Marshall Mcluhan and the Arts MOHAMMAD SALEMY

REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES

IMAGINATIONS JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES | REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE

CONTRIBUTORS

ADAM LAUDER AND JAQUELINE MCLEOD ROGERS Publication details, including open access policy ELENA LAMBERTI and instructions for contributors: ALEXANDER KUSKIS ADINA BALINT http://imaginations.csj.ualberta.ca JESSICA JACOBSON-KONEFALL MAY CHEW DAINA WARREN

TOM MCGLYNN

HENRY ADAM SVEC ISSUE 8-3 KENNETH R. ALLAN Marshall McLuhan and the Arts MOHAMMAD SALEMY

JODY BERLAND ASALMCLUHANAND THE MARSHALL Editorial Team: Brent Ryan Bellamy, Dominique Laurent, Andriko GARY GENOSKO Lozowy, Tara Milbrandt, Carrie Smith-Prei, and Sheena Wilson December 6, 2017 REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES

MARSHALL MCLUHAN

ARTS AND THE ARTS

ISSUE 8-3, 2017

To cite this article: Genosko, Gary. “The Designscapes of Harley Parker: Print and Built Environments.” Imaginations 8:3 (2017): Web (date accessed) 153-164. DOI: 10.17742/IMAGE.MA.8.3.11

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.MA.8.3.11

The copyright for each article belongs to the author and has been published in this journal under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives 3.0 license that allows others to share for non-commercial purposes the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal. The content of this article represents the author’s original work and any third-party content, either image or text, has been included under the Fair Dealing exception in the Canadian Copyright Act, or the author has provided the required publication permissions. THE DESIGNSCAPES OF HARLEY PARKER: PRINT AND BUILT ENVIRONMENTS

GARY GENOSKO

Abstract | In this paper I present two views of Harley Parker, Resume | Dans cet essai je présenterai deux perspectives de Marshall McLuhan’s longstanding collaborator. In the frst I Harley Parker, qui pour un longtemps collaboré avec Mar- underline how Parker’s training in the arts as a typograph- shall MacLuhan. Premièrement, j’explique comment Parker ic designer was put to work on the print projects for which a utilisé son training typographique pour le travail dont il est he is best known, namely, on the original series of Explora- plus connu, le journal Explorations. Je dirais que son travail tions. I debate the claim that his work on Explorations 8 was sur l’Explorations est original et son propre en utilisant l’his- not his own, and in this phase of argument I draw upon the toire des autres designers notables à Toronto, spécifquement, legacy of other notable designers working in Toronto, name- les producteurs de Flexitype, Allan R. Fleming de Cooper & ly, Allan R. Fleming of Cooper & Beatty Inc., the developers Beatty Inc. Deuxièmement, je désire à resituer le connexion and promoters of Flexitype. Second, I resituate Parker’s link entre Parker et l’exposition au musée d’art et le performance to installation and performance art in Canada by following au Canada, par suivais la ligne de son fls, Blake Parker, et the line established by his eldest son Blake Parker as resi- la groupe musique expérimentale d’Intersystems. Pendant dent poet of the experimental electronic band Intersystems, 1967-68, cette groupe a performé dans un labyrinthe psy- whose activities in 1967-68 included installations and perfor- chédélique, Te Mind Excursion, durant l’évènement du Per- mances at Perception 67 on the University of Toronto cam- ception 67 à l’Université de Toronto. Le Hall de Fossiles de pus. Te Mind Excursion psychedelic maze had its debut a Harley Parker au Musée Royale d’Ontario a ouvert en jan- few weeks afer Harley Parker’s Hall of Fossils opened at the vier et quelques semaines plus tard Te Mind Excursion a Royal Ontario Museum and marks the group’s origin proper. ouvert. Le groupe d’Intersystems a commencé avec cet évène- Te connection between father and son is explored through ment. J’explore les relations entre père et fls par voie des in- the infuences of elder Parker’s artistic proclivities as a paint- fuences artistiques de Harley, et son collègue MacLuhan, et er, typographer, exhibition designer, critic, his collaborations la combinaison la culture de psychédélique et l’art kinésique. with Marshall McLuhan, and the blend of McLuhan’s ideas, Ces idées ont animé d’Intersystems. psychedelia, and kinetic art that animated Intersystems.

ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 153 THE DESIGNSCAPES OF HARLEY PARKER

arley Parker’s core career accomplish- ment was as Display Chief in art and archaeology at the Royal Ontario Mu- Hseum (1957-67). He was co-conspirator and collaborator with Marshall McLuhan on print projects, journals, books, and flms. Parker was visiting professor at Fordham University (1967- 68) during McLuhan’s visiting research chair, and later held the post of William A. Kern In- stitute Professor of Communications at the Rochester Institute of Technology (1973-74). From 1967 to 1975 Parker was a Research As- sociate at McLuhan’s Centre for Culture and Technology at University of Toronto. However, he had worked out a non-stipendiary cross-ap- pointment with the Centre as early as 1963, the year of its establishment.

In this paper I situate the contributions of Parker along two connecting para-academic corridors of the Toronto School, focusing on graphical art and sound experimentation. Te frst refers to his design of McLuhan’s semi- nal communications journal Explorations, in particular, issue number 8 from October 1957 Fig. 1. Harley Parker and Marshall McLuhan, “Because print is a patterkiller,” section 12, in Explorations 8, (Figs. 1 and 2). Although a few of the earli- ed. Marshall McLuhan and Edmund Carpenter (1955; er issues involved Parker in several tentative repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016): n.p. © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. © Estate Of Harley Parker. Used with experiments with the spatiality of the print- permission. ed page and the plasticity of then new typographic methods, it was not until issue 8 that of Spaces”). However, it is productive to isolate the results became substantive and infuenced two events in the aforementioned months in the look and feel of an entire issue. Transiting order to solidify this observation. Te connec- from the page to the built environment, Parker tion I make here is between the Parkerian page would become a trailblazer in museum instal- and performance spaces in which his son, poet lation, as his masterpiece of museum display, Blake Parker, participated through his mem- the Hall of Invertebrate Fossils at the ROM, at- bership in the electronic music group Intersys- tests. Students of Parker’s role in the Toronto tems, with specifc reference to installations of School have observed that “perhaps the most the group’s Mind Excursion structure, which literal application of Parker’s design theories debuted in the same year as the elder Parker’s was made by the Toronto art-and-music col- opening of the Hall of Fossils. His agile move- lective Intersystems, which included Parker’s ment from print to installation and back again son, the poet Blake Parker” (Lauder, “A Clash

REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 154 GARY GENOSKO

McLuhan’s collaborations. Schnapp and Mi- chaels reconstruct the history of the creation of Te Medium is the Massage and War and Peace in the Global Village as experimental “inventory books” and properly remedy the erasure of the team’s eforts, that is, the roles of co-author and corporate communications consultant Fiore and publishing coordinator Agel, not to mention details about McLuhan’s own participation. No matter how non-bookish these books appeared, in examining the layout and printing decisions as well as underlining the diferences in de-bookifcation undertaken in Massage in contrast to the more lineal and textual War and Peace, Schnapp and Michaels enable us to augment earlier critical statements, such as by Don Teall, who disparaged the Agel-Fiore books as “corporate art” (Electric Age 103). Teall included in this category McLuhan’s collaborations with Parker on the books Trough the Vanish- ing Point and Counterblast. Yet he made an exception when it came to the long-established afnity of Parker for McLuhan’s penchant for James Joyce—War and Peace is afer all shaped by the quotes from Finnegans Wake in its mar- Fig. 2. Harley Parker and Marshall McLuhan, gins—which required a prefatory note and rec- “We are back in acoustic space,” section 14, from Explorations 8, ed. Marshall McLuhan and ognition of hidden collaborator Eric McLu- Edmund Carpenter (1955; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & han’s role in decoding the ten thunders. Tis Stock, 2016): n.p. © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. © Estate Of Harley Parker. Used with permission. made a diference for Teall: “the collabora- tion with Parker seems more successful than solidifes Harley Parker’s legacy within the To- that with Fiore, possibly because Parker has ronto School. worked closely with McLuhan for years and shares the same interests in Joyce, in various Part 1. The Colophon Caper contemporary movements, in the visual arts, and in cinema” (Medium is the RearView Mir- Te kind of questions that Jefrey T. Schnapp ror 155). It was Teall who originally coined the and Adam Michaels ask in Electric Information term “concrete essay” to describe the collab- Age Book—about McLuhan’s picture books orative books noted above, including the way with Jerome Agel and Quentin Fiore with re- in which War and Peace achieved the “tech- gard to role clarifcation in collaborative pro- nique of marginalia” that McLuhan had har- duction and the technomateriality of publish- bored since publishing Te Gutenberg Galaxy, ing—may similarly be asked of Parker and opening a space for greater consideration of

ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 155 THE DESIGNSCAPES OF HARLEY PARKER

the collaborators themselves and the techno- Parker was specifcally acknowledged on the material processes of these books’ production. front page of the original issue, receiving cred- Indeed, such books may be analyzed as qua- it for the cover and the interior, his choice of si-acoustic spaces, remaking reading and repo- colour inks, and modifed typefaces; the eight- sitioning the reader, injecting ambivalence and page yellow section looks forward to the style retaining tactility and inviting multi-sensory of the “unknown” Explorations once it moved participation—these are so-called “non-books” to the University of Toronto alumni magazine in an entirely salutary sense. By contrast, the in 1964. However, it was not his frst involve- term “non-book” was used within journalis- ment with Explorations. He designed the cover tic circles to disparage McLuhan and Parker’s of Explorations 7 earlier the same year, where Trough the Vanishing Point. For instance, in it is briefy noted that the next issue will be “an “McLuhan Nonbook” former UCLA English experiment in photo-type designed by Harley professor Jascha Kessler mocks this “illustrat- Parker.” He also received credit for the Anna ed manual” as “non-enlightening.” Livia pages in Explorations 5 (June 1955) along with colleagues Richard Grooms, Frank Smith, However, my approach is less concerned with and Cooper & Beatty Ltd., which also gets a the negative tropes of de-bookifcation and small mention on one page of the spread itself: is more overtly and positively focused on the “Experimental typography by Cooper & Beatty, acoustifcation of printed pages. T is is espe- Ltd.” Tis design brings into focus typical con- cially pertinent to Explorations 8 and the ca- tent from a descriptive colophon, which early per that accompanied the erasure of its colo- issues of Explorations, with the exception of is- phon. Te augmented reprint of this issue ten sue 8, for the most part integrated into “Notes years later in 1967 by Fluxus press Something on Contributors” and “Acknowledgements” or Else—a rarity given that issues of Explorations spread out on pages throughout the issue. have not been reproduced until 2016, with the exception of an anthology of selected essays What does the 1957 colophon tell us? Te that appeared in 1960—omitted the colophon typography was known as Flexitype, expertise of the original altogether. A colophon appears in which was provided by Cooper & Beatty at the end of a publication and makes note of Ltd. of Toronto. Tis use of Flexitype migrated the design, typesetting, and printing details. from the world of commercial advertising Not incidentally, such details and notes, once and design to the academic publication regained, are not completely transparent, even process at University of Toronto Press, and though they provide insight into the details of it marks an alleged frst—at least in terms production. Te modifcation of Parker’s “orig- of the concentrated quantity of its use, but inal design” is acknowledged in the reprint. also in relation to the high quality of printing provided by another outft, Bomac Ltd. of Parker rightly counted Explorations 8 in his Toronto—not to neglect the type of paper, portfolio of key design accomplishments, and Paragon Ofset Brilliant, and the company his contribution has been noted in detail by that sold it, Provincial Paper Ltd. Together keen observers of the journal such as Robert with the sponsorship note from the front Fulford, who praised his “famboyant and high- matter indicating that the funder was the ly original typography” (“All Ignorance” 314). Toronto Telegram newspaper, there is an

REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 156 GARY GENOSKO

began his career at Eaton’s (1945-47), but afer Parker (Parker is 14 years older than Fleming). Te fact that the colophon does not mention Fleming has angered Martha Fleming, who writes in “Te Man who Branded a Nation”: “Te company was forefront; its creative director unmentioned.”

