(B3) Concrete Poetry: Research

Ideas:

Word play with type, wanting to design something that is going to push boundaries of type and visuals. Could be a collaborative project with a creative writer/poet, talking through poetry and what the words mean and applying that to the layout and design of the poems.

• Maybe reach out to poets and ask about their work (book from mum for birthday). What could be a good way to inspire this project? Concrete Confinement - book bought during isolation. Inspired by designers like Ryan Carl Studio. Playful take on a serious topic.

Thought about poetry I've been drawn to and poems by Miles @itsamemyleo are fun and playful with a serious undertone.

Some of his poems:

Miles Poem 1

Miles Poem 2

Miles Poem 3

Miles Poem 4

Miles Poem 5

Think about where I'm at right now:
- Struggling to be creative
- Finding type difficult but wanting to improve
- Feeling lots of feelings 

How could this translate into an exercise about typography?
Could work on a different idea each day, developing a wealth of concrete poetry, could use other people's poems or just a word/sentence from that day to develop workload.
> Would be a great way to get introduced to creating again.
> No need for fancy facilities.
> Can work on alongside other briefs.

Research: 

Experimental Jetset: https://www.experimentaljetset.nl/archive/gilgamesj

Esperanto Magazine:

• The visuals developed for this magazine are what interests me, the typeface developed for the piece is clean and simple but the fact that it's only used for this magazine adds a sense of luxury and is able to communicate exactly the right tone for the magazine. 
  - Could design own typeface (quickly) for own project, could be an idea?
• The layout involved a grid system but with text and imagery applied it has a more rhythmic appearance, particularly in the title text. We can see a dynamic adaptation of this with the animation above adding more movement to the design.
  - Think about how motion could be incorporated into the brief, what would this do to the tone of the work, different movements having different effects.

Superstructure:

The relationship between language and the city is one of the main themes of Superstructure - an exhibition that is simultaneously a retrospective on the work of the Amsterdam-based graphic design studio Experimental Jetset (with a practice spanning over 20 years), and a site specific installation addressing the very notion of the city as a platform for language. 

• Looking at text and language in relation to other topics reveals interesting ideas and ways of incorporating and presenting text. This exhibition achieves this by looking at language and architecture in synthesis with each other. 
  - Interesting to see how the text fits within the exhibition, it isn't the most obvious thing, the structures take president. 
  - How can words be tied ro connected to other objects, feelings or spaces?

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Jun Lin: https://junlin.info/

“An Ode to Normalcy” is performance poetry in digital space.

The prototype imagines a framework for messaging wherein key information (text) is self-censored in order to bypass censorship. Depending on which part of the world the user accesses the site, images are generated from a curated archive, forming narratives that highlight the voices of a regionally censored, silenced or oppressed cultural minority.
Through the digital performance of the work, the narrator imagines a society where s/he is finally integrated into the ‘norm’, briefly empowering the self through the subversion of power relations between the censor and the censored. 

• Find the visual representation of poetry here to be exciting as it is interactive, the audience can take part in exploring the poetry. Feels like something that would encourage people to get involved in poetry more as it can be perceived as boring.
  - How could interactivity play a part in the brief? And should it?
• The simplicity of the visuals are effective in communicating a sense of calm.
  - How could the visual representation influence the tone of voice of the text? 

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Go Figure, Drew Milne: https://r2.vlereader.com/Reader?ean=9781844712014:

• Full of different ways to arrange text, all within the format of a publication.
• Plays on layout and how we traditionally read text by placing in changes and alterations to present a different experience of reading.
  - Really like this idea of showcasing a different way of reading through text manipulation. Should aim to explore this throughout the brief. 

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Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language: 

Exhibition at MoMA: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1214

'Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language is a group exhibition that brings together 12 contemporary artists and artists’ groups working in all mediums... all of whom concentrate on the material qualities of language—visual, aural, and beyond.'

'The works in Ecstatic Alphabets represent a radical updating of the possibilities inherent in the relationship between art and language. In this exhibition, the letter, the word and the phrase are seen and experienced, and not necessarily read.'

• Found the use of imagery in the exhibition to be interesting, not just type in an exhibition about alphabets and language. 
• Really like the idea of creating other representations of poetry alongside concrete poetry. 
  - Thinking about 'An Ode to Normalcy' and how these images add or take away from the poem.
  - Should use imagery for a purpose not just for the sake of it, needs to be useful to the poem. 

• The repetition here is of interest, creating visuals and displaying in this way is more intriguing. 

