Author: Chenxi Gao

As Hito Steyerl states in her essay “In Defense of the poor image”, poor images are poor because they are not assigned any value (Steyerl, 2012). A question raised in my head, what if we turn something that is extremely valuable into poor images, how does that change its value? Art masterpieces are usually sold in extremely expensive prices but how do we define their values? As I turned the art masterpieces into poor images and pixelated, they gradually become unrecognizable, and it is the process of devaluation. However, on the other hand, viewers become the editor, critics, translator and co-author of the poor image through the decoding process.

Annotated Bibliography

From the reading list:

• Steyerl, H., 2012. In Defense of the Poor Image. The Wretched of the Screen, Berlin: Sternberg Press, pp.31-45.

In the essay, Steyerl states that the ‘poor image’ is the result of mass-reproduction and are often distributed with less care in quality and a heavily emphasize on quantity. Also, she argues that low resolution makes the image out of focus which lowers its value. Therefore, I referenced this idea of devaluation and explored the value of arts. I’ve also seen the overuse of “poor image” on many social media platforms. Some iconic images are manipulated with computer software to be made into memes. This further inspired me as the poor images can be a sign of users becomes the co-author/editor of the image.

• Tenen, D., 2017. Literature down to a pixel. Plain Text: The Poetics of Computation, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp.165-195.

The author Tenen argues that the change of the medium from paper to pixel entails a series of corresponding changes in the mode of perception. And from physical to digital, it affects how people perceive the work, for example eye movement, posture, and etc. So, as I turned the paintings into digital format, the mode of perception change at the same time. The original way of seeing these paintings would be to physically go to the museum and having the immersive experience, however, when they are turn into digital format, one can just see it through internet and hundreds of miles from the physical paintings. Also, by pixelating the paintings, the faux low-fidelity aesthetic asserts its independence from the history of the art piece, as a result manipulating their original value.

From my own researches:

• Findlay, M., 2014. The Value of Art: Money, Power, Beauty. Munich: PRESTEL.

As a veteran in the circle, Findlay is very familiar with the operating rules of the art market. His experiences constitute his reflections on the commercial and social value of art. But what Findlay values ​​the most is the most essential aesthetic value of art. In this book, he combined his decades of experience to summarize a set of methods for appreciating art. The commercial value of art is essentially a consensus. Picasso’s paintings are worth tens of millions, because everyone has a consensus on the name Picasso. Also, the aesthetic value of art goes beyond what language can express, and the aesthetic experience of art can activate people’s inner feelings. As a result, for my project, by manipulating the aesthetic of the art piece, I was able to devaluate them but because it was also another form of aesthetic experience, it can never be valueless.

• Artincontext.org. 2022. Most Expensive Paintings – A Look at the Wold’s Most Valuable Paintings. [online] Available at: <https://artincontext.org/most-expensive-paintings/#:~:text=Salvator%20Mundi%20(1500)%20by%20Leonardo%20da%20Vinci, Artist%20of%20Painting&text=At%20an%20auction%20held%20at,a%20nineteen%2Dminute%20bidding%20war.>.

This website listed the most expensive paintings ever sold in the history and talked about their reasons being so expensive. I referenced this list to create my project for this week. Looking at these painting all together, we can see that the paintings are pricy because they represent an idea, or reflect a history/movement, or the author uses unique techniques. Art pieces can not only fulfill people’s aesthetic needs but also is a tool for the artists to express themselves.

Practices:

• Schmidt, H., 2021. What Is the Poor Image Rich in?. [online] Helenaschmidt.com. Available at: <http://www.helenaschmidt.com/>.

Similarly inspired by Hito Steyer’s essay, this website is a collection of poor images, which can be uploaded anonymously by users. As a user of many social media platform, I can see the overuse of poor images. They are often low-resolution images shot by personal devices or memes created by manipulating famous art works. Schmidt’s archive website inspired me in the way that poor images are not only restricted by its resolution quality but also the low-class visual feelings it creates to the viewers. There are lots of archive about famous art pieces been turn into poor images through the manipulation and reproduction. This makes me think about how easily we can change the value of an image through recreation and manipulation.

• Mapes, M., 2014. Dutch male specimen: J. [photographs, painted photographs, fabric samples, rope, sand, sea shells, coffee, tea, tea bags, tobacco, gunpowder, sugar, driftwood, hair, cast resin, clay, thread, insect pins, capsules, specimen bags, magnifying boxes].

Michael Mapes creates portraits of people by putting pieces of photos and many other mundane objects. When looking at the portrait as a whole, it looks like a low-resolution image, and when looking more closely to the objects or pieces of photo, they look like swarms of smaller portraits of the person they depict. The recreation combine with the focus on detail is what makes the work valuable and innovative. As for my project, I decompose the art pieces into pixels which forms a low-resolution version of the original painting. When determine the value of the painting, it can be affected by its history value, painter as well as the techniques used and many more. By turning the painting into pixelated images, I am eliminating the details of the paining but rather focus on the image as a whole. As a result, this causes the images devaluate.