In addition to pointing out many of her father’s accomplishments as a designer and research- ing his legacy and infuence (some of the vis- ible manifestations of the academy in Ontario during the 60s and 70s results from Fleming’s work for Trent University and Massey College, not to mention corporate logos for Toronto Hydro, TSO, Gray Coach, and CN), Martha Fleming also calls into question Parker’s role in Explorations 8. She further claims that:

Fig. 3. Harley Parker and Marshall McLuhan, “Anna Nominally this issue of Explorations was de- Livia,” from Explorations 5, ed. Marshall McLuhan and Edmund Carpenter (1955; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & signed by Harley Parker, who taught colour Stock, 2016): n.p. © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. © at the Ontario College of Art where Fleming Estate Of Harley Parker. Used with permission. taught typography. Parker, as display chief of unusually rich array of information about the Royal Ontario Museum, would have also products and businesses but not persons. helped install the exhibition Fleming assist- ed in curating (by selecting books for display) Afer Parker graduated from OCA in 1939, he there in 1956 to commemorate the 500th an- undertook an apprenticeship in typograph- niversary of Gutenberg’s 42-line bible: “Te ic design with Cooper & Beatty in Toronto Art of Fine Printing and its Infuence upon before moving into a position as typograph- the Bible in Print.”’(“Te Man who Branded a ic designer with the T. Eaton Company, prob- Nation”) ably working in the catalogue division, afer which he joined the Canadian army, where he Te choice of the term “nominally” suggests served three years (1942-45). Upon his return that the reality is diferent from the ofcial he began teaching classes at Ontario College credit afxed to the journal. Tis involves two of Art, where he continued until 1957, the year related events. Te frst is that Père Fleming’s he joined the ROM. He would have known de- catalogue essay for his curated exhibition, “Te signer Allan R. Fleming through OCA, who Development of Printing as an Art,” ends on became head of typography at the college in a rather sour note as he points out the pauci- 1955, the same year he began working infor- ty of fne Canadian books for display in a Ca- mally with Cooper & Beatty, quickly becom- nadian setting, remarking that “the production ing its Creative Director in 1957. Fleming, too, of printers and publishers here are still at the

ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 157 THE DESIGNSCAPES OF HARLEY PARKER

level of England in mid-nineteenth century, a period not of bad taste, but of no taste at all” (“Development of Printing” 19). In the end, he found only one Canadian book to display. Te cultural cringe of an accomplished Toronto- nian does not amount to a critical insight.

Te salient point is that Parker did not arrive at the ROM until September 1957, while the exhibition “Te Art of Fine Printing” took place a year earlier in September-October of 1956. Although these dates do not support Martha Fleming’s claims, the second factor looms large. Te product known as Flexitype was promoted by Cooper & Beatty through a substantive brochure with abundant typeface samples and glowing self-promotional discourse grounded in the machinic modernization of tradition; Fulford was an admirer of Fleming’s brochures for C&B (“Allan R. Fleming”). Flexitype was in the mid-50s a new photography-based typesetting that directly generated negatives rather than rely on relief surfaces on metal plates, Fig. 4. Marshall McLuhan, “Printing and Social Change,” in Printing Progress: A Mid-Century Report (Cincinnati, and Cooper and Beatty promoted their ad- Ohio: The International Association of Printing House vantage this way: “We’re proud to be the frst Crafts- men, 1959), pp. 86. Graphic design and page layout (1958) by Allan Fleming (1929-1977), as company to introduce photographic typog- Typographic Director, Creative Department, Cooper & raphy to the printing industry across Canada” Beatty Type Craftsmen (Toronto). © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. Courtesy Clara Thomas Archives and Special (“FLEXItype”). Collections, York University. Used with permission.

Beginning in 1955, the distorted typefaces that As a graphic design professional in Toronto, Parker utilized in Explorations were generat- Parker seized the opportunity to experiment ed by placing a prism before the camera’s lens, by crossing over from commercial methods to captured in a photographic negative; Cooper academic publishing, a process of de-special- & Beatty did this in-house using a photo-me- ization that was at the heart of his critique of chanical process. It seems likely that the ad- the position of the curator and his public loath- vertising copy for Flexitype was the work of ing for ‘POBS’—print-oriented bastards. Ad- Fleming, as his repeated point of reference is ditionally, the yearly Typography exhibitions Gutenberg, a curatorial interest. For instance, a and lectures, at least from 1958-64, occasion- typical piece of hyperbole: “Typesetting direct- ally involved McLuhan, who guest lectured at ly into flm is the greatest advance in the de- the 1960 luncheon, and also Parker, as these velopment of graphic arts since Gutenberg frst exhibitions would have been his responsibili- invented movable type” (“FLEXItype”). ty to mount as they occurred at the ROM (ie.

REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 158 GARY GENOSKO

Typography ’58-’59-’60-’61 and ’64); moreover, Martha Fleming astutely reminds us that it Fleming designed invitations to the exhibits was her father who designed McLuhan’s paper and arranged for OCA students to show their “Printing and Social Change” for the 1959 report work in them alongside his own. McLuhan’s published by the International Association of work was known among members of the Typo- Printing House Crafsmen, in Cincinnati. Tis graphic Designers of Canada, especially Carl remarkable publication is clear about attribu- Dair. Parker and McLuhan tried to enlist Dair tion as each paper has a detailed colophon, including a personal refection by the designer, who explains, in this instance, that he sought to “evoke a feeling of change in the reader” by means of a series of introductory pages con- sisting of wood cuts and a photograph and the title of the essay, a motif taken up in the page headers in the remainder, using red and black inks, and two colours of paper stock. Still, Fleming attributes the design to the collective eforts of all eleven Canadian Crafsmen clubs. Moreover, it is not Cooper & Beatty but rather the Society of Typographic Designers with whom Fleming identifes himself; C&B provided the type for the body and display elements, and preliminary printing and binding for the essay was done in Canada.

Although Fleming and Parker were fourteen years apart in age and Fleming died young at the age of 48, they shared the C&B and the Eaton’s art department connections and both were OCA teachers. Tey both had, most im- portantly, McLuhan and University of Toron- Fig. 5. Marshall McLuhan, “Printing and Social Change,” to in common, as Fleming joined UTP as chief in Printing Progress: A Mid-Century Report (Cincinnati, Ohio: The International Association of Printing House designer in 1968 and later even designed pro- Crafts- men, 1959), pp. 887. Graphic design and test signs for the Stop Spadina campaign in page layout (1958) by Allan Fleming (1929-1977), as Typographic Director, Creative Department, Cooper & which Marshall was active; Parker had already Beatty Type Craftsmen (Toronto). © Estate Of Marshall joined McLuhan’s Centre as an associate. Both McLuhan. Courtesy Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, York University. Used with permission. Parker and Fleming contributed design elements to Expo 67 and were active, one as cura- to design Trough the Vanishing Point, but Dair tor and artist and the other as display chief, at would not take up the project and passed away the ROM during the years when Typography in 1967, a year before the book’s publication. took place there. Typographic 58 was, as Ful- ford described it, a “one-man show” by Flem- ing who even designed the invitation card:

ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 159 THE DESIGNSCAPES OF HARLEY PARKER

“everywhere you turned in the small room in is brought into close contact with movement, the Royal Ontario Museum in which the show colour, and light, underlining psycho-physical was held, it is more than obvious that Canada’s experience in a defned and controlled space frst attempt at an annual typographic exhibit (Popper 204-7)—is shared with the Intersys- was dominated by the work of one man” (“Al- tems’ built environments, especially Mind Ex- lan R. Fleming” 268). Ironically, Martha Flem- cursion, and the tools that Harley Parker uti- ing’s complaint is not so diferent from the ab- lized for the Hall of Fossils, including a range sence of credit for display and installation in of invisible beams and pressure sensitive mats published records such as catalogues under- that triggered light and sound events, a low taken by Parker for much of his everyday ROM cloth ceiling, round walls, sand and shells on work. Te important point is the confuence of uneven fooring, a bank of wall-mounted di- design intelligence in Toronto in the late 1950s, al-less telephones delivering recorded messag- with the commercial training and product in- es in lieu of typical didactics, and an acute aver- novation and C&B, its leaders such as Allan sion to labels and glass display cases. Parker’s Fleming, design fgureheads such as Dair, and goal was to make the “changing sensory ori- the inter-institutional cooperation between the entation of the public” a key factor in inven- ROM, C&B, McLuhan, and University of To- tive exhibition design, citing that much can be ronto Press. learned from “Go Go girls and the psychedelic event … [without] the misdirected enthusiasm Part 2. The Winter of ’67 of the hippies” (296).

