look at the work of maurizio cattelan.

No as a resouce of doing this, but as a way to avoid doing it, and, instead, doing it a smarter way.

In “The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign)” Bruce Nauman “…proclaims a private thought to a general public.” In doing so, he leaves the interpretation up to the viewer. It can be taken seriously, or not, or any way really.

“Difficult to prove or disprove, it takes a leap of faith from the outset to believe that one person can help the world or that “mystical truths” even exist. Rather than write the statement in a journal and debate what it means in private, Nauman makes his uncertainty a public affair. At a time when the young artist was questioning what it means to be an artist (a maker of non-utilitarian objects) and during a historical period fraught with political unrest and injustice (the late 1960s), Nauman’s sign is an investigation into the meaning of his own activity. Resonant with the popular idea that “knowledge is power,” Nauman’s work questions the artist’s relationship to a cultural equation.”

(source: pbs.org/art21/artists/nauman/card1.html)

I think designers feel obligated to eliminate all uncertainty when it comes to making a design object. There must be a clear, concise, and singular interpretation of the final piece. Many designers, myself included, may feel this is limiting and attempt to open up interpretation by allowing for interaction with the piece. Interaction means personalization in many instances. But, the issue here is that the user is still told how to interact with the design object. This is because the final design object does not have any ambivalence in it’s communication because ambivalence in communication is maybe failing to communicate your exact message.

How can I use ambivalence towards content to leave it open for multiple interpretations?

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.

(start with error screen with title. go to leaky faucet (or whatever video it is when i begin to talk))(saying this to show an awareness of what i am doing-see kinross article in dot dot dot 2 to understand why) Failure is all around us. Usually, we try our hardest to avoid it. Ideally, we take alternate routes to avoid traffic, (show a traffic pileup and a car on a open road wind blowing in hair, smile on face) we don’t carry too many items to avoid dropping them, (show a person loaded down with crap and dropping it and one not loaded down) and in design, we sketch and discard those options that fail to communicate as we intend.

We have intentions and plans about the way things should go and failures simply distract from that. For example, if you only allow that an image has one form-the one you intended when you captured it (show yoda image here. would be good to have something later to show that has been made from a timeout like error happening as with the wine stain) then a timeout error while uploading a picture has no intrigue. A red wine stain is something to pour soda water on immediately to remove it. (show a general wine stain here. show wine stain broaches later from RE:FORM book in contrast.) And a moire pattern in a printed piece is something the printer better damn well deal with in pre-press or they are printing it again at their cost. (show a general moire pattern in a printed piece and contrast that to a Karel piece later that uses a moire pattern purposefully)

(The examples in this paragraph are actually anticipated)
Some degree of failure is actually expected. We have rubber stamps (show rejected stamp here) with words like “rejected” and stencil letters (need this word to distinguish from pictoral stencils) which can be configured to send any message to redefine an object’s function as different from its form. (droog design does this, but I want a primary source “not designed”) The image element in html has an alt attribute which is there in case the image does not load-and for people whose eyesight has failed them. (show img tag syntax and img tag syntax with alt highlighted and an example of it in the browser when an image does not load.)Test patterns anticipate the failure of image rendering devices. (use test patterns here since they anticipate failure occurring and show my patterns with this.)

(The examples in this paragraph are not anticipated)
However, no matter how much design, planning and anticipation of failure occurs-every need cannot be accounted for over time, and this leaves room for more failure and, thus, for more innovative ways to achieve a solution. (show image of dirt path here)Dirt paths where there are predefined walkways demonstrate the need to adapt a structure in unanticipated ways.

However, those failures are things. and although they do not work for the current situation, that does not mean they are not generative.

Failure is viewed as a dead zone within the scope of the current intent-a place you do not want to be (that previously just sort of restated what i said in the second sentence) because you have an ideal in mind and the reality does not meet that expectation.

As something to be avoided, failure is a relatively untapped resource.

I want to show some images that represent things not going according to plan. Some, we are familiar with and some are from my own work. We could call them failures or malfunctions or errors, but that implies they have no use-they are a dead end-an unwanted result. However, each of these images, to me, represents potential.

failure is untapped. (then focus on these failures as opportunities)

One way to utilize failure is through reinvention (this term involves having a base element but changing some or all things involved with that base element so that it exists in a new space.) Karel reinvented defective washers that a shopkeeper gave him as printing somethings(what would these be called?) Paul reinvented discarded mechanical parts as an ever expanding typeface. The butcher bar was a butcher first and without any alteration to the premises became a bar. And my favorite example is Prince. Yes, his career was not doing so well, but by reinventing himself as a symbol or maybe we could call it a logo-with a name that nobody could remember-he generated more buzz than his best album he ever made. (is there a piece of mine that would work here?)

