If there is one missing point that I would like to share with everyone after the many wonderful interactions I have had these last few days, it is this:
Mobilizing to get the government to respond to the will of the people and do something about the corporate decimation of the world is based on the idea that the government and the corporations are separate entities, that corporations only influence those in government. Please consider for a moment how this strategy works (and if it works) if they are NOT two separate entities. If the government is filled with people from these industries then they are not in fact influenced, and likewise will not be swayed by demands from the people. They are acting in their own interest and that action includes first and foremost silencing the voices of those who would expose them. If there is any capitulation on their part, is it only to appease and pacify the people – to allow them a sense of victory specifically to lessen their resolve? For example, if the Keystone XL Pipeline is stopped will it be a victory? I imagine it will be celebrated as such, but will this victory serve to roll back the climate crisis or just keep from making it that much worse? No steps forward is three steps back... Manufactured crisis is seductive strategy – desperately chasing every new threat can distract from the larger issue. I have heard this issue roundly referred to as Capitalism – I’m just going to call it profit.
At the People’s Climate March on Sunday I heard a few chants directed at President Obama. The next time you hear/watch the President speak I invite you to imagine him as a used car salesman, attempting to sell you the same lemon that the last President/salesman tried to sell you. Now swap that car showroom with one overflowing with American Made high-tech weapons of war. There he is wheeling and dealing weapons to the Saudis (and practically every country in the Middle East and North Africa) that they buy with money we pay them for oil. So when you are at the pump are you buying American Made weapons for the Saudis? Do you think the Weapons Industry wants you to stop buying oil from the Saudis? When you consider the chaos that we see across the world today, please remember that the military solution we reflexively deploy in every crisis, from war on terror to hurricane relief to policing our streets, ALWAYS has an underlying profit/power motive. The more chaos and conflict, the more weapons sold. And this in turn provides the rationale for further militarization and security control. If this man in the White House is not the community organizer, anti-war progressive that many “hoped” he was; if he is in fact just a fantastically charismatic mouthpiece installed by the banks and industries he serves – what then?
You can stage this type of salesman scene substituting any politician you wish to see how well they can play the role. When I was at Flood Wall Street yesterday I found myself imagining the morning call our new Mayor may have received from his new police commissioner:
“What’s the word today Mr. Mayor? Oppression or Not Oppression? Thank you sir we understand.” ___
When I walk into a gallery, I prefer to look at the art
without first reading the provided curatorial blurb or even the titles
of the works themselves. This is my design eye, always looking to
understand the work without the assistance of the written word. Does
this work speak to me? Does it tell me its story without the
accompanying critical analysis? Do I provide the context or is it
provided for me? That said, I do love art that incorporates words and
typography – Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, John Baldessari, On
Kawara, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer... But the artwork that has had the
most profound impact on my process often has no plastic manifestation,
no tangible artifact in the traditional sense. When I first learned
about DADA, I really didn’t know what the hell to make of it. Every
single artist involved seemed to be doing their own thing – where is the essential cohesive visual statement?
When I experienced FLUXUS, I could clearly see the relationship between
the two movements. The emphasis was not on producing precious artworks,
but on inspiring (or inciting) the would be audience to action so that
they too become participants in the creative process. This blurring of
the line between artist and audience, between art and life,
this irreverent disregard for the hierarchical categorization of all
things artistic delights me to no end. There is a playfulness to the
“work,” a fleeting timelessness centered on the ever present now. The
compulsory this or that duality fades as the “artist” releases control of the process and invites everyone to join in the fun. My writing on The Missing Point
over the last two years has focused on expanding the dialogue in a
similar manner, so that we may move past the dualistic (conflict)
narratives we are provided. While the content on Forth Position will
likely continue to be primarily visual, I am going to have some fun
breaking through my own this or that duality, and post some (perhaps
even a buncha) words here.
I have written previously
about the many factors that contribute to the production and
replication (or “regurgitation” as a professor of mine once termed it)
of design that is tried and true rather than design that is... well... Design. Design with a capital D - as in innovation, creation, and communication. I recently participated in a class titled Design + Psychology at the Pratt Free School. Our graduate student professor brought up the aphorism there’s nothing new under the sun
(everything’s been done before) to launch into a discussion about how
creativity is a process of synthesis, taking two things and combining
them into something new. It got me thinking about what that “new”
actually is. Is it new if I have never done it before, even if someone
else already has? Would my version of this already done thing not be
different as a function of my creation, born of my unique perception and
understanding? Is there no value in experiencing it, doing it yourself,
if someone else has done it before you? Is it not still a creative act
regardless? Take dance for instance – a dancer may move in ways that we
have seen before, but we still recognize the creative act of dancing.
