E

Very Nice. I love your poster series!

Re: Presentation
It may help to try to write captions for the main numbered sections (e.g., Pretend Architecture, Pretend History), for the purposes of guiding the audience and choosing appropriate imagery. I would love to
see the presentation more clearly articulate what ‘Pretend’ is to you and show its value as a tactic or method of representation.

I have added some commentary, mostly links or relevant content,
to your presentation and pasted it into this e-mail. All of my comments
are within dashed lines - - - - - -.

F

Eric Adolfsen Thesis Presentation : Draft 0.2

Reality or Make Pretend? In the world we all live in, it’s sometimes hard to draw that line in the sand between the two.

1.

Take Walt Disney’s World. Mickey Mouse and his friends. Imaginary right? Sure. If you ignore the history behind Mickey. But as some of you know, Mickey–like the lesser known Flip the frog and many others–is an evolution of the american minstrel act. Walt Disney was at the frontier of a brand new world but he still brought fragments of the world around him to develop his new brand.

Many companies do this everyday. Building a story around their product, creating an aura for something that is in reality lifeless. But mythologizing is done to live things too, like Jaques Cousteau in his red cap and yellow submarine. Or baseball players, who might look ordinary out of their costumes.

In fact a lot of re-presenting of the world takes place when we develop something for the kids. Maybe it’s a result of our desire to protect children from, while still preparing them for, the world. But we never return back to the basics entirely. Kid tools and books often connect utopia with reality. This can also be said of publications such as The Whole Earth Catalogue, or Willy Flekhouse-designed Twen Magazine.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Pretend Architecture

Archigram may be a good reference here as well.
Projects such as the Walking City may complement the
Whole Earth Catalogue. During your presentation,
you are building the value of ‘Pretend’ in the audience’s eyes.

Archigram (Walking City)
—-> http://www.archigram.net/projects_pages/walking_city.html

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Both were reinventing the world, creating everyday things that seem uncommon. But like their common counterparts, they were designed for everyday people–like us.

Well, Governments play this game too, imbuing our daily lives and transactions with the color of something familiar yet alien.

2.

In science fiction we often find worlds like our own but different.

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Pretend language

The Ewokese that the Ewoks speak in Return of the Jedi
is sampled ‘Earth languages’ such as Tagalog, Hindi,
Tibetan, and Swedish. Pretend (or alien) as an appropriation of ‘foreign.’
—> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewok (see Language)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Aliens look like humans or animals. It’s often like looking at a fun-house mirror (eg, Windsor McKay). In near-future science fiction (Blade Runner), we’re able to peer into a world that’s only slightly ahead of our time–a convention that allows for critical commentary about contemporary issues without seeming too political: there’s still a mirroring going on, but it’s dressed in a strange costume so as not call attention to itself.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Pretend Curse

It is interesting to note the Blade Runner Curse that is humorously mentioned
in reference to all of the companies whose logos are prominently featured
in the film — market leaders at the time of the film but the majority went bankrupt.
(Atari, Pan AM, Cuisinart, etc.). Pretend is real.

Pretend Airlines

The Pan Am Space Clipper (Orion III) from 2001: A Space Odyssey
What companies and brands follow us into pretend worlds? and why?

–> http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/PAN%20AM%20SPACE%20CLIPPER%20PAGE.htm

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In many contemporary Japanese video games, tv shows and films, a signifier (lets say, an Italian American plumber, to offer one example) is dislodged from its ‘original’ (or previous) context and placed in a world that recombines with other dislocated elements (say, turtles and mushrooms) to construct a new (super mario) world. Howl’s Moving Castle jumps across centuries and continents.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Pretend Hero

It is interesting to note that Mario’s origin is in Donkey Kong,
where Donkey Kong captures Mario’s girlfriend Pauline. Mario is
thus embedded in our collective consciousness as the
archetypal working-class hero.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And maybe Mario’s world is even more bizarre, but there’s something that we want to connect with. What about these characters do we identify with? Is it the way they represent the underdog, the working class hero, filtered through strange lenses and cultures. Mario arrived in the US from Japan (like the Super Sentai, aka Power Rangers) and became one of the worlds most iconic (and profitable) figures. We play their video game, or draw a piece of fan art, or even “cosplay” (kosupure in japanese, contraction of costume + play) a manga character. We pretend we are the character who, in way, is an abstraction of our selves.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Pretend World: Avatars and the Virtual Space (the Metaverse)

Second Life may be a good reference here. A virtual space
where people assume avatars that can buy and sell virtual
goods and services using real currency. Pretend is profitable.

