Typologies

+Printed/Paper +communication/signal +Writing +Lettering/typography/calligraphy +code/system +icons +subversive +absurd/noise +performance +middle east/arab +power dynamic/politics +generative +populist+language +war +sustainability +identity +aesthetic +interaction +resource+ +archive+ collection +together/participation +systematic +(self)control +segregation/integration +rhizome +psychology +Instructional Diagrams +Organizational diagrams +People: People organizing in social groups / patriotism / nationalism

Thesis Mise en Scène

The following is a mise en scène for the thesis thinking process. A collection of potential territories and areas of interest. A potpourri of ideas, events, people and places that influence my work. 15 categories, 45 sub categories, 135 images.

Reading: Deconstruction and Graphic Design

Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller. Published in special issue of Visible Language on graphic design history, edited by Andrew Blauvelt (1994)

[...]

Post-structuralism’s emphasis on the openness of meaning has been incorporated by many designers into a romantic theory of self-expression: as the argument goes, because signification is not fixed in material forms, designers and readers share in the spontaneous creation of meaning. This approach represents a rather cheerful response to the post-structuralist theme of the “death of the author” and the assertion that the interior self is constructed by external technologies of representation. According to the writings of Barthes and Foucault, for example, the citizen/artist/producer is not the imperious master of systems of language, media, education, custom, and so forth; instead, the individual operates within the limited grid of possibilities these codes make available. Rather than view meaning as a matter of private interpretation, post-structuralist theory tends to see the realm of the “personal” as structured by external signs. Invention and revolution come from tactical aggressions against this grid of possibilities.

[...]

First things first

How does one start writing down a thesis? He just does. The following is a list of ideas I plan to edit over time. Some are more abstract than others.
Belonging and the desperate need to identify / the unique and the collective / together alone / belief and religion promoting oppression and ethnocentrism / participatory / generative systems / evolution in systems, sequences, order, semantics and logic (or lack of) / systematic creativity / the planned and the accidental / glitch and noise / language and typography / redundancy / the Archive / control and (self)censorship / alienation and integration / …

Reading: Metaphors We Live by

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. 2nd ed. University Of Chicago Press, 2003.

[...]

We have seen that metaphor pervades our normal conceptual system. Because so many of the concepts that are important to us are either abstract or not clearly delineated in our experience (the emotions, ideas, time, etc.), we need to get a grasp on them by means of other concepts that we understand in clearer terms. This need leads to metaphorical definition in our conceptual system.

Definitions for a concept are seen as characterizing  the things that are inherent in the concept itself. We, on the other hand, are concerned with how human beings get a handle on the concept – how they understand it and function in terms of it. We are concerned primarily with how people understand their experiences. We view language as providing data that can lead to general principles of understanding. The general principles involve whole systems of concepts rather than individual words or individual concepts. We have found that such principles are often metaphoric in nature and involve understanding one kind of experience in terms of another kind of experience.

Such a concern for how we comprehend experience requires a very different concept of definition from the standard one. The principal issue for such an account of definition is what gets defined and what does the defining.

[...]

Rhizomatic identities and the need to belong

“The starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the historical process to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory. Therefore it is imperative at the outset to compile such an inventory.”

-Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks

The following is a compilation of loosely connected ideas. It is the current state of an ongoing research and readings rather than an exhaustive essay towards a conclusive end. I will deliberately omit citing a bibliography because most of the content is not my own. It’s more of a compendium of writings by other people; collected, amalgamated and sometimes re-written, beyond just ‘referencing’. I will however try to keep track of my sources in the bibliography page.

The metaphor of Identity as strata inspired a series of posters found here.

Continue reading…