Posts categorized “Favorites”.

Drawing machines

http://www.youdontmatter.com/files/gimgs/5_b03.jpg

http://www.youdontmatter.com/files/gimgs/5_b03.jpg

After a workshop by Jürg Lehni, among who’s works are Hektor and Scriptographer, ‘You don’t matter’ converted a plotting machine into an device to draw, scratch or cut with traditional drawing measures. The goal was to combine aesthetics of hand drawings and computer aided design. With analogous tools as well as computational errors you get imperfectness and individuality.

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Grid-based Type Design

http://www.fonts.info/dlcounter/DrWeb_DownloadZaehler.php?d=7

Since I prototyped my font design with ‘fontstruct’ which has an grid-based interface for shaping each letter, it might be worth mentioning that this approach obviously goes even back to Jan Tschichold and his ‘New Typography’ in the 30ies. This year typedesigner Sebastian Nagel recontructed Tschichold’s Typeface originally named ‘Leicht und Schnell Konstruierbare Schrift’ (A font easily and fast to construct) and translated it digitally. The end-product is Iwan Reschniev. (Sample pdf over fonts.info/info/iwan-reschniev.htm)

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First font plot

Eventually I have three different versions of the TrueType designed. The original one for usage on screen, print and as source of font outlines for programming. The second version is for plotting with a felt- or ball-pen. It consists of multiple lines to get a kind of hatching that makes a filled type when rendering. The third one is for cut outs and therefore contains gaps to leave some paper as the shapes become holes.

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Font development


(On the top you see the final TrueType font whereas the image below shows the very first version)

The font was to be simple, clear, neutral. It should consist of unambiguous characters with good readability. Moreover the typeface should work fine in small point-sizes as well as in huge format - on the screen, in print and sculpture.
Because of different reasons a classic commercial font is not an option: First, because of the installation’s aspect of Zeitgeist - on one hand the installation should be timeless and matter-of-fact on the other hand it should suit a contemporary feeling for aesthetics (A font like Helvetica, Avenir or Blender are overused, impersonal and loaded with associations). A self-made font can be designed and adjusted to one’s actual and desired needs and does not involve any licensing or costs. An individual Type is therefore very important as it is the element on which all other designs base on. I decided to design an edgy font to get some suspenseful differences through varying sizes. Thus it also contains just straight lines and no curves what makes its coordinates easier to translate into different media.

A closer look at the font development shows that I started with more obviously varying shapes that formed a much more diversified face. In small continuous text or viewed from distance the first versions of the character set look too reserved and female though, so that I went on with more uniform and rather blunt letters. Other than that I mainly changed proportions.

To realize the TrueType I used the online application on fontstruct.com. Here you basically build up each character in a pixel-like grid and lets you choose between different modules for this. Finally it offers the possibility to apply ‘filters’ to the whole character set before generating a TrueType. I welcomed that since I could very much need that for easily generating a kind of line patterned font.
Fontstruct has limited features and conversion algorithms so that I needed to retouch the font with a font editor. I used the free software Font Forge for that purpose.

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Stefan Brüggemann

http://www.stefanbruggemann.com/work/images/tp/036.jpg

http://www.stefanbruggemann.com/work/images/tp/036.jpg


Stefan Brüggemann is one of the representatives of the neo-conceptual art movement who produces polemic and often provocative works mainly with texts or ‘ghost-words’. ‘Ghost-words’ he explaines are “those words that stay in your mind most of the time without making you say them out loud. I see those words blinking in neon in my mind, that’s why neon is the most mental medium. Another characteristics of those words is the dimension of time they contain. Have you ever spent enough time contemplating a certain word till it became something else?”
Probably best known is the artist for ‘Showtitles’: A list of suggestions for exhibition titles that can freely be used by anyone as long as they are credited to the artist. On the website each title is clickable so that you can listen to it spoken. Within an exhibition context they are displayed in black vinyl lettering on the wall. Other than that the media he uses ranges from photography, neon works, writing and film making to planning hotels or curating activities.
Stefan Brüggemann is interested in the void, ‘pictures that become words’ or other ‘words that become pictures’. He is interested in how certain issues “are reflected in all kinds of political or life-style slogans. Or to put it in other words”, he sais, “I am interested in the names of names.”
Asked about his ‘Text Pieces’ he states “The only thing that I could say about the Text Pieces is: what you read is what you get.”
(from interviews on stefanbruggemann.com/bibliography)