Publication also, want to see if i can access this from the library and will research further. 

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SHOULD LOOK INTO THE ORIGIN OF CONCRETE POETRY - better understand the foundation can apply knowledge better to the brief. 

• Looking At and Looking Through: Futurism, Dada, and Concrete Poetry: https://poets.org/text/looking-and-looking-through-futurism-dada-and-concrete-poetry
  > 'If a language is going to support a highly literate culture, rhetoric scholar Richard Lanham has argued, then the language itself must be made of simple parts. That is, the characters that are the building blocks of language must be easy to comprehend and the calligraphy unobtrusive. This is because a reader must be able to internalize an alphabet and effectively look "through" the characters to the meanings they convey'
  - Philosophy based around keeping things simple to allow the true meaning of the letters to shine through.
  - Think about research from essay and how typefaces we know we don't think as deeply about: typical fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman are used so regularly we become familiar with the way they look and simply glance over them, (Zetlin, 2018).
  > 'But the twentieth century saw several movements in art and poetry that called this philosophy into question, using typography itself as a medium for meaning, preventing people from looking "through" words and forcing readers to look "at" them.'
  - This idea of 'through' and 'at' suggests words and meaning can be viewed differently, and how we design for this can impact that perception also. 
  - Type as meaning is something that is within concrete poetry, having both a visual relationship and a theoretical one. 
  > 'Concrete poems continued the typographic experimentation begun by the Futurists, requiring readers to look both "at" and "through" language simultaneously.'
  - Think more about this 'at' and 'through' what do they mean for the poem, how can the design place more emphasis on one than the other, and which one is it appropriate to place emphasis on?
  > 'concrete poetry deals with the relation between the visible form and the intellectual substance of words.'
  - Keeping this in mind to run throughout the project. 'How does the visual impact the substance of the words?'
  
  
• Concrete Poetry: https://www.theartstory.org/movement/concrete-poetry/#:~:text=Concrete%20Poetry%20emerged%20from%20the,movement%20to%20the%20written%20word.
  > 'Concrete Poetry emerged from the major hubs of Concrete Art in Northern Europe and Latin America during the 1950s and sought to bring the same clarity and simplicity of composition that defined that movement to the written word.'
  - Could look into design style in these areas for visual inspiration, developing a structure for the work to rest on (Latin America book back in Leeds to start).
  > 'Concrete Poetry is a kind of linguistic art in which the way words and letters look is as important as what they mean.'
  - Find the level of importance between the content and the visuals to be particularly interesting, how can the boundaries between letters and visuals be pushed before they become one in the same? 
  > 'Concrete Poetry reduced the linguistic element of poetry to an absolute minimum.'
  - This relates to previous philosophy looking at the simplicity of  the visuals and how they impact the experience of the piece. 
  - Does this philosophy need to be listened to throughout this project or is it too limiting? 
  > 'Concrete Poetry became closely associated with developments in Performance Art such as the emergence of Fluxus and Happenings.'
  - Looking into the performance element of concrete poetry could be a really interesting nod to it's heritage while creating a more engaging experience for the audience to be involved with. 
  - Thinking abou Jun Lin's work and that of Experimental Jetset that incorporate motion and visuals into the text. 
  
  
• Concrete Poetry (Britannica): https://www.britannica.com/art/concrete-poetry
  > 'the poet’s intent is conveyed by graphic patterns of letters, words, or symbols rather than by the meaning of words in conventional arrangement.'
  - Again the combat between words and visuals, aren't they one in the same within concrete poetry, should they be the same?
  > 'uses typeface and other typographical elements in such a way that chosen units—letter fragments, punctuation marks, graphemes (letters), morphemes (any meaningful linguistic unit), syllables, or words (usually used in a graphic rather than denotative sense)—and graphic spaces form an evocative picture.'
  - Feel this idea of using 'graphic spaces' is particularly interesting, how does the space in which the work sits in affect the way it is perceived?
  - In what 'graphic space' is most appropriate for my outcome? 
  > 'The origins of concrete poetry are roughly contemporary with those of musique concrète, an experimental technique of musical composition'
  - Touched on this in first year about experimental music compositions. Could be something to look into especially if planning on using sound for the piece.
  - Could add sound to the designs or introduce audio. 
  >' It attempts to move away from a purely verbal concept of verse toward what its proponents call “verbivocovisual expression,” incorporating geometric and graphic elements into the poetic act or process.'
   - Again here the term 'poetic act' is interesting and presents a visual and dynamic interpretation of concrete poetry.