Joana's Thesis Outline
Introduction
My research project explores compositional processes in graphic design and dance performance. By investigating diverse graphic design methods, and a selection of post-modern choreographic approaches, I aim to research what performative qualities could be implemented and explored in design. And what powers of invention or transformation it sets free.
My interest in choreography comes from my dance background, beginning with classical ballet, at the age of five, and later extending it towards contemporary dance. The primacy of movement and concepts of spatial representation and perception, rhythm and flow have been emerging and influencing my thoughts on designing design. Reformulating the question into: Could I choreograph design?
During my experiments and reflection upon the subject matter, I will be simultaneously investigating on the concepts of phenomenology, movement perception and virtuality in both dance and design. My two main sources under these topics are the dancer and photographer Maxine Sheets-Johnstone and the media theorist Brian Massumi. I will also be referencing texts from Sher Doruff, Geoff Cox and McLean which raise theoretical and practical questions on creative processes and mediated performance practice. My most specifically related reference to communication design is the typographer Karl Gestner. Author of a collection of essays "Designing Programmes”, who created a new method and approach to design, similar to computational systems, a design based on a set of conditions.
Graphic Design and Performance pieces are a product of a process, by which general rules and concepts are represented by means of abstract structures. When simultaneously looking at both disciplines, it is possible to to draw a parallel between its different methodologies. For instance when defining a grid layout, the baseline (space between sentences) sets the rhythm and gives more or less space for the page to “breath”. The units specified for this structure are either relative or absolute, turning it into a flexible or rigid design. Yvonne Rainner also defines moments of suspension or pause in her dance pieces as “breathing” instances, which duration depends on the dancer. The choreographer Trisha Brown, draws complex diagrams to specify the directions or points in space and create dance patterns. Simmilarly to vector drawings which are determined by a set of coordinates and a direction, leading to a creation of a path, which unless it has been animated, it appears static in front of our eyes. Vector also seems to be a good example for understanding the positioning of graphic elements assigned to the “potentiality of movement”. As an event that unfolds from the moment of being read by the computer until its been read by our eyes, in Massumi’s words: “ An object’s appearance is an event, full of all sorts of virtual movement. It’s real movement, because something has happened: the body has been capacitated. The action of vision, the kind of event it is, the virtual dimension it always has, is highlighted.”.
Algorythmic programs also call for performance (by machines), which not the less follow many of the same ‘operations’ by choreographers, such as William Forsythe, who used a script to generate a choreography out of a list of 135 movements.
(Other examples have been compiled in a ‘inventory’: http://pzwart1.wdka.hro.nl/~jo/inventory/ and will be further mentioned throughout the thesis)
The first part of the thesis will explore further the similarities in compositional processes found in graphic design and dance choreography. There are nonetheless other variables used in choreographic techniques, which could be explored while designing. These being a deeper consciousness of a presence of the body (embodiment) in design, highlighting the conditions of users as being temporally present, spatially aware, and considering ephemerality and improvisation strategies as an integral aspect of designing. The second part of my thesis will investigate further how this unlikely aspects to be applied to design, serve as point of departure for my for my project.
Overall in my considerations and experiments I mostly refer to digital media formats for designing, and since media has proven to my experience to be unstable, in constant transition, that shouldn’t design respond in the same continuous mutation, acknowledging its performative stance? Considering this away design as the unfolding of a series of events, and conditions rather than a static object.
I believe processes in design can learn from processes in performance, challenging the conventional design thinking. This cross-referencing system opens the possibility to unveil new aesthetic, energetic and social dimensions of design production processes.
Thesis Structure
Preface
Abstract
Introduction
‘’’PART 1.
The common structures:
COMPOSITION (time and space): Design and Performance rely on decisions of how to organize and distribute elements in space, how these elements relate to each other and how they inherently set a specific rhythm and flow, which is then perceived in the moment which is accessed/performed.
Eg.: (from inventory)
The common languages:
The choreographic scores developed by these different dance performers to communicate movement, use an extensive use of language such as - graphic / numeric / alphabetic complex systems. = Design Language/Tools/ Methods. For eg. to combine mathematics (geometry) and linguistics for communicating the position and relations between different elements, the properties of space, and time attributes. An exercise of code and decoding, writers (designers/ programmers/ choreographers) and readers (public /computer programs/ dancers)
Eg.: (from inventory)
‘’’PART 2. How to translate performativity into design?
A new hybrid form
With the current hybridized status of design, embedded in a technologic and socio-economic ever-changing stability conditions, is it still possible to discuss about static/fixed elements? When fluidity is taking a major role in design practices, how can these aspects become subject of discussion in first place?
- design as … conditions / an event or phenomena.
PERFORMANCE > DESIGN
The project currently exists of a series of experiments that try to translate performance to design, divided in categories: embodiment, ephemerality, improvisation and movement. As the process continues I hope the categories with its experiments merge into one single piece, which reflects on the conclusions I will take out of theory and experimental based information.
1. Embodiment (spatial and body consciousness)
- units
2. Ephemereality
- Being temporally present, spatially present: I now would like to continue to reflect upon the difference between discrete definition and one's actual perception of those same time values and evoque the intensities of spaces. In this way ephemerality becomes key, as well as its transformative effects that persist afterwards.
3. improvisation and determinism
4. on movement (virtual / actual)
Conclusions
From process to expression (form/outcomes)
Integrating a new set of variables in the method/LOGIC of design.
Eventness - Space and Time - http://pzwart1.wdka.hro.nl/~jo/notebook/series/series_thinkinginaction.html
"Starting in the middle", as Deleuze defines an "event" that happens in the present which means in the middle of past and future.
Design with a performative caracter because of being the unfolding of a possibility / an event / a phenomenon.
Keywords
Fluid or hybrid compositional processes / forms / tools / methodologies or fundamentals? Performativity / transdisciplinarity / cross-modal fusion? Dynamic unfolding of the here and now? Ephemerality Virtuality/ potentiality? or Intangibility?