Everyone has heard about the summer of ‘69, Sculptor Michael Hayden had successfully ex- but I would like to revisit the winter of ’67, Jan- hibited a number of kinetic pieces in Toronto uary and February to be precise. In the last and New York in 1966 at Gallery Moos and week of January the elder Parker’s master- Martha Jackson Gallery respectively, and had work, the Hall of Fossils, opened at the ROM; begun collaborating with Blake Parker who in February, the building and opening of Mi- contributed textual elements but had not yet chael Hayden’s Mind Excursion installation for begun to perform and record them himself. Perception 67 took place at University College. By 1967, Head Machine was shown at Nation- During these two months the dailies in Toron- al Gallery of Canada; it featured composer to and New York were chewing over the Hall of Mills-Cockell’s soundscape and Parker’s re- Fossils’ opening, each trying to outdo in wit the corded recitations, an “environmental contain- McLuhan in/of the museum motif. Ten Mind er with its own sound and light systems and a Excursion burst onto the Canadian arts scene timing device which programs the action of as a strange psychedelic built environment that each piece in the whole,” but within an 8’x8’x8’ would catalyze the founding of Intersystems, cube, (NGC, Intersystems and Lajeunie). help Blake Parker fnd his voice, and put Inter- systems on the international map of kinetic art. Intersystems as a trio was born in February at University College (U of T) at the Hayden-co- Te environmental impetus in kinetic art— ordinated Perception 67, a psychedelic event which moves toward collapsing the space be- featuring visual art, music, poetry, and a range tween work and spectator-participant, who of countercultural luminaries. Mind Excursion

REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 160 GARY GENOSKO

was a built structure: a ten-room maze that at Carbondale courtesy of an invitation from heightened by parceling sensory experience Buckminster Fuller). Te band acquired new into rooms by means of modifying foor and member architect Dik Zander, who had been wall and ceiling surfaces augmented with var- active already with Hayden during the con- ious substances including chocolate, cotton struction of Mind Excursion. Duplex is again balls, candy, and projections of images, with architectural in inspiration, with Mills-Cockell sof and hard substances for shoeless visitors, and Parker (voice and sound) on the ground live dancers, low ceilings, and slanted foors. foor, and Zander and Hayden (lights and pro- Given its room-to-themed-room sequentiali- jections) upstairs. Parker recites a tale of an ty, a given trajectory would result in a series of ordinary duplex, with laundry machines and experiential transitions rather than a true mul- framed diplomas. Tis motif would become tisensual simultaneity. While McLuhan and progressively darker as Parker troubled do- partner Corinne attended the event, he was mesticity and suburban life (“Intersystems” 89). not on the bill. Mind Excursion was later re- Parker was a poet of the everyday, of the fore- constructed in 1968 in Montréal and included a boding ordinary. Intersystems would only sur- Mindex Department Store selling packaged art vive until early 1969 afer their performance of objects, giving the notion of “exiting through Network II at the Masonic Temple in Toronto. the gif shop” an early referent (Reid 98). Mind Excursion is, however, a three-part work con- For A Post-Typographic Practice sisting of the soundtrack of the third Inter- systems album, Free Psychedelic Poster Inside, While a case can be made for broad overlap- and Blake Parker’s narrative for Mind Power, a ping extra-psychedelic themes in Parker’s late collectively produced bilingual graphic short 1960s collaborations with McLuhan in print story borrowing from group members’ fami- and flm media (“Intersystems” 84), when ly photos (in addition to photographer Brian Blake Parker found his voice and began per- Tompson) of the courtship and marriage of forming his poetry for Intersystems—as it had fctional Gordie and Renée, an ordinary couple hitherto been rendered and recorded by oth- whose experiences indicate some of the excur- ers, a fact he allegedly disliked according to sion thematics (i.e., room of mirrors, confetti Hayden (26)—then a controlled exploration room, pastoral room). of integrated multi-sensory elements emerged and the possibility of taped performances Hayden-Parker-Mills-Cockell frst performed within the plastic elements of custom designed live together as the foursome Intersystems in and built environments could take place: Blake Vancouver at the VAG’s spring 1967 event Di- Parker moved from published poet to spoken rection 67, an “electrosonic” installation and word performer, making kinetic art, records, performance in near darkness. Intersystems’ and performing live, sometimes within the public presentations were enhanced when structures themselves (i.e. Duplex 1968 ). Of Mills-Cockell acquired a Moog synthesizer course, in its initial incarnation Mind Excur- in 1968 and the machine became a performer sion only stood for two days, a far cry from the in its own right, especially at its frst appear- long run enjoyed by the Hall of Fossils. While ance at the AGO in March 1968 during the Hayden had insisted on exploring olfactory band’s Duplex performance (later revisited diferences amongst the “programmed” rooms

ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 161 THE DESIGNSCAPES OF HARLEY PARKER

of Mind Excursion, Harley Parker once joked us about print culture is that a page is a process, that it would have been appropriate to infuse sped up by translation, slowed down by a rede- the entire Hall with the smell of rotting fsh signed reprint. Furthermore, as he wrote with to augment the bird, storm, and other sounds McLuhan in the preface to Trough the Vanish- and recorded voices, both thundering and qui- ing Point, “labels as classifcation are extreme et, not to mention fashing lightning and flm forms of visual culture” (xxiv); a gallery that projection of a wave overhead—in the pro- limits the use of labels and transforms them cess de-emphasizing the graphical and esh- into recorded messages and projections erodes ewing naturalism for abstraction in pursuit stable visuality for the sake of new movements of a carefully deduced audience whose role and relations. Blake Parker took opportunities would be to “operate” the gallery. Te Hall of for releasing new intensities when he decided Fossils is certainly less boxy and more senso- to record his own poetry for art works and to rily integrated than Mind Excursion, with its perform it live, becoming the “singer” in an calculated sequential changes and hyper-con- experimental band. Harley Parker, in moving centrated atmospheres. Still, the Hall relied on Flexitype from a commercial to an academic standard built motifs of museum design such context, initiated novel intensities of aesthetic as dioramas and borrowed the semi-circular and conceptual relations, building pages like ambulatory from church architecture (Medie- environments with all of the special efects val Modern 164-65). Mind Excursions’s rheto- available at the time. ric of programming and its foor plan, viewed from above in standard architectural bias, may In opening up the space of the printed page, have forced sensory experience into tight spac- Harley Parker also addressed the transition es and thus intensifed it without refecting on from the visual bias of illustration to the syn- the control elements of interplay imposed by aesthetic icon as a way of understanding the both design and institutional factors. predicament of serials in the post-literate age that typically include both. He tried to make By the end of the 1960s, Harley Parker had re- his design work in print and in natural history turned to typographic experimentation and galleries more iconic, breaking up large masses book design in the rollicking pages of McLu- of grey type dynamic fourishes reduces word han’s Counterblast (1969). Counterblast can counts, suggesting that writing will need to be- barely contain the Lewisian eruptions of print, come increasingly non-sequential. Exposition and the niceties of print craf are gone—no will proceed in clusters rather than sequential- more colophons and no more nods to the ink ly. Phototype will fourish, and sound will be and paper producers. Te designer’s name is invoked in a myriad of ways. Parker was imag- actually on the cover, in capital letters, fxing ining a post-typographic practice akin to the identity and authority, a hard-won acknowl- post-labeled artifact in the museum setting; edgement that uses its power in the pages of the the immersive psychedelic environments that book to disorient and disrupt in grand gestures concentrated elements borrowed from kinetic of de-signifying glitches and the construction art practices. of word-objects whose stability goes only as far as the foreign translations that of necessity re- make and remodel them. What Parker taught

REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 162 GARY GENOSKO

Image Notes Works Cited

Fig. 1. Harley Parker and Marshall McLuhan, “Be- Cooper & Beatty. FLEXItype, photo-typography cause print is a patterkiller,” section 12, in Explora- (brochure). Toronto: Cooper & Beatty Ltd., 1954 tions 8, ed. Marshall McLuhan and Edmund Car- penter (1955; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016): n.p. © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. © Estate Of Cruchley, Brian. “Headline freak out at U of T.” Te Harley Parker. Used with permission. Telegram (Toronto) (January 1968 12): np.

