of the reader, Derrida’s zombie attack on meaning. All viewed the world in process– cohesive and not static.
It is possible the West is just catching up? ‘The Art of War’ is over 2000 years old, and yet reading this is like reading ‘Mille plateau’. Take the notion of ‘Shih’, a relational aesthetic that ‘curates’ power. The Denma translation describes it as: ‘the small alterations you can make to the environment so that it works suddenly in your favour’. Shih is a classic example of intervention – of treading lightly, and for a moment, making the space your own; only to give it up when conditions change.
This piece is about fostering a more ‘cybernetic’ approach to graphic design. What John Thackara calls: ‘designing as steering more than designing as shaping’. Such ideas are not new to the industry; there already exists a fair amount of liquid thought and practice. However they seem to have developed via osmosis and intuition. As yet, no official discourse has fully developed.
Anyhow, if you are not happy with the prevailing weather conditions, after a hard day of ‘deterritorializing’ there is always the possibility of a nostalgic retreat into the oedipal arms of a Brockmann, a Crouwel or a Gerstner– bathe in the soft ideology of objective typography and unambiguous communication!
You, a bureaucrat? Is this the new humility, downgrading the creative to civic functionalism? Or are you doing a sacrilising upgrade on the lowest common denominator?
It's all very cheeky. The DJ as doorman to the sacred ... great debate, which I have been having for some years. The continuum (from my jaded muso POV) is this DJ: Presses 1 button every 3m30sec— Musician: realtime feedback with the sounds being produced by the whole being. Is holding half a headphoneset between ear and shoulder a musical performance?
Surely the cultural landscape you describe is still one amonst many ... and those who do not relate to curating as the new definition of creativity should not merely be seen to be retreating nostalgics?
Nostaligia is after all "home-sickness" and this thrashing through the territory of the postmodern is all about incarnation, an attempt to find home and belonging.
In a recombinatory world, what role is there for those wanting to just play pianoforte, paint with oils or author an original font?
Posted by: nic | 2007.07.05 at 10:43 PM
Nic, great questions, keep them coming– so in response:
Both— increasingly I’m fed up with old notions of authorship and originality. I’m well in favor of more ‘dialogic’ responses to creativity. So it’s more about co-creation and dialogue, art is not something you have ‘done to you’; it’s something you participate in and construct together– author AND reader, designer AND user.
I understand what you mean by ‘Doorman to the sacred’, but are you not exchanging the priest for a DJ? You’ve still got a gatekeeper– a specialist who resides over proceedings.
Also, where do you stand in terms of the ‘sacred’? It’s a ‘binary’ I less and less understand– Often the most ‘profane’ statements are the most spiritual, just and life enhancing, ‘blasphemy is not apostasy’.
I totally agree about the wide ‘cultural landscape’ or event horizon– meshworks co-exist with hierarchies and it’s not about one or the other. I was being cheeky.
Like you, I’m congenitally homesick in an ‘uncanny’ cosmos. I equally suspect that ‘becoming’ grants no home or rest and that is our condition, that is our lot.
Posted by: nic | 2007.07.06 at 10:14 PM
Nic: I concur regarding the Sacred Binary. I'm on an unlearning/learning trajectory of Incarnation, and for me the Panentheistic POV is making a lot of sense.
There is so much stuff appearing that turns out to be the same rhizome ... its uncanny, almost ecstatically so at the moment for me. Its a huge challange to celebrate this, especially here in South Africa.
Congential homesickness, I feel this disease keenly. I think ALL of us are deeply ill, but many or most choose to medicate themselves, an-aethetise, instead of aethetising into and through the pain, and into truth.
Posted by: nic paton | 2007.07.09 at 10:46 AM