Karina/histories of experimental publishing

19 JANUARY

How to make a manifesto that

• is personal / has character
• balances being objective / subjective (both?)
• accessible to future students
• allows content to be manipulated / added / taken away
• is a tool / shows action not only ideas

Issues that arise

• need to see whether there are already existing similar manifestos
• is self classifying / hypocrisies of own ideas

CONDITIONAL DESIGN

https://conditionaldesign.org/manifesto/
A manifesto for artists and designers.

"Through the influence of the media and technology on our world, our lives are increasingly characterized by speed and constant change. We live in a dynamic, data-driven society that is continually sparking new forms of human interaction and social contexts. Instead of romanticizing the past, we want to adapt our way of working to coincide with these developments, and we want our work to reflect the here and now. We want to embrace the complexity of this landscape, deliver insight into it and show both its beauty and its shortcomings. Our work focuses on processes rather than products: things that adapt to their environment, emphasize change and show difference.
Instead of operating under the terms of Graphic Design, Interaction Design, Media Art or Sound Design, we want to introduce Conditional Design as a term that refers to our approach rather than our chosen media. We conduct our activities using the methods of philosophers, engineers, inventors and mystics.

Process

• The process is the product.
• The most important aspects of a process are time, relationship and change.
• The process produces formations rather than forms.
• We search for unexpected but correlative, emergent patterns.
• Even though a process has the appearance of objectivity, we realize the fact that it stems from subjective intentions.

Logic

• Logic is our tool.
• Logic is our method for accentuating the ungraspable.
• A clear and logical setting emphasizes that which does not seem to fit within it.
• We use logic to design the conditions through which the process can take place.
• Design conditions using intelligible rules.
• Avoid arbitrary randomness.
• Difference should have a reason.
• Use rules as constraints.
• Constraints sharpen the perspective on the process and stimulate play within the limitations.

Input

• The input is our material.
• Input engages logic and activates and influences the process.
• Input should come from our external and complex environment: nature, society and its human interactions."

Luna Maurer, Edo Paulus, Jonathan Puckey, Roel Wouters

THE STUCKIST MANIFESTO, 1999

Established in 1999, the British group the The Stuckists proclaimed themselves to be “Against conceptualism, hedonism and the cult of the ego-artist.” The movement was formed by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to celebrate and promote figurative painting in a reaction to the proliferation of conceptual art. Every year, the Stuckists famously demonstrate outside Tate Britain as the winner of the Turner Prize is announced.

1. Stuckism is the quest for authenticity.
2. Painting is the medium of self-discovery.
3. Stuckism proposes a model of art which is holistic.
4. Artists who don’t paint aren’t artists.
5. Art that has to be in a gallery to be art isn’t art.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

EXPERIMENTAL JETSET

http://www.manifestoproject.it/experimental-jetset/
Speaking of Experimental Jetset, I always loved this

9 JANUARY

Original notes on evernote

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s368/sh/8bd4c53d-56cb-4a83-a2b7-fa6dddf2d19a/46d54f4a9e18121510d5e83b5fea48b4

8 NOVEMBER

Original notes on evernote

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s368/sh/5fb1da6b-7a93-44e8-88f6-392b20b84070/f328dd48c807d57b757d339e0ddf9cf6

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11 OCTOBER

Original notes on evernote

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s368/sh/2b183b41-b41b-431a-90bf-aea717f789e8/21359b2dab9a6c65aff6a2524f1e51d8

29 SEPTEMBER

Original notes on evernote

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s368/sh/927b3dc4-6af7-4981-8878-1ad8c9e01c4d/02d0b1dec684a2844c792e90b5577828

traditional culture of visual images has changed trump/clinton memes - political culture

what is publishing? sharing content with the public communicating content with the public 'wydawnictwo' - dawac / wydawac / rozdawac - give / publish / share

to bring to the public verb made into a noun - activity / process journalism, books, newspapers, Wikileaks, what is the necessity of making things public? is publishing the opposite of privacy? is every form of sharing publishing, is every form of publishing sharing? sharing doesn't necessarily be of information? - could be food

Claude Shannon

- AT&T communication - use binary method for computers - information is about signal and noise - technical motion of information - it can be measured

Gregory Bateson "Information is a difference that makes a difference" information is that was is not redundant information is the bits that are not redundant

bits vs bites 8 bits is a bite AAAAAABA

ASCII table - American Standard Code of Information 127 characters

128 = 27 each ASCII character needs 7 binary character (=7 bit)

Binary (0&1s) binary is not equivalent to digital

• project idea: convert binary 0&1 into red&blue. Make images from binary

Model not just for telecommunications also for conversation on the phone (encoder is microphone, decoder is speaker)

for book publishing: Sender - author Encoder - designer / printing press Channel - book store Decoder - literacy Receiver - reader

is the sender the author or publisher? graphic designer could be the feedback - the process could have a few loops before it ends up on the shelves

what is noise? electrical resistance / physical resistance / static noise degrades signal information is no longer decodable

BitRot - magnetism changes, gets interpreted as something different, distorts 0 to 1

AAAAAABA "Information is a difference that makes a difference" 'A' are the noise 6A 1B 1A - to compress the signal

ex. 1000 x 1000 pixel image uncompressed 28 = 256 (bad jpeg quality) 216 = 65536 (uncompressed tiff)

1 bite per pixel 1000 x 1000 pixel image = 1MB 1 million x the same pixel, so if compressed, file size even smaller

Shannon: the image consists most of noise, not information

this is a purely engineering perspective do not confuse qualitative and quantitive model of information fully yellow painting would be seen as redundant in the Shannon-Weaver model

Edward Ruscha - gas station photo book art books still seen secondary to the exhibition Ruscha wanted to challange that - the book is the art, not the medium

Fluxus early 1960s movement of art performance wanted to operate as a publishing house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus

Is a postcard a publication?

Joseph Beuys for Fluxus: 'hybrid object'

what is the information in publishing?

before: need to transport information from A to B, the book is the carrier now: it has changed. the object / interaction is important and has been overlooked in the past

Flexus galerie und edition hundertmark http://www.hundertmark-gallery.com/fluxus.0.html

record publishing is still publishing Artist anonymous, published by Johannes Goebel - all the information on the record is noise, although the materiality is information itself - the more it get scratched by the sandpaper, the more noise, but different every time. Durutti Column (most punk band ever) - sandpaper album cover Mémoires by Asger Jorn, 1959 (Situationist International).

!!! visit: The PirateBay Library in Rotterdam near Worm

Fifty Unused Zine Titles theblatchfordgallery@yahoo.com.au

Milan Knizak Glued a few records together