602: PMVABF - General Looking

ABC (Artists’ Books Cooperative) is an international group of artists, publishers, and educators seeking to create, engage, and experiment with the form of the book, and to foster alternative forms of distribution through collaboration. As well as working on our own practices, we work together to produce collective projects. 

At the invitation of Wil van Iersel, twenty-nine international artists each produced a book on a chosen day between June and July 2020. The result is an archive of 29 works made by artists - sometimes in quarantine - during a period encompassing the Covid-19 outbreak and worldwide protests against racism and police brutality.

Books collected into blue perspex box for the artbook fair. 

- Thinking about this for B6 and a way of collating the publications to be part of a collection.

- Think it would be a good to continue this project through after my study, would be a brilliant way to keep my graphic design skills up to scratch and also for developing visuals and ideas. 

Atelier Éditions is an independent publishing house established in 2015. Developing collaborative projects across an array of disciplines, the atelier offers curatorial and editorial consultation, creative direction, content creation, and print innovation. Authoring archival monographs, contemporary art books, catalogue raisonnés, and exploratory printed matter, Atelier Éditions regularly curates exhibitions, and envisages cultural programming.  

An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Colour: The Harvard Art Museums’ Forbes Pigment Collection, is a monograph produced in collaboration with the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Harvard Art Museums.

Anthology Editions is an independent book publisher based in Brooklyn, New York. An imprint of the record label Mexican Summer, Anthology is dedicated to uncovering and presenting new narratives via thoughtful, exceptionally designed publications in the fields of art, music, and pop culture history.

“Once on a foggy day, I came across a very peculiar bar with a huge hedge just in front of it. I took a photograph and went on. I didn’t really know where I was and never saw that bar again on my future explorations”

Guided by Mekas’s distinctive prose and suffused with warmth, A Dance with Fred Astaire is rhapsodic, poetic and funny as all get out. A revealing visual autobiography of a genuine culture hero.

Back Bone Books. Claudia de la Torre founded Berlin-based backbonebooks in 2011 to formalize her own practice and publish other artists’ books. Creating objects, fields, spaces in relation to the book as a highly historical & contemporary medium – backbonebooks performs consistently in a flexible, conceptual and collaborative process, aiming to open a new perspective into what a book can be.

Underlay, to lay under. A book is a sum of layers, one underneath the next one. An under-sheet (Shitajiki) was placed on a scanner bed, deconstructing the A5 sized transparent sheet.

- Really exciting books here! Found the ideas to be fascinating, and the ways ideas are generated and visualised is really cool. 

- I think the approach here is the most interesting part the visuals as well I really like and think they're very similar to the direction my current project is going (B7 - Research Brief). The publications here have a more clear focus and experimentation into light and dark, this is really nice and directs the audience through the books. 
- They really feel as though they explore publication like an image (as Dayanita spoke about in a previous talk). 

http://backbonebooks.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/backbonebooks_catalogue_2020.pdf

(B7) Research Brief: Refining Imagery/Concept

Scans of Sudokus:
- Thinking about showing the human element, editing to remove pre printed sections and keep the notation marks.

Including these in imagery:

- Layers of confusion, not sure why the image is there, looks like it's within the book but isn't.

- Edited the sudoku book so it doesn't contain any printed matter (apart from the grid) but it incorporates the human marks left on the page.

- Really like the scribble and notation marks that aren't related to the puzzle but just are there. 

- Again communicating a sense of confusion the numbers have been taken out of the grid and they look very out of place.

- Same as above in approach but really don't like the look of the numbers like this, they make too much of a connection to the puzzle than the human aspect.

- Feel the other notation marks were more interesting to include. 

Wider thinking:

- Overlap of location and puzzle (new imagery of sudoku completion in different location with more light). 

- There's something intimate about the photography of someones bes, feels very personal.

- Highlighting the location of completing a sudoku through the textures and overlays. 

- Presenting the different photographs, lighting differents communicates a different tone.

- The top image has much more light, less grid, appears more peaceful.

