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Graphic Interruptions update

11 February 2016
Dubdog, Graphic Design, Graphic interruptions, Photography, Psychogeography, Research, Spectacle, UCS
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Lampost-lottery

The blogging on here is truly taking a back seat as I thought it would *, but my Graphic Interruptions project continues. I got validation this week about its direction in the form of results for the first piece of assessed work on my Masters course, and I’m stumbling across more examples every time I step out onto a pavement.

The above example is one of my recent favourites. The reason I like it is because the graphics aren’t decayed by weather and its form isn’t physically broken. This is the case with a lot of examples I find which could lead to an accusation the project is solely concerned with ‘ruin-porn’, which it isn’t. This piece of graphic design is interrupted because of human interaction as someone has decided, (without too much thought), that health & safety concerns trump communication. This ultimately renders the intention of this item useless when approached from this direction. The question then needs to be asked about the suitability of such a communication device, in the form of pavement signage, if it is liable to have people tripping over it? I also like the irony this implies: the item becomes a lottery—will you or won’t you trip over it?—and I wonder whether there is more chance of financial gain if you were to trip over this and put in a ‘no win no fee’ claim than actually buying a lottery ticket.

Until now I’ve been using Tumblr as an image dump for my finds. However, I’m not convinced I was getting the traffic I wanted and I find Tumblr a little clunky. Now that Instagram have made switching between multiple accounts easy, I’ve created one for this project: you can find it at @graphic_interruptions

Lastly, for now—the undergraduate graphic design course I lecture on at UCS is taking students to New York at the end of this month. Exciting as it is to visit New York, I’m doubly excited to have the opportunity to make this project international.

Console

* It is typical that when I am extremely busy, (as seems to constantly be the case now), an idea for a blog post will throw itself at me that can’t be ignored, as happened recently with the article I wrote for Eye. See previous post. 

Pause and effect

10 October 2015
Dubdog, Education, Graphic Design, Graphic interruptions, Masters, Research, Spectacle, UCS
1 Comment
Perfect

Graphic Interruption: Perfect Image image

I am embarking on a new venture as of this week; that of starting a Masters. As a result it is unlikely that I will have the time to blog here as much as I have in the past. Dubdog blog is not closing, merely shifting emphasis and directing its attention elsewhere for the time being.

I anticipate I will still add to this blog over the next 2 years that I’m doing the MA course part time, but what with my day job and other commitments, I will have to prioritise rigorously and blogging here will be a much lower priority.

I am hugely looking forward to doing my MA. It is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time but have had to put it on the back burner over the last 5 years due to work commitments. The irony is that as an academic I am expected to be conducting scholarly activity and researching but the lecturing and administration side of being an academic is the thing that has held me back from doing this in anything but a piecemeal fashion. In the last five years I’ve maintained a regular (ish) activity here; peer-reviewed and written reviews for books for art and design publishers; attended conferences; contributed to other blogs, including that of Eye magazine; and I’ve been actively researching historic typographic and print related publications. I’ve even managed to create the odd piece of graphic design, self-published a book and followed my growing passion for photography with a number of personal projects. However, none of this has had a continued focus or the structure that is needed to truly give any of it real academic merit. The framework of an MA will give me that structure and allow that focus.

Do keep checking back from time to time, there will be the odd new post every once in a while. Thanks for reading thus far.

Readinglist1

Facebook: A cheap holiday in other people’s misery

4 July 2015
Critique, Culture, Facebook, Spectacle
2 Comments

I left Facebook a while ago, but my abiding memory of it meant this advert in today’s Guardian was ripe for a swift détournement.


What Facebook would like you to think it is:

IMG_1072

What Facebook actually is:

IMG_1074

McGummer

26 July 2014
Critique, Dubdog, McJunk, Spectacle
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It’s not everyday your local Tory MP big’s you up in the local newspaper. But to my surprise, I found my McJunk project featured in MP Ben Gummer’s weekly Ipswich Star article yesterday.

