COLD
MAKING IT IN AN ANXIOUS WORLD
SWEAT
STEPHEN GODDARD
A THESIS IN FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF DESIGN (HONOURS)
UNSW ART & DESIGN MARCH 2019 Thesis/Dissertation Sheet
Surname/Family Name : Goddard Given Name/s : Stephen David Abbreviation for degree as give in the University calendar : MDes (Hons) Faculty : Art & Design School : Art & Design Thesis Title : Cold Sweat: Making it in an Anxious World
Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)
Cold Sweat: Making it in an Anxious World is a reflective examination of 25 years of design practice. The research is proposed as a transformational trigger leading to potential platforms for future design investigation. The Anxious World is best described as a combination of the significant pressures of wicked problems and the dominant ideology described by John Wood in his book Designing for Micro-utopias: Making the unthinkable possible, that ‘the individual consumer is God … the belief system that propels the economy’ (2007). Examining the place of my own practice within a range of theoretical models has led to a clarification of its position in what I’m referring to as a seam space that has allowed the negotiation of a generalised anxiety over a lengthy professional career. I use the tolerant and non-binary model of quadratic consciousness proposed by Wood and based on Leonhard Eular’s visual schema, which argues for a network of designers, greater than the sum of its parts responding to those pressures. This model positions the practice in a broader network. The thesis utilises a practice map that has emerged from theoretical exploration and reflection at an historical juncture in my career. It is deployed to frame the two case studies that form the primary methodology for the research – Obsessed: Compelled to make (Australian Design Centre, 2018) and Book Club (Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, 2017). A comparison of these case studies informs the conclusions on which a future practice can be based.
Declaration relating to disposition of project thesis/dissertation
I hereby grant to the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all property rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation.
I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstracts International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only).
18.03.2019 …………………………………………………………… ……………………………………..……………… ……….……………………...…….… Signature Witness Signature Date The University recognises that there may be exceptional circumstances requiring restrictions on copying or conditions on use. Requests for restriction for a period of up to 2 years must be made in writing. Requests for a longer period of restriction may be considered in exceptional circumstances and require the approval of the Dean of Graduate Research.
FOR OFFICE USE ONLY Date of completion of requirements for Award: ORIGINALITY STATEMENT ‘ I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project’s design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.
Stephen Goddard 18.03.2019
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INCLUSION OF PUBLICATIONS STATEMENT UNSW is supportive of candidates publishing their research results during their candidature as detailed in the UNSW Thesis Examination Procedure.
Publications can be used in their thesis in lieu of a Chapter if: • The student contributed greater than 50% of the content in the publication and is the “primary author”, ie. the student was responsible primarily for the planning, execution and preparation of the work for publication • The student has approval to include the publication in their thesis in lieu of a Chapter from their supervisor and Postgraduate Coordinator. • The publication is not subject to any obligations or contractual agreements with a third party that would constrain its inclusion in the thesis
Please indicate whether this thesis contains published material or not.
This thesis contains no publications, either published or submitted for publication
Some of the work described in this thesis has been published and it has been documented in the relevant Chapters with acknowledgement
This thesis has publications (either published or submitted for publication) incorporated into it in lieu of a chapter and the details are presented below
Candidate’s Declaration
I declare that: • I have complied with the Thesis Examination Procedure • where I have used a publication in lieu of a Chapter, the listed publication(s) below meet(s) the requirements to be included in the thesis.
Stephen Goddard 18.03.2019 COPYRIGHT STATEMENT ‘ I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my thesis or I have obtained permission to use copyright material; where permission has not been granted I have applied/will apply for a partial restriction of the digital copy of my thesis or dissertation.’
Stephen Goddard 23.05.2019
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AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT ‘ I certify that the Library deposit digital copy is a direct equivalent of the final officially approved version of my thesis. No emendation of content has occurred and if there are any minor variations in formatting, they are the result of the conversion to digital format.’
