User:Ålnik
Hello, world! ål nik here :)
About
Digitart, illustration, visual facilitation & scribing, graphic design. Looking for experimenting with tools, researching peculiar topics and finding focus before the end of XPUB2. ;]
PZI Archipelago
I worked at the team of PZI Archipelago between June 2022 and January 2023 (I was kicked out because wdka couldn't pay me as a volunteer due to my Room for Sound student assistant contract). My main motivation was to continue publishing the regular master students' newspaper the Piet and to support the team in organising workshops and shared moments. As part of my work there, I support the process of publishing the Piet (getting contributions, designing, illustration, printing, folding, and distributing). We work on the Piet together with Emma. I also organise the schedule of workshops facilitated by us. Documenting some of the events, supporting the Open Days at PZI, and doing some graphic design, illustrations etc. are also things I do at the Archipelago. Here are a few highlights of my work there:
The Piet
The Piet // Issue 7 // december 2022
_december 2022 // edition units 250 newspaper layout // al nik (alexandra nikolova) header & illustrations // al nik (alexandra nikolova) contributors // emma prato, agata sznurkowska, stephen kerr, kamo, gersande schellinx, chaeyoung kim, al nik, zoraïma hupkes printed // at wdka rotterdam paper // kasaka typefaces // panic, big caslon, courier prime, phosphate, cutive mono, cabin sketch, oswald, eb garamond, big caslon, american typewriter
Documentation
2022-11-22 // build your own tools by Emma // photographing the workshop
▶ photos of the workshop
Station Skills
WdKA's Station Skills: Most of the station skills I joined during my second trimester were related to writing. The reason is that I feel quite insecure in my writing and have been criticised before for bad writing. Thus, I am trying to improve my writing in English, which I still find challenging because it is not my native language, nor alphabet.
RE:Writing
17 November 2021 This workshop was the first station skill I attended because I was stressed at the beginning of XPUB and wanted to make sure I can manage everything. I went to the RE:Writing because I wanted to listen to some random stories, get outside the special issue thoughts and illustrate something. Whilst listening to the short stories and poems, I illustrated one of them: It All Started by Kristiāna N.
Tagging Topics
20 January 2022 In order to help myself learn how to document (better) and how to do (proper) research, I joined Harma Staal's workshop at the Research Station: Tagging Topics. She offered a way to do research using tagging and thinking of topics in tags. The purpose is to narrow down the content - from chaos to focus.
With this approach, the researchers are invited to connect their work and interests with other makers. (maker is now my new favourite word) As artists, we want to speak about perspectives, opinions, and notions. Not truths. Research is not about reading books. It starts with your making. Then, document it, reflect on it, and talk about it. Share your knowledge and make new knowledge. When you talk about things you found out, make them relevant. Share that with image and text.
Wood Workshop
21 January 2022 Together with Chae, Kamo and Erica, we visited the wood workshop in order to make a wooden board. We imagined it to be a place to harvest ideas, hang stuff and move around the studio on wheels. For the first time I cut such a big wooden surface on the big cutting machine. After that, with the small cutting machine I curved one of the 4 corners. Nice collective moment indeed.
Crash Course in Typography
24-26-28 January 2022 The typography class by Britt Möricke took place at the Publication Station. We had three classes within a week to go through the basics of typography and to learn the rules (so we can break them, hehe). We dived into the history of typography, the theoretical rules and did several practical exercises on Adobe InDesign. I did not work with that programme that much before, so it was quite useful for me; and also to get to know a bit better some basic rules on compiling long body text. We also did some fun exercises on typo-posters.
My handwriting sucks! Now what?
3 February 2022
Publication Station
Another workshop by Britt Möricke who presented to us a handwriting handbook she had developed. We did exercises to train cursive writing.
Writing as reflection, writing as practice. Experimental Research Documents workshop
24 February 2022
Research Station
"Writing as a form of thinking. Writing as a manifestation of thoughts. Writing as a struggle. Write as a chore. Writing as practice. There are so many ways of thinking about writing and so many different forms of writing."
In that workshop by Michelle Teran we did various short writing activities such as writing a letter to our recent project. We experimented with ways of thinking about the role of writing in our research projects. The second part of the session was more focused on examples (in a form of a presentation).
Editorial Perspective on Documenting
21 March 2023
Research Station
I took this station skill because I wanted to find good practice and inspiration how to organise and take of my documentation in the future. I recently installed my wikimedia at wiki.alnik.me and wanted to see how to use that space for publishing documentation and observations. The workshop aimed at raising our awareness of the act of documenting, to consider what are we wondering about when collecting the pieces of our research. There were two core levels we looked up - editorial overview and editorial detail.
What I took from this workshop were two highlights: 1// to take a small report when taking a photo or picking up some material for my research (i asked, i did, i found, i know now), tag them & maybe try categorising them; and 2// to tag my research posts (to create an index on my wiki with all the pages categorised, and keep it organised until I find a less-manual solution).
Workshops & Labs
Speech To Booklet [Roodkapjie Rotterdam, 07 October 2021] by Kamo & Poni
created a booklet with Jian:
Zine Camp [WORM Rotterdam, 06-07 November 2021]
Wordmord Presentation & Q&A [23 November 2021]
Bookbinding Workshop [Gerrit Rietveld Academy Amsterdam, 27 November 2021] by Gersande
Public Lecture by Shira Chess [23 February 2022] online
FIBER Lab: Natural Intelligence [A:Lab Amsterdam, 10-13 March 2022]
Networked Touch [V2_ Rotterdam, 22 May 2022]
Ultra Studio [BB Gerrit Rietveld Academie & R A T S Rotterdam, 05 October 2022]
Remnants of Future Voices [by Jonathan Chaim Reus in collaboration with Angeliki Diakrousi // Varia, Rotterdam // 10 december 2022]
▶ pad with my annotations & work
[contribution]
Conversation piece from the future past Mitsa's and Alex's clones are talking Mitsa's clone is in the future Alex's clone is in the past They are having a quick chat Somewhere and sometime in the future