‘We live within a spectacle of empty clothes and unworn masks’
– John Berger
Reflections on
Research & Theory
A question of ‘research’ – My understanding of research is that it is a question of wonder. And in that question of wondering you want to find answers even if the question isn’t asked. As Confucius said, ‘When you go outside, you go inside’.
Research can then be viewed as an odd and unlikely input into formulating or solidifying an idea. If your reference points (research/ cultural) are different from others, then your ideas are going to be different. But then the question arises, is research merely an illusion that then creates a framework to create a set of instructions or notations, which one could say is the basis of what we deal in, graphic identity (Ref. D&AD interview – Jetset Experimental, 2013).
And then the question becomes, do we end up fetishizing the idea of research, where the research becomes more important than the design, a common problem in Ui/Ux design whereby methods and the conclusions as confounding factors are not addressed in usability testing because many usability tests are not designed as experiments. After all, these “tests” are set out to try and measure too many things at once and fail to take into account the tendency of our mind for inner sabotage that is called fundamental attribution error (Ref. The Correspondence Bias – Daniel T. Gilbert).
So then does an overcomplicating of the research path then create an all-encompassing and complex beast that ultimately loses its power and instead creates products, services, and processes that are so complicated that they are no longer viable or workable as design solutions. Do we then need a permanent process of simplification and focusing on essence, eg, how a user will engage with the final design or product rather than focusing on the research process itself? Is this a step back to the idea of establishing curiosity as the primary driver of research or as Martin Hoskins puts it, “knowledge gained through the act of reflectivity’.
This is perhaps why I am rooted in a qualitative approach eschewing the concern of measurement and numbers of quantitative approaches in my own practice. The issue I have with quantitative research and the assumption of fixed and measurable reality is that it fails to take into account a couple of key questions that John D. Caputo writes about in Hermeneutics (Facts and information in the Age of information).
1 . Is anything ever not an interpretation?
2. Is there such a thing as the pure fact that is interpretation-free?
3. If not, how are we supposed to know what to thank and to do?
Big questions that are rooted in the postmodern condition. But I would also question the qualitative approach giving recent advances in the psychobiotic revolution and our understanding of how the body and cognitive mind are now interlinked. So back to the question of how do we now start to redraw our inner maps and apply this understanding to future models of research methodologies.
Should a good research question now not only be relevant but also ask, what is your body telling you?
If the body is not available (as is the case when researching the past, etc), how do we then being to understand the reasons for decision making in the past?
If a good research question is to be substantial and original and yet potentially rely on existing literature how do we ultimately trust that literature without knowing the context of the interplay of the body and mind that led to that writing or documentation even if we understand an idea or event to be recorded as ‘fact’. (see fundamental attribution error).
Further Thought 1:
We understand that primary sources provide first-hand or direct evidence. As primary resources we generally rely on the input of the ‘human’, this leads me to ask the question of the problem of traumatic memory and how it impacts how we record and document the events or conditions been researched? (the same good be said of the normal memory and its inherent fickleness and our understanding that autobiographical memories are not precise reflections of reality: they are stories we tell to convey our own take of an experience. So what happens when for example, we research the horrors of war (eg WW2) and our research is influenced by the traumatic brain that can only relate bleached memories (De Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score). How are we to know that the interpretative accounts of war captured are true memories? And within the content of interpretivism and the importance of self-reflexivity and the idea that the research reflects the researcher's identity and the research subject, how can we really trust the result if both are impacted by trauma? Of course, we can confirm that the actual horrors existed by researching the footprints of physical evidence that help us fill in the gaps, eg contextual analysis. but it still raises an interesting question which then found room in my own research path.
Further Thought 2:
I found Tom Finn’s discussion on Sleeping Beauties interesting especially the note on how Mathia Clottu creates a narrative around each book that is descriptive and talks about its physical qualities and how it allows the self to then have a voice in what you see. It raises an interesting point that relates back to the above. In the future are we not only going to have to consider current methodologies that allow us to interject the ‘I’ as a voice but also create new methodologies around research and output that consider the psychobiotic revolution and emotional brain and how they could create ‘a false negative’ in research that perhaps doesn’t have physical evidence to hand (for example, an editor creating narrative without talking to the original authors) which leads to solidify a rooted narrative.