Another way to utilize failure is through repurposing. Abake took a common mistake in photography and utilized it to show the differences in styles of a particular Martin Margiela collection. Tim Davies has used the flash of his camera to prposefuly obscure the subject’s faces in paintings. (this does not really utilize the blur for any purpose) Work in Progress utilized an out of focus image for a hussein chalayan campaign. (all three of these are obstructions, is there somethign different?)

(show pie in the face)Why is this funny? It relies on using an object in an unexpected way to achieve a new interpretation of that object. Tibor did this with his AIGA poster.

(talk about test patterns with my patterns rgb)

(end with failure blog b/c it generates a lot of questions whereas I have made a lot of statments)

Other potential sentences:
My favorite part of the energy usage web page is when you click on a country and the entire page goes white.

[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)

Stamping over existing thing
Stencil over existing thing
an large quantity of a particular item available for less than or around the cost to produce
a missing crucial part
form negating function (square wheels)
test patterns for tv monitors, photocopiers, computer monitors, projectors

• it is impossible to show vertical images as large as horizontal images with the current ratios of digital projectors and screens. Do you show them at different proportions or shrink large images? This is not a problem with slides since you can rotate the slide.
• leaky faucet
• error pages on the web
• moire patterns
• discarded items
• items rendered useless through replacement (but still function) (could include old software too)
• dead web pages
• deserted/abandoned architectural spaces
• printing and production errors
• stains on materials

Time is an important part of my thesis. For there to be failure, there must be an effort at success and a resultant that is deemed unsuccessful. This requires a certain amount of time.

Asking for help.

Knowing what works and why. There is usually not just one solution, but a range. One example is step height. Steps can be a range of heights, but there is a range that will work for the range of motion of people (and, of course for the space that needs to be spanned). Anything beyond the comfortable range will discourage people from using it. If that is the purpose, then it is a success.

Letting go of control. There are so many things out of one’s control. This must be dealt with and in fact embraced as the route to new possibilities.

Nothing is perfectly successful. The Mini capitalized on the fact that larger cars-while perceived to be safer-use a lot more gas, and in that way fail in the current system of rising gas prices.

Reinvention. As a graduate student, this is something very relevant to me at this moment. We have a three-year program in addition to the two-year MFA specifically for people who want to reinvent themselves as designers. And, the two-year program is filled with people who want to take their design to a different place that it could not go while practicing in the “real world.” Prince has been a very successful example of this when he changed his name from Prince to a symbol (or a logo-what’s the difference? That is a study for later.) Without really doing anything but a rebranding, he became a completely new thing (this is a bad description-working on it…).

Retrofitting/adaptive reuse/repurposing. How can something that did not work as X work as Y? Film outtakes are an example of this-did not work in the larger scheme of the film, but work on their own as mini-film (some work better than others-and anything works better than showing the actors continually just laughing in one scene).

Authenticity. This one seems to work both ways. If you are inauthentic, you can fail because you not are representing the subject in its true form. But, on the other hand, if you are authentic, you run the risk of being rejected for what you are actually communicating. Politics seems to play this game a lot. The politicians know that if they represent something in its true form, it will be rejected, so they are in authentic to sell their idea.

What is the best forum for failure-on the computer or off?

Need to combine things that do not seem to go together to see what results.

Mechanical (analog) things have limitations that can be seen and understood as a physical thing. Digital things are maybe too complex to comprehend so need to set limitations. When you can manipulate an image to represent almost anything in Photoshop, why would/how does one make choices about how to manipulate images.

Rules make the game interesting. This is the difference between a beautiful soccer game and a bunch of people chasing a ball around in an open space. The limitations should not be randomly thrown onto content, but should stem from the content itself.

History. It influences everything I produce.

In some types of humor, things are funny because there is a failure of sorts. Slipping on a banana peel, getting a pie in the face, etc. An object that produces a result outside of its intended use can be funny even if it causes physical harm or embarassment to a person.

Moving beyond failure itself. It seems is always going to be negative. In my reading, I found a place where a certain field of scientist (I cannot remember which one) created a place where they could publish their failures online with the idea that the collective could advance faster and in the end have less failure, however, it appeared not many people have published anything there. Since this is supposed to be a generative process, I need something that will give me a finished product. It is the nature of my field.

So, I guess I want to ask the question, “How did this thing that failed work for something else?”

In posing the question like this, I am hoping to avoid a binary situation of failure or success-and tend more towards a situation where failure can be success and success a failure.