As we were visiting the museum, the New York Times cover of May 24, 2020, which marked the harrowing milestone of 100,000 deaths from Covid-19 in the United States took my attention. In the beginning of 2020, the sudden COVID-19 crisis swept the world like a butterfly effect. This historic crisis and turning point has allowed us to see the various states of the world under the epidemic. If documentaries can truly record the current plight of all human beings, can it also be presented through the language of graphic design? How grief is manifested? And how that tells the story of the pandemic?

By collecting information on group memories, statistics and news under the pandemic, we wanted to truly and objectively reflect everything that is happening in the surrounding society through the medium of experimental book design, so as to output thoughts and values ​​on the global crisis.

When graphic design becomes a medium for human beings to re-examine memories, events and grief, it can not only better study and excavate the practical value and social significance of graphic design language, but also enable the public to reflect on the past and restart the future.

Annotated bibliography

Texts outside the reading list

1. Berinato, S., 2020. That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: <https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief>.

A genuine feeling of communal grief has arisen during the worldwide epidemic. In the text, David Kessler, a grief expert, describes how the standard five phases of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and acceptance) apply today in an interview with HBR, as well as the practical strategies we may take to handle the worry.

In the experimental book we designed, I was in charged of the first chapter which talks about the very beginning of the pandemic. What was happening was incomprehensible even to scientists and doctors. It also felt violent and scary and confusing, full of misinformation, questions, denial and disbelieve. In the article, the part about anticipatory grief resonates with my chapter the most. One reaction to the loss of safety wrought by the pandemic, at both a micro and macro level, can be seen as the war on information and the denial of the virus itself. That denial is a coping mechanism, a way to channel grief into something that feels active and gives people back their sense of control.

2. Pattee, E., 2020. Covid-19 makes us think about our mortality. Our brains aren’t designed for that.. [online] The Washington Post. Available at: <https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/covid-thinking-about-death/2020/10/02/1dc0f7e4-c520-11ea-8ffe-372be8d82298_story.html>.

This article records several mental activities the author was going though in the beginning of the pandemic and talks about the ways in which humans avoid thinking about mortality and how we behave when we are reminded of death. The denial of your own potential death was common to see during the epidemic period as people are protesting and spreading the conspiracy theories about COVID-19. It answers why people are reacting such ways. Since our project is to tell the story of the pandemic through the lens of grief manifested on its different forms, it enhances our project in a way that we as designers can use our visual languages to manifest the grief, educate people, document the current plight, reflect on the past and restart the future, as human beings are more tended to attract by visual representations than long texts and vast numbers.

Texts from the reading list

1. Laranjo, F., 2014. Critical Graphic Design: Critical of What? | Modes of Criticism. [online] Modes of Criticism. Available at: <https://modesofcriticism.org/critical-graphic-design/>

In the article, it states “The critiques are targeted at social and political phenomena.” Like our project, we are interested in how grief can be presented through the language of graphic design and how we as a designer can record and reflect on the social crisis using our tools. People’s reaction in the COVID-19 pandemic from disbelief to suspension to mourning to living in the shadow, we wanted to record these significant moments of a reflection of living through one of the most consequential events in recent history. Linking back to the article, critical graphic design is also the result of an increased importance of the social sciences, humanities and their multiple research methods being applied, changed and appropriated by design education and designers. The object we chose as the inspiration, the New York Times cover “U.S. deaths near 100,00, an incalculable loss”, is also using critical graphic design to raise awareness of how serious the pandemic is by transform anonymous data into a meaningful memorial of named individuals. Therefore, it is crucial that our project can get people start to think about these social phenomena and introspect on themselves.

2. DiSalvo, C., 2012. Adversarial Design, MIT Press, Cambridge. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central.

There was a lot of social, political, economic, and humanity issues been revealed through the Covid-19 pandemic. Carl DiSalvo analyses how technology design might challenge and engage the political in his book Adversarial Design. He discusses a process he calls “adversarial design,” in which he employs design’s means and forms to confront people’s ideas, values, and facts. In my opinion, we as designers should use our design to engage people and raise awareness of our current social issues, to interact and make actions. As for our project, we are also trying to do the same thing. By recording the sense of grief from the pandemic, and help our readers to understand and memorize these specific moments in the near history, our goal is to explore and uncover the practical utility and social relevance of graphic design language, while also allowing the public to reflect on the past and relaunch the future.