Further Thought 3:
As I’m currently reading a Glossary of Undisplined Design – Spector Books I thought I’d include the following idea of the No Delete policy that could accompany a project from an early research phase through the deciding marking process and only the final steps of a project.
1. Everything should be documented.
2. Nothing should be deleted.
3. Individual voices should blur into one.
4. Spontaneous thoughts should be included in the text.
Research
During the previous week’s work on seeing, I came across a Julian Opie artwork that has always held resonance for me each time I pass by it. Unbeknownst to myself the reason it held a resonance became apparent during the research phase of its inception and placement outside the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin and provided a valuable insight into research methods but also how traumatic memory can impact research.
I identified a number of questions I wanted to answer in relation to the piece.
Whats was the commission details of this piece of work?
How did this digital artwork come to be positioned outside the gallery known its previous history in relation to it being part of the landscape of the main thoroughfare of Dublin on O’Connell Street?
Why was LED chosen as a material by the artist for this particular piece of work – History of the LED?
What is the significance of the name Suzanne and its relationship to his earlier work ‘Suzanne Walking in a Leather Skirt’.
How does a digital artifact change the composition of a streetscape?
How could the material selection, in the case LED influence a final design output?
Julian Opie is an artist who produces paintings and sculptures, elemental in appearance that reduces the world to simple, clear lines and yet still remains amongst the most complicated and sophisticated in contemporary art practice. He is widely recognised as one of the most pre-eminent artists working within the public realm today. He blurs the relationship between artist and non-artist within our culture and society.
What Opies Work reveals to us is that that culture is malleable, exciting, free, and all around us. (Ref: https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/39678/julian-opie/). His work had previously come to the attention of the Irish Public when in 2005 he was commissioned to create the screens for the art of the stage sets for Dublin based rock band U2, and their Vertigo world tour of 2005, where he showed another LED screen displaying an aimless walking man figure.
The artwork we see here was originally commissioned as part of the centenary celebrations of the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin by curator Barabar Dawson. The original installation consisted of 5 pieces entitled Julian Opie Walking on O’Connell Street with four of the five animated LED screens placed on the central median of O’Connell Street and one outside the gallery on Parnell Square, located to the North of O'Connell Street. The O’ Connell Street installation featured four life-size “walking” figures (Sara, Jack, Julian, and Suzanne) and also a life-size dancing figure (Sara) mounted on durable plinths and is was considered one of the most ambitious public art projects to be installed on the Irish nation’s iconic main street.
Once the exhibit was over, a single figure remained aloft on her stone plinth, Julian Opie’s Suzanne Walking in a Leather Skirt. The piece is neither heroic nor static, ignoring the past history of the surrounding areas and its role in the War of Independence and instead references the movement of the ordinary citizen; a contemporary woman elevated to commemorative status, walking in the city.
The LED (Light Emitting Diode) serves as a key material selection in many of Opie’s most high-profile artworks. It allows the artist to convey movement in his figures through a simple grid of alternating lights and creates an almost hypnotic endless motion which references attempts by artists such as Edward Muybridge and Marcel Duchamp to capture movement on a flat surface. The grid-like formation of LED displays perfectly complements Opie’s simplified style of drawing figures, allowing his bubble-headed men and women to stride purposefully towards an unknown future (Ref: https://www.myartbroker.com/artist/julian-opie/led-to-3d-julian-opies-style-and-techniques/).
Suzanne Walking in a Leather Skirt portrays one of Opie’s most commonly featured muses, Suzanne. The original artwork from 2005 made use of lenticular print techniques to give the illusion of depth and movement, bringing Suzanne to life as the viewer walks around the work, a clear reference to Duchamp’s “Nude Descending Staircase No. 2”.
Further Thought 1:
On researching the Julian Opie piece, an interesting point came up around the idea that reflection of further thought and a belief that primary sources can provide first-hand or direct evidence can fail to materialise and that the memory of an event can be lost over a period of time. Having identified the Julian Opie piece as an artifact wished to explore more around due to its prominence within the city landscape and talking to the staff of the Hugh Lane Gallery it…
A) occurred to me that my memory of the orientation of Suzanne Walking was wrong, that in fact Suzanne always walked towards the South rather than the North.