Even when a dance is choreographed, isn’t it essentially different each
time it is danced by a new group of dancers? It would seem that dance is
not limited to an exploration of newness as the essential creative act.
Expression, experience, and freedom itself all come into play. Time and
circumstance, the element of chance, all of these factors are there.
Over this last year I had the opportunity to explore these concepts with
my students teaching a course called Motion Design: Graphic Design at
Pratt Institute. As a first time professor, it was challenging to unpack
such a comprehensive subject and format it in a way that would build
progressively over the term. In preparation, I spoke with the many
professors I know in motion, design, and other related disciplines, and
researched the methodologies of numerous others. I share this bit of my
experience hoping it will provide some insight (and enjoyment) to
educators and designers and those interested in such things.
On
the first day of class I have my students do a little peer to peer
interview to initiate our class dialogue. They break out into pairs
taking about 5 minutes each. They take notes and present one another’s
answers. When there is an odd number of students one of them gets to
interview me (!). The questions are simple enough, what is your name,
where are you from, what’s your favorite food, what do you like to do,
and the last one - what is motion design? Answers to that last
question vary. There are some general answers like “graphics that move,”
and “4D design” (the extra dimension being time). There are more
theoretical and technical answers like motion design is about creating
the illusion of motion from a series of stills, or it is about using
specific programs to make your illustrations move. Their answers provide
a reference point for us to begin a dialogue that will continue
throughout the semester (and beyond). I ask them if there is a
difference between motion graphics and motion design – taking the opportunity to laugh with them about the inevitable conversation where your mom asks “what exactly do you do?”
We watch a video titled “What is Motion Design?”
after which I inquire “what do you think of that?” This is a common
refrain in the class. It’s about developing trust and respect, letting
the students own the dialogue so they can recognize the value of their
individual voice. When I ask them what applications there are for motion
design they each have the the opportunity to chime in, to experience
the importance of their input to our learning process. I write their
contributions on the board as they call them out. My notes include a
dozen – they come up with a dozen, including one I forgot. I add my
single remaining contribution to the list to seal the deal. We’re all in
this together now – this is our list. The class is not a competition – we are all here to learn. As Paolo Freire writes in Pedagogy of the Oppressed:
“Education
must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by
reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are
simultaneously teachers and students. This solution is not (nor can it
be) found in the banking concept. On the contrary, banking education
maintains and even stimulates the contradiction through the following
attitudes and practices, which mirror oppressive society as a whole: (a)
the teacher teaches and the students are taught; (b) the teacher knows
everything and the students know nothing; (c) the teacher thinks and the
students are thought about; (d) the teacher talks and the students
listen—meekly; (e) the teacher disciplines and the students are
disciplined; (f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the
students comply; (g) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion
of acting through the action of the teacher; (h) the teacher chooses
the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to
it; (i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his own
professional authority, which he sets in opposition to the freedom of
the students; (j) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process,
while the pupils are mere objects.”
In my first term the student who interviewed me summarized my what is motion design answer as, “Thomas thinks that motion design is EVERYTHING!” Quite the ego huh? What I was getting at is that everythingin life
can be a potential source for motion design. Design doesn’t happen in a
vacuum after all. Communication is based in common language and
cultural coding, and this common language goes much deeper than the
sounds we utter. When we have a story to tell, we don’t actually have to
connect all the dots. I have found that it is more effective to
let my audience make these connections themselves, engendering a more
personal experience based on their specific perceptions, not just the
ones I provide for them. This doesn’t mean I leave the page blank,
however, simply that I allow the space for my audience to participate in telling their story. The destination is less certain but the experience is more lasting.