Design practices/projects

1. Shibuya, S., 2021. Taser / Gun. [Acrylic paint, newspaper].

Sho Shibuya is an artist who creates news-inspired work that captured the essence of some of the world’s most important events. By using abstraction and devoid of words, Sho’s work express the events in a manner that a clean line of text could not express. This specific work talks about another African American person was killed by the police, while the officer claimer that she confused her taser and her gun. This piece illustrate grief in a way that the striking visual of the bullet hole and use of the neon yellow, which is the color of the taser, speak for itself without text the fact that it was an unbelievable mistake to make. He was also sharing his sympathy and emotion through his work. Using the same reference (the NYT cover) as Sho Shibuya, we also wanted our project to create resonance and empathy towards the Covid-19 crisis. We believe that graphic design has the power to influence emotions and emotions can influence actions.

2. Tiravanija, R.,2014. Untitled 2014 (We have the Light). [Lithograph].

Similarly using Newspaper as the medium, artist Rirkrit Tiravanija paint over the original newspaper which talks about the tsunami in Japan with enlarged uplifting texts in bright colors to bring out contrasts and suggests a better future. Like our chosen object, the NYT cover which records information about some of the people who had died from Covid-19, the tsunami news also lists a frightening information about people who has lost their life because of it. It creates a powerful impact to the audiences. The enlarged text treatment Tiravanija has done was a why to bring hope and comforting to the audiences. Like our project, while we were documenting grief and tragedy, we were also trying to engage our readers to rethink what has happened and restart future. In our last chapter, we tell the end of the story, the survivors of the pandemic who bear the scars of the disease and also some way of how we as survivors can move forward to a brighter future.

Draft 1

Digital printers are fundamental tools used in our design process and they are supposed to make exact copies. Printing anything several times should result in it looking exactly the same. However, it never quite works out that way especially with inkjet printers. The color settings, alignment and resolutions can have a great impact on the printing outcomes, thus making the design outcome somewhat unpredictable. As a result, questions raised in my head while working with the printers this week: To what extent can the printing process affect the original design? How do we value the imperfections? How to define the fine line between it being a mistake/error or an unexpected/unplanned design breakthrough?

Draft 2

To jump out of the usual way of designing which is by rational, how can we generate visual representation from the possibility of movement and change rather than unflappable rationality? As a result, the second week I explored further with digital printing in layers, including changing the values in resolution, offsets, and colors. My expectations of how the printing outcome would be and what it actually has become clashes even more. When I switch the colors of the color layers, the entire vibe of the image changes. The change in resolutions and offsets results have yielded frozen moments of each layers, which recorded the printing process. This resonate with Martin Lister’s point illustrated in his book Photographic Image in Digital Culture that when software and image collide, the results are not just a new, processual picture, but also a shift with implications for how we think about representation, memory, time, and identity (Lister, 2013). I think this also somewhat answers my question from last week that to see the outcome as an unexpected design breakthrough rather than it being a mistake, it has to generate a representation, memory, time or identity, which makes the irrational outcome meaningful.

Reference:

The Photographic Image in Digital Culture, edited by Martin Lister, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=1415807.

Draft 3

Digital printers are fundamental tools used in our design process and they are supposed to make exact copies. Printing anything several times should result in it looking exactly the same. However, it never quite works out that way especially with inkjet printers. The color settings, alignment and resolutions can have a great impact on the printing outcomes, thus making the design outcome somewhat unpredictable.

Initially I was wondering to what extent can the printing process affect the original design and how to define the fine line between the printing imperfection being a mistake or an unexpected design breakthrough. I then started to explore how we can generate visual representation from the possibility of movement and, breaking the usual way of designing which is by rationale.

As a result, I worked with digital printing in layers, including changing the values in resolution, offsets, and colors; repeated the same procedures and noted each iteration down. My expectations of how the printing outcome would be and what it actually has become clashes even more. When I switch the colors of the color layers, the entire vibe of the image changes. The change in resolutions and offsets results have yielded frozen moments of each layers, which reveal the printing systems and the mechanism. This resonate with Martin Lister’s point illustrated in his book Photographic Image in Digital Culture that when software and image collide, the results are not just a new, processual picture, but also a shift with implications for how we think about representation, memory, time, and identity (Lister, 2013). I think this also somewhat answers my question from last week that to see the outcome as an unexpected design breakthrough rather than it being a mistake, it has to generate a representation, memory, time or identity, which makes the irrational outcome meaningful.

The artist Alan Skees had a series of work called American Glitch which he plays around with the idea of processing code using digital slit-scan ink jet print (Matney, 2019). In one of his interview, he stated that digital art is in the canon of printing age. As our technology advances, printed matters are facing dramatic challenges however Alan Skees believes digital art is just an evolution of printmaking because the code is the fixed matrix that imagery is derived from. It is the plate or stone in the digital age (Matney, 2019). I totally agree with him. The textures and details as well as the expectation in the printed matters adds so much weight to the work which can never be rendered/reproduced in digital work.

Reference:

The Photographic Image in Digital Culture, edited by Martin Lister, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=1415807.