Stephen Goddard 23.05.2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are many people who have supported me in completing this thesis, and a few in particular that I would like to thank. First and foremost, Associate Professor, Dr Ian McArthur supervised my candidature, and gave insight, timely advice, and friendship at just the right moments. Thank you to my co-supervisor Associate Professor, Dr Arianne Rourke, and colleagues Carly Vickers and Bic Tieu at UNSW Art & Design, who have been generous at various points of the research and writing.
Debbie Abraham (Gallery Director) and Meryl Ryan (Senior Curator) at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, and Lisa Cahill (CEO and Artistic Director) and Penny Craswell (Creative Strategy Associate) at the Australian Design Centre were all integral in supporting the inclusion of Book Club and Obsessed: Compelled to make as case studies. In particular, Meryl has been instrumental in a transformation in my career over a number of years. I believe she has a rare insight into that which I’m hoping to achieve.
Thanks also to Brian Parkes for opportunities at JamFactory that have fed the practice journey in significant ways, but more importantly, together with Imogen Landau for his enduring friendship. Technical support was provided by Dean Rowland at Signwave Newtown and Karam Hussein at UNSW Art & Design Maker Space in the creation of Blind Sight.
Love and thanks to my parents Andrea and Graeme for many things, not the least of which was a small workshop at the back of the yard in Tasmania. Finally, and most importantly, to my partner Mark Wongcharoen for his patience and love not only during the writing of this thesis, but over the last twenty years.
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My candidature at UNSW Art & Design has been made possible by funding through the Australian Government’s Research Training Scheme.
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4 CONTENTS
PREFACE 6 CHAPTER 1 TRANSFORMATIONS 10 1.1 Cold Sweat 14 1.2 Making it 15 1.3 Anxious World 18 1.4 What will this research achieve? 21 1.5 General Methodology 22 1.6 Specific Methodology 24
CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE 26 2.1 Rotational Fields 35 2.2 Seam Practice 38 2.3 Precedent Practices 39
CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDIES 45 3.1 Case Study – Obsessed: Compelled to make 47 3.1.1 Project Concept 48 3.1.2 Concept Development 52 3.1.3 Packing Crates as a Vernacular Language 53 3.1.4 Easels for Screen Installation 56 3.1.5 Floor Plan and Installation Principles 59 3.1.6 Digital Storytelling 60 3.1.7 Critical Review 62 3.1.8 Meta-reflection onObsessed 63
FISSURE Notebooks 68 3.2 Case Study – Book Club 80 3.2.1 Working with Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery 81 3.2.2 Book Club Concept 82 3.2.3 Past imperfect. Future tense. 84 3.2.4 Book Hack 87 3.2.5 Reflection onBook Hack 96 3.2.6 Blind Sight 97 3.2.7 The Process of Making 100 3.2.8 Blind Sight as a Research Provocation 104 3.2.9 Blind Sight Data Analysis 110 3.2.10 Blind Sight Data Findings 112 3.2.11 Book Club Catalogue Design 117 3.2.12 Meta-reflection onBook Club 118
CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION 121 REFERENCES 134 5 APPENDICES 142 PREFACE
It’s early – barely light – and the morning is cool. Crisp mornings are usual, but so are long and productive days as the temperature rises on the small southerly island and the year draws to a close. The months are hotter and more humid as you cross the Strait and head further north. Well, that’s the way it was – it seems more unpredictable now, on the Island at least.
Five people are asleep. The sixth, a boy, has been awake for some time, waiting for a moment to venture quietly out the back door, up three stairs, a small ramp, and then two more. Then along a path, three or four more stairs to a small shed at the back of the steep yard under a canopy of pine trees. The shed is in a strange cluster of buildings – wedged between what once was a glass house, and a bigger workshop and garage. The roof of the glasshouse has since been covered with iron and the remaining glass in the walls whitewashed.