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Sandy Smith

http://www.sandysmith.co.uk/artwork/computers/sunset/sandy_smith_sunset_01.jpg

http://www.sandysmith.co.uk/artwork/computers/sunset/sandy_smith_sunset_01.jpg

http://www.sandysmith.co.uk/artwork/poststuckism/image5.html

http://www.sandysmith.co.uk/artwork/poststuckism/image5.html


Sandy Smith’s ‘Mauritian Sunset’ is a wall of computers and screens and ‘Please don’t break my heart’ was made from around 100 sheets of mounting board glued together to form the sentence “All the time I was making this I was thinking of you”. It fell during the exhibition as it could not stand without scaffolding. I think in combination with the title and the text this unintended transformation due to the physical construction becomes a significant part of the art work.

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Mike Mills, Blonde Redhead - Silently

http://mikemillsweb.com/filmandvideo_br_silently.html

http://mikemillsweb.com/filmandvideo_br_silently.html


With ‘Blonde Redhead - Silently’ Mike Mills made a music video that creates images with just plain white text on a black ground describing scenes different to the lyrics of the song.

In 1959 McLuhan said “flickers, as the movies were once called, are really built into the printed form. The printed form is itself a flicker in which you are constantly transferring from this shot to that shot. This shot, the image lingers while you look at that one, and while you look at the next one, there’s a fingering, wavering, doubtful no-man’s land.” (Essential McLuhan, p.282)

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Ernesto Neto, Tara Donovan, Tomas Saraceno, Tobias Putrih

http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/neto/7.jpg

http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/neto/7.jpg

http://www.acegallery.net/artists/donovan/TD-UntCupsLA.jpg

http://www.acegallery.net/artists/donovan/TD-UntCupsLA.jpg

http://maxprotetch.com/MEDIA/00178.jpg

http://maxprotetch.com/MEDIA/00178.jpg

http://www.re-title.com/public/exhibitors/936/archive_1940_TanyaBonakdarGallery-2.jpg

http://www.re-title.com/public/exhibitors/936/archive_1940_TanyaBonakdarGallery-2.jpg

Artist work in the field of installation and sculpture: Ernesto Neto, Tara Donovan, Tomas Saraceno and Tobias Putrih give examples of creative space, usage of materials with high availability and modular construction.
Ernesto Neto is mostly working with light, flexible fabrics in nylon or cotton resulting in spaceous installations whereas Tara Donovan uses various everyday materials such as tape, drinking straws or plastic cups to form large-scale abstract floor and wall works.”She considers patterning, configuration, and the play of light when determining the structure of her works but the final form evolves from the innate properties and structures of the material itself.”(Hammer Museum, Los Angeles 2004) Tomas Saraceno used elastic rope to realize installations like ‘Galaxies Forming ALong Filaments, Like Droplets Along the Strands of a Spider’ which I got to see in New York this year. Among Tobias Putrih’s work especially the usage of cardboard or projection screens are interesting references.

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Augmented space, Edges light-installation

http://www.pablovalbuena.com/imgs/quebec.jpg

http://www.pablovalbuena.com/imgs/quebec.jpg

http://www.framebox.de/creations/3d/edges/till_stefan.jpg

http://www.framebox.de/creations/3d/edges/till_stefan.jpg

With his augmented sculptures and urban installation Pablo Valbuena shows great effect with a simple method. A combination of light and object at it’s best. Stefan Golz and Till Nowak were doing some light installations with a similar idea. They also used some typographic elements in Edges but ulike Pablo Valbuena they did not project them considering the three-dimensional distortion of the projection.

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Twitter, Twistori

http://twistori.com

http://twistori.com

Twitter seemed to me to be a potential source of brief messages taken from various people in various places at the same time. The increasing number of applications around the so called tweets show it is also relatively straight forward to get the desired text input from Twitter as the feed is it’s main task.
Twistori is an application that uses messages posted on Twitter for a social experiment. It filters posts optionally by the usage of the words “love, hate, think, believe, feel, wish” and thus realizes a ticker on community’s emotions expressed in sentences containing one of those key words.

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