—> http://secondlife.com/

Leo Burnett just opened a virtual agency in Second Life,
hoping to capitalize on having visibility to virtual clients
and build brands in a virtual environment. Pretend as the future.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

3.

Our ease in character/self-identification is hardly surprising when we look at the first books we read growing up. Cartoons and comics are by definition simple drawings that caricature at the same time as they help introduce young readers to the real world. Richard Scarry teaches us about cars by showing us imaginary ones driven by human-like animals. Chris Ware also redecorates the world, including its signage, in a recombination of the everyday and the nostalgic that is still surprising and new–a modern spin on Windsor McKay. Finding that new thing is very much the challenge, as when Mckay drew ‘imagination,’ where he equates new forms of pretending with the progress of mankind.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Neverending Story. Pretend as necessity for survival.
Evil is personified as the Nothing, an absence of imagination.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

4.

Some graphic designers have taken on this challenge by passing the briefs given to them through their own signature hand (eg, Tadanori Yokoo). Edward Fella has chewed up the painted signs he’s shot on his polaroid and spit them back out soaked in his signature saliva. With his typeface Babyfat, Milton Glaser runs gothic letters through an imaginary beveling machine rendering a new and unexpected form. And once that form was popular enough to appear in supermarket posters, he caricatured himself, running this poster for a Simon and Garfunkel concert through the Glaser machine.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Barbara Kruger (another applied/fine artist)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Perhaps it’s not strange then that these designers—all three of whom have work on display at the MoMA—are sometimes referred to as artists. They grew up alongside pop art, which elevated the applied arts while also supplying fine art to the masses.

5.

There are plenty of other artists who make pretend in their own esoteric ways (Marcel Dzama, Aya Takano, Rita Ackermann, Paper Rad, Nara Yoshitomo, Matthew Barney). But if you’re familiar with these artists, you’ll agree that there’s a lot of abstracted reality echoing in their work.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Federico Fellini may be a good reference (8 1/2). Pretend as autobiography.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

There’s also a way in which, like a lot of the work I’ve been pointing to, images of childhood bear shadows of more sinister realities. Yes, making pretend is about our “make beliefs,” but it’s also about our “beliefs”–our awareness of what is real and, often, terrifying.

6.

I’d like to make one caveat about art and its relation to the real before wrapping up tonight’s talk. Fake Louis Vuitton handbags and wallets, sold on the street: Do they have the currency of the the real? It’s a test in a way for these wallets, just as it is for art I’ve shown you tonight. The relationship between the pretend and its reflection. But that’s not all.

You see, I want to make clear that with the exception of this wallet, I have been sidestepping a discussion about forgery, fakeness, or trickery. I don’t want to have a conversation about whether this baboon centaur exists (We all know it doesn’t) or whether the men of Apollo 11 in fact walked on the moon.

With Make Pretend there’s a third element. It’s the hand, the artist, the inventor, the performer, the provocateur. It’s the maker of pretend. That person is an active participant, a critical voice in the back and forth of real and fiction.

JS Boggs draws a detailed cartoon of a dollar bill and then uses that bill to purchase something. Tom Sachs remakes a big mac extra value meal but gives it Prada skin. When these two artists borrow elements from the real world, we are able to track what value is lost, what remains, and what is added. Pierre Huygue, Momus, or Paul McCarthy also borrow characters from the world (a Manga character named Anna Lee or Walt Disney’s Pinocchio) and recombine them with other unexpected elements also abstracted from reality (copyright laws or violence, albeit with ketchup instead of blood).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Life Is Beautiful (1997) with Roberto Benigi.
A father shields his son from the horrors of the concentration camp,
using ‘Pretend’ as his tactic.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Through their acts of abstraction and recombining they make something that helps us challenge systems and ideas in the real world. The artist stands on the line between the borrowed element and the artwork. It is a triangular relationship, with value passed between each of them. And moreover every time that act takes place, there is a metaphorical zooming back in space, echoing and re-imagining the act that came before.