- The bottom image is darker but the sudoku book is light, demonstrating this idea of focus and concentration when other stuff is happening around you. 

- Showcasing the different hand movements, very organised, structured. 

- Demonstrating the process and the thought over the actions. 

Thinking about the curation of the publication.

- Need to start placing images into book to see the narrative, easier to work through the book when creating it than trying to make images fit. 

- Keep the process natural and allow the direction to evolve with what's working in terms of tone. 

Video of book:

The imagery can become very overwhelming very quickly when made large the impact is rather intense since the imagery is quite dark.
Some of it becomes repetitive since the images of hands with sudoku is used a lot, need to think about ways of incorporating more images, could go with the location images but the issue is these don't communicate as much about the human aspect, they still feel very cold as an image.

Finding the human aspect of sudoku most interesting, should focus on this to develop more images and then use these in conjunction with other images to develop a stronger process. 

A - Could isolate the movements, repeat these with hands only, no pen, book and capture the movement.
B - Isolate the notation marks that aren't related to the puzzle.
C- Note points of hand placement when holding sudoku book and emphasise these on the publication. 

A - Movements:

Could use this imagery to highlight the human side, the movement.

It's interesting seeing the two next to each other, they appear more meticulous and human, really excited to see how these work within the book. 

B - Notation Marks:

- Removing the grids from the sudoku books and leaving the not marks I made around the edges with my pen. 

Adding images over the top.

- Not a fan of the way this is looking, the book in a book vibe is not something I want to bring to this project. 

- Could isolate the marks and add them to the pages of the publication? 

- Really like these small marks, it doesn't work for all of the marks as some look more like wiggles.
- Should look through my sudoku book and find more marks to add to the pages.

C - Making note of points within the book:

Marking the touch points of the image

 Then continuing this onto the next page. 

Again showcasing the human side.

- To me this isn't very successful when it's repeated on a different page, it's too obvious and introducing such a harsh graphic and changes the tone of the imagery. It focuses your attention in onto something that isn't the key feature. 

- Could achieve the same idea in a different way, having the focal point of the next page be where the touch points were on the previous page. Maybe experiment with this. 

- Or could allude to the touch points without an image on the second page? Keeping a focus of attention on the human interactions. 

What to do next?
- Keep refining imagery and developing a visual narrative.

- Scan in more marks from sudoku book (these are working well, want to see these more).

- Think potentially about type, should it be included? 

(B7) Research Brief: Location Picture, Ideas and Image Analysis

Further location photos (park bench):

Thinking about the direction to go in when curating the publications:
- What do I was to communicate?
- What's the best way to do this visually?
- What's the best way to do this physically? 

Analysing Imagery:

- The layering of this image brings attention to what the hands are doing but also add some confusion to what that is. The grid over the top make of repeated image manipulated on the scanner encourages this and shows a sense of process. 

- Really like these 3 as a collection, the central focus being different aspects of completing the sudoku.

- This format could be pushed forward more, thinking about the different visuals and what they convey, currently the photo in the background doesn't show much, it's the image layered over the top that's the point of interest (this would only be encouraged if repeated more times). 

- Be aware of this when making imagery, repetition has an impact on how the image is perceived. 

- On the left is an image that I really enjoy to look at, it demonstrates a point that I brought up to Simon about having a sense of analysis and logic applied to a location that you might not associate this with (in this instance a bed). 

- The white space and composition of this image is really pleasing to look at, your attention is brought to the different elements by having sections not overlapping focus is brought to these. 

- Similar to the image above with this image.

- Would want to create more analytical images to use, this is something I need to develop going forward (avoid things being used too many times). Could experiment with pencil.

- I like these zoomed in close ups of some of the imagery, it makes the audience really involved in the image, it makes it feel more personal.

- The printed image then scanned and zoomed in has a grit to it, could be fun to explore this more but tread the line carefully since I don't want anything looking pixelated and low quality. 

- These are similar to the first image with the focus being between the two elements.