Matney, J., 2019. Conversation with Kristin and Alan Skees — Linda Matney Gallery. [online] Linda Matney Gallery. Available at: <https://www.lindamatneygallery.com/news/2019/9/27/kristinandalanskees> [Accessed 1 February 2022].

A manifesto is often used to spread message, intentions and ideas. As a result, a manifesto would normally contain intent, views, and motivation and present them in a straightforward way. In this written response, I chose the article ‘Fuck Content’ (Rock,2013) and rewrite it in to the form of the ‘Conditional Design Manifesto’ (Blauvelt, et al) in order to directly convey the main messages illustrated in the ‘Fuck Content’, which is the form (or the container) is just as important as the content, and the manipulation of the form can also change the content. Just like my project in method of translating, I picked several documentary photographs and translating them together into a zine, cropping them to focus on certain views and adding comments and explanations, which tells a story of “Love” in a special period of time.

Reference:

Rock, M. (2013) ‘Fuck Content’, Multiple Signatures: On Designers, Authors, Readers and Users. New York: Rizzoli International.

Blauvelt,  A. et al. ‘Conditional Design Manifesto’, Conditional Design Workbook, pp. ii.

In “the Library of Babel” the author Jorge Luis Borges (1998) illustrates an infinite unordered universe and refers to it as “the library”. In “the library”, the content of the books are composed with variations of 23 letters, in random order. Therefore, every possible permutation of letters is accessible in one of the books in “the library”, only awaiting its discovery.

The infinite possibilities illustrated in the story creates multi-dimensional perspectives to the readers to immerse themselves into this infinite library. I want to use my design to visualize and replicate this abstract environment and feeling of infinite and orderly unordered which Luis Borges illustrated in his story through classification and resorting. The alphabet letters in small font size, standing against a darkened background, are designed to bring a mysterious, enigmatic feeling and an imaginative space for the viewers to discover the infinite unordered library.

Borges (1998) wrote before the start of the story “by this art you may contemplate the variation of the 23 letters”, thus I took this prologue as my inspiration, which I pulled out all the nouns from the text and place them in alphabetic order, and combined it with the library search function created this index. By extracting nouns from the text, it allows me to break down the text and get a wide picture of the story through a glance as nouns are the first and focal building squares of language. The index can also lead audiences to explore the vagueness and mysteriousness of the metaphor presented in the story, by encoding and decoding it, rather than passive reception. 

Selecting unorderly from and ordered index:

Centered around the main idea of the story that everything is unordered, I want liberation from the traditional way of reading a written text which has to be from the start to end. My design intent is to allow readers entering into the text through anywhere along the alphabetical index. Their selections of the words can be random just like what Jorge Luis Borges illustrated in the story.

Reference:

Borges, J.L. (1998). “The Library of Babel”, Collected fictions. New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Viking, pp. 112-118.

The space I chose to investigate is the Gasholder Park located in King’s Cross. This is a place where I walk pass by almost every single day and the unique architecture style always fascinates me. Through this project I wish to investigate the purpose of this space and how people interact with the space in different time of the day.

It has been illustrated in detail that two blind people’s actions and appearances in the Rue Linné (Georges, Perec, 1974). In my project, I was to observe people in the Gasholder park like what Perec was illustrating in his writing. During my investigation, I was sitting in the corner of the park, and note down people who entering the park, their route, appearances, actions, positions, genders, and approximate ages. I then summarized the information into symbols and graphs. It’s interesting that I found both my investigation and Perec’s writing are consists of both objective facts (for example, we both recorded the target person’s actions and appearances) and subjective observation (in this case me and Perec both record /wrote about the approximate age of the person through his/her appearances and the person’s emotion/feeling through his/her actions). As a result, I believe the objective facts can reflect subjective observations. However, if I were to continue this project, I would to proof or deny my subjective observations by talking to my target people.

Johanna Drucker (2014, cited in Designing graphic interpretation) states that Imagining new intellectual forms of interpretation also means designing and sustaining the spaces that structure interpretive act. It relates to my investigation of the Gasholder Park in a way that it’s theme of suggesting a new way of using graphic to interpreting the intellectual forms. In my investigation, I visualized people in the park with symbols and colors to categorize them and investigate their actions and emotions. It also resonates with what Drucker (2014, p. 181) states “Innovative graphic armatures will extend our capacities to create associative arguments in digital space, creating the support for extensive interpretative activities among textual and visual artifacts.” By using graphic interpretation, I was able to spot the different interaction people made with the space during different time of the day clearer and with more logic.

Reference List:

1. Perec, G. (1974) ‘The Street’, ‘The Neighborhood’ and ‘The Town’, in Species of Spaces and Other Places. pp. 46-67.
2. Drucker, J. (2014) ‘Designing graphic interpretation’, in Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 180-192.