To begin this brief I decided to contact a graphic designer called Adam Griffin who was working on some really interesting curation projects. In the hope this would give me a bit of a direction to aim myself here was his response.
Hi Jonathan,
no worries about missing the talk – I’ll see if there's any documentation of the evening for you, if not I’m sure we’ll catch each other at some point.
Some answers below for you, and again give me a shout if you need anything else.
I read that the automated process you used for forme came from your research into online image hoarding, how did you approach your research at the beginning of the project?
The project / process began from my own curiosity surrounding the collecting and harvesting of online images via platforms like Tumblr. I was initially interested in the range of subjects and typologies that were displayed, and how even in this stage there was an odd and subversive relationship between the material – a fashion image from the 80s sat beside an Yves Klein sculpture, an image of Michael Jordan next to an image from a 90s homeware shopping catalogue – It occurred to me that the blog read like a timeline or linear biography of my collecting, but there was no indication to where I paused and re-engaged. I wanted to study not just what I was collecting but also what this may of said about the kind of imagery I was drawn to.
The automated process came out of this analysis, discovering and formulating an algorithm between the online platform and the printed page. The process gathers all the disparate imagery and begins to form compositions or ‘constellations’ of the images, overlapping, truncating, and creating a curatorial manner in which it spurs serendipity and arbitrary results.
What was the rationale behind using the automated process?Within my own experimental publishing projects, I wanted to adopt the process as a means of the designer losing control. I discovered that I was, becoming hardwired and mentally programmed to design to set rules or expectations when working on a lot of client led work. It’s very much the graphic designers norm – place images and text like this, don’t you dare kern your type like that, never crop an image like this, don’t have anything in the gutter of the page like that.
The automatic curation that I adopted became the anarchistic element to my design practice, by breaking all said rules. I could feed it content, but the design results become justified by the algorithm.
The main feature of using it within Forme was to create some unexpected layouts and compositions that allowed a further discourse around the concept of the magazine, exploring the space between fashion and fine art photography. The process allows a more conceptual take on curating the content, and disrupting or fragmenting sequences and contexts.
And do you think that automation impacts the context and message of the image?I think it can if we choose to see it that way. We can look at a page of images and read each individual photograph as we may in a gallery or on screen, but we could also choose to look at what that image becomes when placed next to another, and this is the territory that I’m interested in with automation and experimental curation. The fact that the ‘machine’ has placed 2 images next to eachother or over eachother allows us to perhaps see those images in completely different contexts, or read a new message or meaning, and that’s why I find it so exciting. The process often makes decisions that I, as a designer, editor or curator may never decide to do, be it because of the precious nature of the images or because of the engrained design methodologies that I have practiced over the years.
Within Forme, we adopted the process to an experimental piece of writing by Jennifer Richards. Taking something that is so linear and sequential such as a text and running it through the algorithmic process results in a complete burst of fragments that takes on a completely new piece of communication. I think this becomes the tipping point in the generative process in that it allows us to reinstate, repurpose or re-present an existing piece of media into something new, disrupting or manipulating the reading, or reveal something that perhaps otherwise is concealed.
Cheers!
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