While I’m not sure Ben has completely seen he point of McJunk, (see McJunk website here), and I’m certainly not sure that the free advertising McDonald’s are getting from this is appropriate, I can’t be too harsh on the man as I expect that Ben’s love of beef burgers is a family thing that he is unable to distance himself from.

McGummer

Ipswich Star, Friday 25 July 2014

Museum of Water

21 June 2014
Art, Exhibition, Observation, Spectacle
1 Comment

Last week I was lucky to catch the Museum of Water exhibition at Somerset House before it closes at the end of this month.

tunnel

The Museum of Water is a project by Amy Sharrocks who has been collecting donated water and associated stories for the last 2 years. As the museum’s website pronounces: “In a time of relative plenty in Britain, we are gathering a collection of water for future generations to consider. Clean water is more and more difficult to access across the world: will people look back at our current profligacy with horror and amazement…will the notions of fountains, swimming pools and baths become as archaic as the Broad St Pump now seems? We need to hold on to it, consider what is precious about it and how we are using it now in order to explore how we might save it for the future.”

The museum doesn’t have a permanent site, and tours the country showing its collection in different locations. But for the month of June it is being hosted in the basement of Somerset House.

shelving

madagascar

antartica

catbowl

The basement of Somerset House is a suitably dark and damp venue, with the added feature of a leaky roof complimenting the exhibition. Volunteers are on hand to talk you through the exhibits and show you the filing systems used to log all the donations.

buckets

In this location, a sense of a victorian curiosity show is overpowering. The shelves are laden with vast amounts of bottles and the dark wood and sensitive lighting help to focus the attention of the viewer on the different shapes of bottles and the explainers contained next to each.

The stories of people donating water veers from the poignant and academic to the pointless and banal. There is a unifying sense regardless and the whole feels very human and touching, let alone thought provoking. It struck me as I view the different donations that water is a single source, as all of it is contained within this world of ours. What I drink out of a tap today, and then pass into the British sewage system could end up half-way around the world. So despite some of the donations being from Madagascar or Delhi, it is fitting for it to sit next to water from Suffolk. And at the same time, because of the discolouration of some of the samples, (and yes, there are some of those sort of ‘samples’ as well), it becomes blindingly obvious that safe drinking water is easier to come across in Ipswich than in Delhi.

delhi

suffolk

There are interactive ‘puzzles’ in some of the alcoves in the basement as well which are fun. For example, one alcove contains a bowl of water with pots surrounding it; if you pour water from one pot into the bowl, you form a connection and a recording of someone talking about their relationship to water starts playing. And it immediately stops if you break the flow.

pourastory

It is a shame that the exhibition is only on at Somerset House for the month of June. So depending on when you are reading this, you either haven’t got long left to see it, or you’ve missed your chance. However, this is an ongoing project, so some aspects of it will be viewable in other locations in the future: follow the Museum on Facebook or Twitter to keep abreast of its development, or view its Flickr page to see photographs of more donations and different locations to Museum has visited.

cabinet

Museum of Water website

Museum of Water on Facebook

Museum of Water on Twitter

Museum of Water at Flickr

Our Nation’s Sons

13 October 2013
Architecture, Illustration, Politics, Spectacle
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After reading the latest copy of Varoom the other day, I’ve really taken to Joe Caslin’s Our Nation’s Sons project which has just won a New Talent award from the Association of Illustrators.

Viewcraig-Street-575px

The project is aimed at repositioning the views of young men about themselves in a world of negative stereotypes. As Caslin puts it on his website: “As a nation we have pushed a significant number of our young men to the very edges of society and created within them feelings of neglect and apathy. It is now time to empower these young lads and give them a sense of belonging. I cannot fix the complex problems of apathy and disillusionment by simply sticking a drawing to a wall. However, I can create something more meaningful than any bureaucratic promise and generate a more positive social impact than many published articles, political broadcasts or speeches.”