Epilogue

I once met an American Indian in Grants, New Mexico. His name, which I’ve never forgotten him pronouncing (dool-ZAA-AAH), means Walk on Edge. They’re words to live by, he told me. And the more I hear that expression come up, the more I understand its message. On the frontiers of art and experience, you must walk the line between fantasy and reality, terror and delight, youth and adulthood, designer and artist, what’s been before you and what’s yet to pass. And you call it whatever you want. I like to call it Make Pretend.

Eric Adolfsen Thesis Presentation : Draft 0.2

Reality or Make Pretend? In the world we all live in, it’s sometimes hard to draw that line in the sand between the two.

1.

Take Walt Disney’s World. Mickey Mouse and his friends. Imaginary right? Sure. If you ignore the history behind Mickey. But as some of you know, Mickey–like the lesser known Flip the frog and many others–is an evolution of the american minstrel act. Walt Disney was at the frontier of a brand new world but he still brought fragments of the world around him to develop his new brand.

Many companies do this everyday. Building a story around their product, creating an aura for something that is in reality lifeless. But mythologizing is done to live things too, like Jaques Cousteau in his red cap and yellow submarine. Or baseball players, who might look ordinary out of their costumes.

In fact a lot of re-presenting of the world takes place when we develop something for the kids. Maybe it’s a result of our desire to protect children from, while still preparing them for, the world. But we never return back to the basics entirely. Kid tools and books often connect utopia with reality. This can also be said of publications such as The Whole Earth Catalogue, or Willy Flekhouse-designed Twen Magazine. Both were reinventing the world, creating everyday things that seem uncommon. But like their common counterparts, they were designed for everyday people–like us.

Well, Governments play this game too, imbuing our daily lives and transactions with the color of something familiar yet alien.

2.

In science fiction we often find worlds like our own but different. Aliens look like humans or animals. It’s often like looking at a fun-house mirror (eg, Windsor McKay). In near-future science fiction (Blade Runner), we’re able to peer into a world that’s only slightly ahead of our time–a convention that allows for critical commentary about contemporary issues without seeming too political: there’s still a mirroring going on, but it’s dressed in a strange costume so as not call attention to itself.

In many contemporary Japanese video games, tv shows and films, a signifier (lets say, an Italian American plumber, to offer one example) is dislodged from its ‘original’ (or previous) context and placed in a world that recombines with other dislocated elements (say, turtles and mushrooms) to construct a new (super mario) world. Howl’s Moving Castle jumps across centuries and continents. And maybe Mario’s world is even more bizarre, but there’s something that we want to connect with. What about these characters do we identify with? Is it the way they represent the underdog, the working class hero, filtered through strange lenses and cultures. Mario arrived in the US from Japan (like the Super Sentai, aka Power Rangers) and became one of the worlds most iconic (and profitable) figures. We play their video game, or draw a piece of fan art, or even “cosplay” (kosupure in japanese, contraction of costume + play) a manga character. We pretend we are the character who, in way, is an abstraction of our selves.

3.

Our ease in character/self-identification is hardly surprising when we look at the first books we read growing up. Cartoons and comics are by definition simple drawings that caricature at the same time as they help introduce young readers to the real world. Richard Scarry teaches us about cars by showing us imaginary ones driven by human-like animals. Chris Ware also redecorates the world, including its signage, in a recombination of the everyday and the nostalgic that is still surprising and new–a modern spin on Windsor McKay. Finding that new thing is very much the challenge, as when Mckay drew ‘imagination,’ where he equates new forms of pretending with the progress of mankind.

4.

Some graphic designers have taken on this challenge by passing the briefs given to them through their own signature hand (eg, Tadanori Yokoo).  Edward Fella has chewed up the painted signs he’s shot on his polaroid and spit them back out soaked in his signature saliva. With his typeface Babyfat, Milton Glaser runs gothic letters through an imaginary beveling machine rendering a new and unexpected form. And once that form was popular enough to appear in supermarket posters, he caricatured himself, running this poster for a Simon and Garfunkel concert through the Glaser machine.

Perhaps it’s not strange then that these designers—all three of whom have work on display at the MoMA—are sometimes referred to as artists. They grew up alongside pop art, which elevated the applied arts while also supplying fine art to the masses.

5.