B) Having talked to the staff and the curator specifically he reminded me that I had actually been part of the original creative team that had worked on the installation and supergraphics in the gallery of the Julain Opie piece 13 years ago.
The idea that I could not remember this event whilst shocking, was not unexpected and on further research, through previous emails from that period, I found documentary evidence that I had indeed worked on the installation.
This revelation reaffired my idea that is aligned with De Kooks belief that trauma interrupts the memory process, an idea that is starting to take root in my approach to the MA.
Research
Having explored and identified the Julian Opie piece, I then became interested in his highly graphic yet reduced approach to both his studio and environmental pieces and the layering influence of Duchamp’s work on his output. His further work utilising LED that allowed his studio-based works to come to vivid life as electric boards to life was interesting as it took what at the time was a new medium and translated into beautiful twinkling constellations that brought life to the concrete environments they touched.
Giving that this weeks output was an editorial piece to highlight the 300 words already laid out and that Suzzan Walking was a digital piece I decided to explore the idea of how this could be translated into the digital realm, primarily with a focus on how it could be visualized as a digital art piece of 300 dots representing both the LED dot matrix of Julian Opie’s artwork and the 300 words output.
Working into the piece I realised that the 300 dots would not accommodate a dot-matrix approach, and the building out of the font resulted in a font that felt too modular and didn’t suggest “artist’ or ‘culture’ in the way that I would wish to communicate to a client and it failed a visualisation pass once translated onto paper. What it did highlight though was that the ‘O’ from Opie gave rise to the opportunity to interpret this as a DOT that would subtly enforce the LED approach with Opie’s work. I then explored how this DOT or circle could then be used to build out a graphic identity by employing its as device to represent the 5 original pieces in the Opie exhibition. This graphic identity would then be used as the visual identity for my final approach, the digitisation of the piece in an online archive.
The archive was borne out of the idea that that the work only exists as a single piece within the city now and that the original 4 of the original 5 pieces are no longer part of the original exhibition. The archive would serve as a legacy (Ref. Order and Reorder - Archives as Effervescent Bodies – see Clare Sextons note on the Tate Archives) for both museum and my own memory of working on the installation of the original pieces.
Some of the other routes that looked to encompass Julain Opie’’s techniques such as layering and offsetting colour (RGB) DOTS failed to find their way into the final execution due to the fact that I wanted the archive to feel more contemporary and not employ visual and graphic devices of the past.
Exploring Colour Interaction (RGB)
300 Dots
Signifier Explorations
Final Outcome
Final Lock-up
Final Lock-up
Landing Page – Archive
Interactive page (Animated)
Inner Page (300 words)
Reflection
Looking at last week’s and this week’s output I’m surprised or perhaps not surprised at the commercial consideration of the output of the work. It feels like I’m locked into a way of producing an outcome to feels fully formed and could be delivered to a client tomorrow instead of a piece that allows for creative exploration. Balanced against this though is that I am successfully starting to articulate, visualise and identify the route I will take as I move through my MA. I feel that the mind-gut connection (psychobiotic revolution) and my willingness to explore how the emotional connection between the two can influence the design decision is starting to take route in my critical approach. What I now need to explore as I move through the MA is how to interpret these writings into a more visual approach that isn’t routed in the commercial.
With more time I would have liked to explore developing out a customised mark for Juilan Opie, one that perhaps interplayed more with the LED idea though in the been dI was happy with the pairings of PPNeuBit and Lausanne Regular.
I’ve also found it difficult at times to dive into Padlet and find the time to share and comment on both my own work and others as I’m playing catch-up on the course currently. As I navigate my way through the MA I’m going to have to find the time to structure myself in a more organised way.
References:
(Ref. D&AD interview – Jetset Experimental, 2013)
(Ref. The Correspondence Bias – Daniel T. Gilbert)
(Ref. John D. Caputo – Hermeneutics (Facts and information in the Age of information)
(Ref. Glossary of Undisplined Design – Spector Books)
(Ref: https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/39678/julian-opie/)
(Ref: https://www.myartbroker.com/artist/julian-opie/led-to-3d-julian-opies-style-and-techniques/)
(Ref. Order and Reorder - Archives as Effervescent Bodies – see Clare Sextons note on the Tate Archives)