My
experience as an organizer has taught me that people are more likely to
mobilize around ideas that they feel passionate about. For that
mobilization to be lasting the people must feel that their efforts are
more than a means to an end, a demand that will be granted or denied;
there must be an intrinsic sense of fulfillment present in the
mobilization itself. If we are only concerned with outcomes and goals
then the mobilization will be constrained by whether these goals are
deemed to be achievable, and ultimately judged on whether they have been
achieved. This product over process approach is self defeating in that
it generally emphasizes the problem rather than the development and
exploration of alternate possibilities. Asking how to solve a specific
problem is quite different than asking the people how they actually want
to live. Within education there is a similar emphasis on goals and
results. There are many extrinsic motivators for student performance –
good grades, the recognition of other students, the promise of
employment, etc. But these motivators can also act as detractors,
setting up a dependency in students on external factors that they do not
control. Helping students to ask questions and value their own
responses can lead to an exploration of what they feel passionate about.
The emphasis here is on dialogue and discovery, on enjoying the journey
rather than on arriving at a predetermined destination. My hope is that
this process provides my students with an experiential model they can
reference throughout their lives, one that helps them establish the
sense of self-worth required to prioritize work that they enjoy over
work they do not.
A major part of that first day lesson plan revolves around a comparative analysis of the opening titles from Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, and Se7en.
While prepping the lesson for class I sought out online versions of the
opening titles to show. It was easy enough to locate the Saul Bass
titles and those for Se7en on Art of the Title, but the SOTL
titles were harder to find. A smallish video on YouTube (with a
hungarian V.O.) inspired me to pick up the DVD at the library before
class. When I dumped the DVD into my class computer, it demanded that I
assign a region to the DVD player (apparently the first time anyone has
projected a DVD for a class in the lab). Of course I couldn’t do this
without an administrator password, and none of the ever helpful student
techs working the lab knew this password… Ultimately the DVD had to be
played on one of the other iMacs in the lab. So now Hannibal
is making faces on a screen (the DVD menu) across from one of my
students. As we begin class the student asks “what are we going to see
in that movie?” I respond that we are going to look at the titles from
the film. She asks “opening or closing titles?” “Opening.” Then she and
another student start talking about how they don’t remember the titles
from the film and anticipation starts to build… Hannibal continues to
make faces throughout my lesson. I really couldn’t have planned it
better myself. By the time we got to the SOTL titles, the
students’ curiosity had peaked and they were fully engaged, likely
expecting some gorgeous mo graph opus. It really grounded the whole
point in a way that I could not have anticipated.
First we view the titles for Vertigo and Psycho, both by the legendary Saul Bass. “What is happening here? What can you tell me about the design?” I ask. My students note that the Psycho
titles seem more frenetic, that Saul Bass uses stripes to animate the
type on and off, that there is no photographic element as in the Vertigo titles. The typeface is a little different from one to the other (slab serif vs. sans serif). The Psycho titles are black and white while Vertigo
has color. The students point out that the music is a major factor in
both sequences, but that it seems more clearly related to the animation
in the Psycho titles. After my students have made their
observations I add “One of the things I notice when watching the two
title sequences back to back is that most of the Vertigo titles have a centered layout, whereas the Psycho
titles seem more unpredictable in their layout. He seems to be
following a similar sort of grid here, but I can’t quite place where the
type will land from credit to credit. Is this a conscious choice?
Why do you think he makes this choice?” This leads to a bit more
dialogue about how Bass builds tension, establishing a grid and
repeatedly breaking it to a create a feeling of anxiety before the film
even begins.
We move onto the Silence of the Lambs
titles (thank you Art of the Title for posting these). Commentary from
the class starts with one student saying quietly “why is the
letter-spacing so bad?” As we continue watching the students moan, groan
and laugh, pointing at the screen to locate the flaws in each
consecutive title card. Kerning, leading, justification, every rule is
broken with even a couple in camera type gags to boot. The critique
culminates with another student saying “even with
all the obvious problems, I don’t mind the titles and I think they work
with the subject matter of the film.” I wait until they all come to a
consensus around this thought before letting them know that the credits
were produced by one of the most influential
design firms of the time ( M&Co. ) and that the design is intentionally “bad.” It’s not a function of typing into After Effects at the default settings
(or simply the limitations of the technology of the time as another student
astutely brings up), it is a conscious choice. My students can see that the
titles are successful in conveying a feeling; their odd, off kilter
unpredictable alignment and letter spacing keys us into the
unpredictable nature of the film itself. The outline type appears oddly similar to the type used in Vertigo,
but here the painstakingly “random” placement of the type, with its
solid black fill, “haphazardly” blocks the shots rather than completing a
thoughtfully designed composition. There is some hierarchical type
scaling as in the Saul Bass titles, but any semblance of regular pattern
is subverted the moment it appears. The appearance of unpredictability
increases exponentially with ones understanding of the intricacies of
typography and design, but as I mentioned earlier – all the dots don’t need to connect. Something is going on here – and the semblance of logic, of a language that we don’t fully understand, is enough to set us on edge.