At the centre of the project is the subject, in more ways than one—as Casiln explains when discussing the process of creating the work: “Find them, draw them, get them to stick them up”, and the positive power of this action on the participant/collaborators can clearly be heard in their voices in this video:

 

In watching the video it is refreshing to hear the observation of one of the lads involved: “When you’re walking around town you see these huge billboards with pictures of celebrities and models for big brands, it’ll be good just to see a giant image of a normal teenager”. This brings into question stereotypes beyond those of anti-social behaviour and challenges the perception that all teenagers are brand obsessed and incapable of decoding when they are being manipulated by advertising.

This project is a positive one on so many different levels, and it probably takes Caslin to sum it up best: “A drawing has the power to go further than words. But a 40ft drawing has the potential to resonate and disrupt the visual landscape of a city. It has the power to pull a passer-by from the mundane, the power to trend and the power to gain real social momentum. It will re-establish respect for and showcase the capabilities of our nation’s sons.”

The project has just recently moved from the streets of Edinburgh to Caslin’s native Ireland and the dramatic Achill-henge. Read here what the local news made of the project.

 

Follow Our Nation’s Sons on Facebook

Culture jam: Art Everywhere

22 June 2013
Advertising, Art, Exhibition, Spectacle
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I love the idea of the Art Everywhere project. For the uninitiated, Art Everywhere proposes to fill billboards across the UK with prints of famous art. I like the concept of this because:

Firstly, while not a new idea, it is getting art out of galleries and onto the streets, making it more accessable. *

Secondly, it is democratic, (to a degree). The public can vote on what they want to see displayed on billboards across the nation. * *

Thirdly, it is putting billboards out of commission to advertisers for a period of time—the ultimate culture jam, you could argue. * * *

For more details about the project, head on over to the Art Everywhere website and donate £3 to help make this happen:  arteverywhere.org.uk

 

* It could be argued that the concept behind this has been borrowed from a recent campaign The Partners did for The National Gallery

* * I would like to know more about the long listing process, and how the decisions were made about what the public can vote on. For example, I was very disappointed to find no Gilbert & George on the list, but then maybe there is already enough shit and piss on our high streets!

* * * When there was an advert ban in São Paulo in 2007 it created an interesting visual and commercial void in the city scape with billboards stripped of their posters—but I always thought that was a waste of space, however intriguing it looked.

O Christmas Tree

9 December 2012
Spectacle
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On a visit to see my mother yesterday, she convinced us that we should go to a Christmas Tree exhibition in Brightlingsea Church. Not sure what to expect, and not really being a Christmassy sort of person, I was bowled over by two of the entries.

WoolWoolybully by Zoe Aldridge got my vote for adult entry.

RocketUnfortunately I didn’t record a credit for this tree, but it got my vote for the children’s entry, (although I suspect they might have had a little help).

Most other trees were more traditional in nature, and decorated with an array of usual and unusual objects. There were Lib Dem and Tory trees, sitting at opposite ends of the church, and it is a shame that no one was brave enough to turn the adult category into an Adult category, which would have been amusing.

But despite my disagreement about most things to do with Christmas, I’d be proud to have either of the above in my front room for the last week in December.

Titter ye not

5 September 2012
Advertising, Critique, Design, Spectacle
2 Comments

Every year there must be hundreds of dissertations being written by undergraduate design students about the portrayal of women in advertising, all referencing the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and Adbusters along the way. And you could spend a long time trawling the Internet for articles about sex being used to sell commercial products. I’ve become a little used to such arguments. However, I never expected to see sex being used to sell integrated office systems. That is, until I turned a corner in Norwich the other day to be confronted by this image on the back of a van:

I was dumbfounded and genuinely taken aback for a few seconds. I could start a basic National Diploma level Media Studies deconstruction at this point, mentioning the see-through blouse and the provocative pointing of the metaphor, sorry, I mean pen. I haven’t worked in many offices over the years, but I suspect this attire would receive raised eyebrows in the average insurance office. It certainly would in the Art and Design department staff-room I frequent in my day job.