There are plenty of other artists who make pretend in their own esoteric ways (Marcel Dzama, Aya Takano, Rita Ackermann, Paper Rad, Nara Yoshitomo, Matthew Barney). But if you’re familiar with these artists, you’ll agree that there’s a lot of abstracted reality echoing in their work. There’s also a way in which, like a lot of the work I’ve been pointing to, images of childhood bear shadows of more sinister realities. Yes, making pretend is about our “make beliefs,” but it’s also about our “beliefs”–our awareness of what is real and, often, terrifying.

6.

I’d like to make one caveat about art and its relation to the real before wrapping up tonight’s talk. Fake Louis Vuitton handbags and wallets, sold on the street: Do they have the currency of the the real? It’s a test in a way for these wallets, just as it is for art I’ve shown you tonight. The relationship between the pretend and its reflection. But that’s not all.

You see, I want to make clear that with the exception of this wallet, I have been sidestepping a discussion about forgery, fakeness, or trickery. I don’t want to have a conversation about whether this baboon centaur exists (We all know it doesn’t) or whether the men of Apollo 11 in fact walked on the moon.

With Make Pretend there’s a third element. It’s the hand, the artist, the inventor, the performer, the provocateur. It’s the maker of pretend. That person is an active participant, a critical voice in the back and forth of real and fiction.

JS Boggs draws a detailed cartoon of a dollar bill and then uses that bill to purchase something. Tom Sachs remakes a big mac extra value meal but gives it Prada skin. When these two artists borrow elements from the real world, we are able to track what value is lost, what remains, and what is added. Pierre Huygue, Momus, or Paul McCarthy also borrow characters from the world (a Manga character named Anna Lee or Walt Disney’s Pinocchio) and recombine them with other unexpected elements also abstracted from reality (copyright laws or violence, albeit with ketchup instead of blood).

Through their acts of abstraction and recombining they make something that helps us challenge systems and ideas in the real world. The artist stands on the line between the borrowed element and the artwork. It is a triangular relationship, with value passed between each of them. And moreover every time that act takes place, there is a metaphorical zooming back in space, echoing and re-imagining the act that came before.

Epilogue

I once met an American Indian in Grants, New Mexico. His name, which I’ve never forgotten him pronouncing (dool-ZAA-AAH), means Walk on Edge. They’re words to live by, he told me. And the more I hear that expression come up, the more I understand its message. On the frontiers of art and experience, you must walk the line between fantasy and reality, terror and delight, youth and adulthood, designer and artist, what’s been before you and what’s yet to pass. And you call it whatever you want. I like to call it Make Pretend.

[transcribed from handwritten notes:]

LV wrapping as a brand. Muakami stands in front but with the background behind still clear and strong.

Branding as a form of pretending; style manuals, actual branding, how it creates mythologies; apple and macdonalds [sic] (Carter)

How do you avoid nostalgia? where are the new forms (Sebastian)

Pretending vs. Lying

nostalgia and naievete can be used critically vs too cute and becoming kitsch;
walking the line (MR)

Boggs - drawing of currency, not just pretend but exchange produced by it
how do you inest the pretend thing with the power of the real
clearly pretend but not invested in the real
fake LV has all the currency of the the real
look beyond itself object into its exchange value (MR)

museum of jurassic technology - uncertainty IS the product
exchage value: aspect of maker producing something that references real
but is a unique thing in the world, so there is a triangle of
PRADA - TOM SACHS - ARTWORK
(MR)

Stories of my son are populated by different characters from different stories, recombined; creating mythologies out of fragments of other mythologies (MR)

Paul McCarthy: Santa’s elves riding blood / violence of film and TV;
thing itself wavers in space …its two space materials (?) (MR)

When we borrow we see how much they bring with them vs. what they lose
1st and 2nd dislocations - return and lose aspects of their original mythologies
in that way, is the pastiche elemet - dislodging them from sources and recombining them (MR)

“we want to look coool” brands,
it becomes a game of convolutions–I’m gonna do the opposite of what you think,
then I’m gonna do the opposite….
Isn’t it weird that Eric is doing the opposite of expectations, you’re a player in terms of expectations, playing with childlike and naive, i’m open to world vs. criticality (?) (MR)

Critical, Otherwise its too saccharine. (MR)

Sitcoms build back story; fit together back story (Carter)

The book you made really engages because it tapped into several systems at the same time (Sebastian)

combining characters japanese idea as the character

huige + philip - bought japanese character
also at carpenter center, marionettes that debate modernism architecture etc [?]
(MR)

One gesture that creates alternate realities
sound design class example (Julie)