The good design/bad design duality is one of the most if not the most commonly used/abused critiques in design. Tibor Kalman expands the dialogue by questioning what these terms actually mean, making a case for undesign / anti-design – another
beautiful design in a sea of beautiful designs is invisible, and
therefore its ability to communicate is neutralized.
“Every
curatorial decision, every convention, every rule about what is good
design and what is bad design works to narrow your perceptions. You
become blind to most of what’s in front of you. Every rule about what is
appropriate narrows what’s possible. Appropriate design is design that
pleases the largest number of people. Appropriate design is normal
design. It’s about keeping things more or less the same. Inappropriate
design is a way of confronting taste. Inappropriate design is a way of
making people think about why they like what they like and how they
learned to like those things. It’s a way of making people unlearn what
they were taught in design school. Unfortunately, schools teach students
to design by imitating what the professionals do rather than
developing their own approaches. And the schools turn out legions of
graduates who believe that their best bet for success is to have a
portfolio filled with layouts that look like the layouts in
everybody else’s portfolios, portfolios of professionals.”
We’re Here to Be Bad – Tibor Kalman and Karrie Jacobs
As a segue I play a short segment from a Charlie Rose interview with Tibor where he actually mentions the titles from Se7en. I ask my students if they have all seen the Se7en
titles, calling attention to the important place they occupy in the
evolution of motion design. After we watch the titles I again ask, “What
is happening here? How do these titles relate to the others we
watched?” It is easy to see that while Kyle Cooper,
Tibor Kalman, and Saul Bass each have their own approach, the three are
dealing with similar themes. Kyle Cooper takes the common themes of
madness and obsession one step further with titles that appear to have
been made by the killer (John Doe) himself. When an actor plays a part,
they may seek to fully immerse themself in the character they are
playing, reacting to each new situation from the perspective of that
person. In a sense this is what Cooper is doing, asking what would these
film titles look like if John Doe made them, or perhaps even more
importantly, how would he make them? The metaphorical design
coding of the SOTL titles is replaced here by a more literal approach,
each design decision a direct extension of the underlying story. Kyle
Cooper goes on to revitalize title design through Imaginary Forces and now Prologue, expanding the field and creating demand that was simply not there before his contribution.
What
is most important to me about these three designers is that they are
all doing something different, breaking with convention, each of them a
vanguard in their field and an inspiration to those who follow. Rather
than simply finding their place within the existing field, each of them
evolves the field through their own individual design voice. It has been
nearly 20 years since I first saw the titles for Se7en in a theater
that has since vanished from Times Square. Adobe had recently acquired
After Effects from CoSA and I was just starting to explore the
possibilities. Having written about the consolidation of media in
college, the accelerating cultural shift toward the market driven model
wasn’t really surprising, but it was pretty alarming. Today the
integration of media, culture & politics is so complete that it is
practically impossible to see where one ends and the others begin. We
can assist our students in navigating this uncertainty by encouraging
them not just to do “good design,” but to do work they love.
Allowing them the space and the support to tell their story, to discover
and develop their individual voice – this is essential. The need to
secure employment, to make a living, to have some measure of stability,
to pay off that education debt – these concerns are real, but they are also distractions. Similarly, the idolization of newness
is a market driven distraction meant to keep us scrambling from one
trend to the next, picking from convenient options, but never really
making a conscious choice. And therein lies the irony, the
pursuit of newness in design manifests as a never ending race to keep up
with market driven trends. There is no dialogue in this, there is no
participation, there is no individual voice – only repetition of
that which has already been deemed acceptable and profitable. Listening to my students revisit the what is motion design
question at the end of the term brings tears to my eyes (keep it
together Gallagher), no longer simply static answers to fill the form, but passionate
testimony to their continuing exploration and their limitless potential.
___