Just as I was getting over the shock of this image, thinking how utterly inappropriate and offensive it was, I was confronted with this sight on the side of the van:

I can only imagine the conversation going on here, as the guy stares at the woman’s breasts and she leans provocatively over his desk. I don’t think I have ever seen anything quite so ridiculous on the side of a van before—I almost expected a slow 1970s groove to start playing as the woman in the photograph dropped her pen and reached under the table to ‘pick it up’!

I find it incredible that neither the designers who proposed this, nor the people at Mayday thought this wouldn’t be objectionable. The objectification of women in advertising and throughout the media is endemic in our society. However, the image on this van, for a photocopying business of all things, could not only be seen as an example of how sexist imagery has become a typical state of affairs in our everyday, but also how accepting and unchallenging many have become to such things. Without wanting to sound like some 1980s anarcho-feminist tubthumping kill-joy, the jolt of seeing this atrocious piece of applied graphics in a high street has convinced me more than ever that design criticism needs to challenge such things a little more often. It can’t be left to the undergraduates who still feel passionate enough about such things to write a critical dissertation only they and their lecturers will read.

In praise of…

4 August 2012
Analogue, Critique, Digital, Spectacle
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—Binoculars

Claire and I have recently returned from a week on the North Norfolk coast. We were staying in a restored fisherman’s shack halfway up a hill that overlooked the Salthouse marshes and beach. Like many people who go on holiday nowadays, we took many electrical gadgets with their associated chargers.

Despite the digital devices that shackle us to power supplies that we insist on taking with us everywhere, one of the greatest joys of the holiday was watching ships and the Sheringham Shoal wind farm through our binoculars. We bought these on the recommendation of a twitcher colleague. We wanted something reliable, comfortable, and good value for money—we didn’t want to spend mega money on a pair that were more than what we needed. We bought them several years ago, somewhere in the region of £60–70, from Cley Spy on one of our many trips up the Norfolk coast. To some this may seem like a lot of money, but they were some of the cheapest in the shop. Having only used cheap binoculars previously, I can assure you that it is worth spending that little bit more. When not holidaying, they generally live in our car, only coming out on odd occasions. But as Claire and I usually insist on holidays that involve views, they are usually a permanent fixture when away from home.

One of the things that these binoculars made me contemplate while we were away, was how I have got so used to looking at things on screens, and rapidly accepted that I need to charge my daily digital accoutrements to the extent that I have to take plugs and leads with me where ever I go. Yet while the images that appear projected onto the double ‘screens’ through these Helios Field Binoculars are crystal clear, they don’t need plugging in; no power is involved, there are no batteries to recharge, and I don’t need to turn them on. Strangely, and momentarily, I found myself surprised by this, as if I had made an observation, (no pun intended), that I hadn’t considered before.

That these thoughts should strike me is an indication of how my mind has subconsciously linked the phenomena of seeing imagery on a screen with my use of electronic media. Obviously binoculars aren’t a screen—you look through a lens—but never the less, there is a double illusion going on here. Firstly, the trick on the eye/mind in bringing things closer to view. Secondly, that my mind is reading these images as being immediately in front of my eyes on the glass discs encased in metal, rubber, and plastic. Through recent lifestyle decisions of always having screens with me on the go, be that a digital camera or iPhone, my brain has, without questioning, accepted this as a way of seeing imagery. To some extent, it could be argued, that I am no longer seeing this imagery on the screen, I am now merely looking at it.

To add an irony to this tale, I have just considered that these thoughts struck me while watching the gentle beauty of an offshore wind farm, built because of our insatiable demand for electricity due to our growing habit for digital/electronic gadgetry. And in light of all this far distance navel gazing, I have a renewed wonder for my pair of humble binoculars.