User:Queenfeline/SPECIAL ISSUE 26
Its the 06.01.2025 and the second season is here. SI26
CSS – Designing with words. Kinda like poetry.
PostScript – is a coding language and a file datei and you can create grafics with it (how cool is that?)
PDF session – messing with PDFs and let python write poems
"Does the fact that the web is potentially everywhere, mean that everyone reads the same things?" Femke Snelting
References related to Methods 15-01-25:
- Stuart Hall - "Notes on Deconstructing the Popular" : PDF
- Jennifer Ponce de Léon - "Another Aesthetics is Possible" : [1]
make my own programming language?
after reading The Webs Grain by Frank chimero
“We begin in admiration and end by organizing our disappointment.” Gaston Bachelard
The wonder i felt was deminished by experience.
There is a certain frustration with (working with) the web. the power you have is your attention and the web is fightig for it. Problematic power structures proceed in order to make profit. the further you look into it all, the gigger and more complex and more overwhelming it gets. one ends up feeling small and powerless.
SO CHANGE THE PERSPECTIVE! Find new ways to look at the web.
So what is the grain / materiality of the web? What is there to see when you look at a website as itself?
What would happen if we stopped treating the web like a blank canvas to paint on, and instead like a material to build with?
Disagreement: "Edgelessness" – I get his point of edgelessness as webs hypothetical structure (individual pages, linked), being able to branch out forever. however there are limits to server capacity (in some way physical edges), enforced limits by politics (banning specific pages or keywords), edges of language maybe (what is articulated but also in which language are websites written), the web has edges and these have real world consequences.
Key Insights: rather than starting with a fixed format where you can place your elements (like in print) we should (for the web) make the single elements and then put them on the page and let the responsive web figure out the placements. (but that is super hard for a graficdesigner! I dont wanna let go of controoool haha)
Summary: Starting off with nostalgia on the early days of the web, the designer Frank Chimero quicky switches to the frustrations he feels now, working with the web. Instead of letting that frustration win, he tries to look at the web from a different point of view. Starting of with the core from the web, the code, he slowly explains the difficultys emerging when doing responsive design. Next, he shows examples of websites and complains about their attempt to fix the responsive problems of technology with even more technology. In his opinion we need less technology and we sould see the web as a material to build with and not a canvas to fill. He states there is no such thing as the one canvas, the web is, as he calls it, edgeless. Lastly he encourages the reader to be more cautious about convenience, because when you don't decide some else decides for you, and to really question the role of technology in ones life, what do you want from it. He ends the text, answering that quenstion with his desire for a more graceful technolgy.
We also made a Wiki page for that The Web's Grain – Frank Chimero
afer reading Reflective Conversation with Materials – an Interview with Donald Schön
"There is no direct path between the designer's intention and the outcome. As you work a problem, you are continually in the process of developing a path into it, forming new appreciations and understandings as you make new moves."
I feel like i have to forget the path and NOT think about it, to get shit done! If i think too much it gets paralizing and i wont do anything. So in order to acually do something i have to tick myself. i have to start by doing something else and then eventually get to the task, or i just have to get in the studio and then just sit myself down, starting the thing without thinking. That works well, from time to time not so well, i think it depends on my cycle...
reflection in action means, when the reflection of the work happens during the work (designing)
- How do you currently document your design/artistic practice? Could you bring or describe a specific example in class? How do you feel about the way you do it right now logistically?
Im really bad at documenting my stuff. for now i only did small projects which i documented only after the thing was done. Gladly i remembered most of what happened, but to be honest, a lot got lost in the process. So i feel like this is definitely not the smartest way of doing that and i should change it!
i see that documentation is very important but it also sometimes feels like a made up, artificial thing that gives more worth / meaning to the thing itself, which feels weird to do. Is the project only valid when i documented the process? No, but es ist besser nachzuvollziehen. for others. and for myself?
- What is your approach to reflecting on your design/artistic practice?
reflecting on my design stuff ist good, but also is hard for me to do, cause i quickly switch into comparing my work to others, which leaves me feeling bad about my work... sooo i have to not think too much about it. especially when its done, its simply just done and if im not happy i will go on and do the next thing.
today Pippin Barr visited us!
19.03.2025
He is a prof at the Concordia University and he does experimental game design.
– the nothing suite
– getting trapped in the academic seriousness – dont loose the fun and experimental playfulness
– taking jokes seriously
– how do i track my process? documentation is important! or may become important in the future
– have a journal for life stuff and one for design stuff – like same same but different
– "more confusing than cute"
– Donald Schön: In seinem Buch The Reflective Practitioner entwickelte Schön das Konzept der „reflection-in-action“ als eine Lern- und Arbeitsmethode, in der Theorien situationsbezogen entwickelt und durch das Handeln selber erforscht werden. [2]
– version control – keeping track of your work –> for design refection?
– how can we talk about if if we dont know how it takes place? (design)
– you can have .md (markdown) files in VSCode where you can document the process
– literally keep a journal on your design shit – write about what you're doing – put in all the emotions, how i feel about the project – alles
– from time to time – question the whole thing and trying to find an answer for it – was ist der mehrwert? WHY am i doing that? (answering that more than once! come back to it and reflect)
– away with the pressure to sound smart!
– Zeno? greek paradox
– document as memory of something
– what do we keep? What do we archive?