Fig. 2. Harley Parker and Marshall McLuhan, “We Dipede, Cheryl. “From Typographer to Graphic De- are back in acoustic space,” section 14, from Ex- signer: Typography Exhibitions and the Formation plorations 8, ed. Marshall McLuhan and Edmund of a Graphic Design Profession in Canada in the Carpenter (1955; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1950s and 1960s.” RACAR 40/2 (2015): 130-45. 2016): n.p. © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. © Estate Of Harley Parker. Used with permission. Fleming, Allan R. “Te Development of Printing As Fig. 3. Harley Parker and Marshall McLuhan, “Anna An Art.” In Te Art of Fine Printing And Its Infuence Livia,” from Explorations 5, ed. Marshall McLuhan Upon the Bible in Print. Toronto: Royal Ontario Mu- and Edmund Carpenter (1955; repr., Eugene, OR: seum (Sept 11-Oct. 13 1956), pp. 11-19. Wipf & Stock, 2016): n.p. © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. © Estate Of Harley Parker. Used with permission. Fleming, Martha. “Allan Fleming: Te man who branded a nation.” Eye 79/20 (Spring Fig. 4. Marshall McLuhan, “Printing and So- 2011). Accessed online via Google cache: cial Change,” in Printing Progress: A Mid-Century http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/ Report (Cincinnati, Ohio: Te International Associ- allan-feming-the-man-who-branded-a-nation. ation of Printing House Crafs- men, 1959), pp. 86. Graphic design and page layout (1958) by Allan Fulford, Robert. “All Ignorance is Motivated.” In Fleming (1929-1977), as Typographic Director, Cre- Marshall McLuhan: Critical Evaluations in Cultur- ative Department, Cooper & Beatty Type Crafsmen al Teory, Volume 1, Fashion and Fortune. London (Toronto). © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. Used and New York: Taylor & Francis, 2005, pp. 307-16. with permission. — “Allan R. Fleming.” Canadian Art XVI/4 (Novem- Fig. 5. Marshall McLuhan, “Printing and So- ber 1959): 266-73. cial Change,” in Printing Progress: A Mid-Century Report (Cincinnati, Ohio: Te International Associ- Hayden, Michael. “How the Mind Excursion came ation of Printing House Crafs- men, 1959), pp. 887. to be.” In Intersystems [booklet of vinyl resissue Graphic design and page layout (1958) by Allan package]. Milan: Alga Marghen, 2015, pp. 21-34. Fleming (1929-1977), as Typographic Director, Cre- ative Department, Cooper & Beatty Type Crafsmen (Toronto). © Estate Of Marshall McLuhan. Courte- Kessler, Jascha. “McLuhan Nonbook Nonenlighten- sy Clara Tomas Archives and Special Collections, ing.” Los Angeles Times (17 November 1968): D52. York University. Used with permission.

Lauder, Adam. “‘A Clash of Spaces’: Harley Parker’s Reconceptualization of the Museum as a Communi-

ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 163 THE DESIGNSCAPES OF HARLEY PARKER

cation System.” Amodern 5 (2015). Accessed online: Popper, Frank. Origins and Development of Kinetic http://amodern.net/article/a-clash-of-spaces/ Art. London: Studio Vista, 1968.

McLuhan, Marshall. Counterblast. Toronto: McClel- Reid, Dennis. “Intersystems, 1967-69: Radically Re- land and Stewart, 1969. thinking Art.” In Intersystems (booklet). Milan: Arga Marghen, 2015, pp. 93-99. — “Printing and Social Change.” In Printing Prog- ress: A Mid-Century Report, ed. Cliford L. Helbert. Schnapp, Jefrey T. and Michaels, Adam. Te Electric Cincinnati: Te International Association of Print- Information Age Book. New York: Princeton Archi- ing House Crafmen, Inc., 1959, pp. 89-112. tectural Press, 2012.

McLuhan, Marshall, and Parker, Harley. Trough the Storring, Nick. “Intersystems: Number One, Peachy, Vanishing Point: Space in Poetry and Painting. New Free Psychedelic Poster Inside.” In Interystems York: Harper & Row, 1968. [booklet]. Milan: Alga Marghen, 2015, pp. 77-91

Nagel, Alexander. Medieval Modern: Art Out of Teall, Donald. Understanding McLuhan: Te Medi- Time. London: Tames & Hudson, 2012. um is the RearView Mirror. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1971. National Gallery of Canada. Intersystems and Lajeu- Figures 1, 2, and 3 © Estate Of Marshall nie (catalogue). Ottawa: NGC, 1967-68. McLuhan. © Estate Of Harley Parker. Figure 4 and 5 Figures 1, 2, and 3 © Estate Of Parker, Harley. “New Hall of Fossil Invertebrates Marshall McLuhan. Royal Ontario Museum.” Curator X/4 (December All Figures used with permission and not 1967): 284-96. covered by the Creative Commons Licence

REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 164