The boy unlocks the shed with a large and old-fashioned key. It used to hang inside the door of the larger workshop with many other keys – all labelled in black marker on manila tags attached by rough hemp string. They had hung in that place long before the family had ever moved in. The boy had since hollowed out and hinged a timber block on the door of his own small workshop, and the key is now (he believes) secreted there.
‘My Spot’ is proudly emblazoned sideways and to the full height of the door in well-crafted lettering, rendered with left-over house paints. The shed is basic but well used. Objects, assemblages of wire, motors and lights, and years of play fill the walls and shelves he has built gradually over time. But the boy is reaching that age. The things that he has made all seem childish and with little point. He doesn’t understand the purpose of it all, so soon everything will disappear. Pulled apart – the pieces methodically returned to the places from which they came.
He doesn’t feel clever in the way his engineer father was or a friend who could build an electronic device from scratch, though he’ll eventually come to see that his assemblages had a beauty. A rotating mechanical cylinder wired to sequence the powering of lights in a large model of a LED numeral (the technology of that time). Or single octave electronic keyboard which he built from plans, housed within a small pine box and emitting a series of ugly but tuneable notes. He loved making the objects – the allure of the electro-mechanical craft that seemed to take him closer to something he intuitively understood.
The boy is twelve and school is becoming more serious. He’s very good 6 at study, and as the next few years pass by he’ll often find himself lying PREFACE
awake, worrying about the work or an exam that is just around the corner. He’ll try to sleep, using a piece of music to quiet his mind. As he lay there with a lump in his throat and a strange pressure in his head, he can see the dark space of his room morph and change like a fluid black void.
He’s becoming curious about other things – a well-placed, finding-a-place, sometimes things-not-quite-in-their-place kind of wonder. He and his friends started working in the theatre – young kids in an adult world at a time when things were different. It was a moody yet comfortable refuge.
He wasn’t much good on the stage, or not interested, at least. But in the background, the spaces, light and mystery of it all felt like a safe place to be. He’d often arrive home late from the theatre, night after night as a teen-but-not-quite-adult. He’d tell stories to his family the next day – recounting the allure of a makeshift place where things were not always as they seemed. The theatre looked better from behind, so he’d bring it home and let it fill his world. The black, anxious void now filled with a purple-black light that would cause the lurid colours he’d pasted to the walls of his room to glow brightly.
With one thing leading to another, he stays some time on the Island – putting together all the pieces he discovers in a way that seems to make sense. He’s become a designer, a maker, a teacher and much more beside. He has his own measures of importance – ones that allow him to navigate just the right things by having just enough money. But the Island becomes progressively smaller; the coastline frighteningly closer; and the journey north shorter. So a wander would begin, disrupting his world and taking him eventually to a place that was hotter, fuller, and quite a bit less calm.
A little water passed under a lot of bridges. He eventually worked less in the theatre, but he particularly loved the objects he made for those spaces – big and small, and mostly crafted by his hand. The objects transformed – becoming pictures, ideas, and words. Every now and then there was a moment when people could see the no-longer-a-boy and the things he made at once. At those times he realised that he had something to say. At one triumphant moment in time he was able to fill his large, new city with a heady, colourful celebration of life and light. The hot, full, less-than-calm place changed him in that moment – he flew in that light and came crashing in its dark. The constant conversation of push and pull. More or less. Big and small. Then and now. It’s a fragile world which the 7 boy understood as normal, but which would eat at him if he let it. PREFACE
The boy’s island home is still south, but he realised that you can see many islands from above. Being nimble allowed him to duck and weave between them. Despite the scattered archipelagos that he has traversed, there were islands – 3 or 4 perhaps – where he paused longer or returned more than once, and that shaped him over time. These islands were places of refuge. Stories like this are romantic and reassuring – told as his father might, or his father before him.
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There’s a beauty in storytelling, and it seems to fit my practice well. In recent times, I reflected on my father and grandfather’s lives as an engineer, a mechanic and both as makers in A Ballet of Giants, written for the catalogue Steel (Goddard, 2017). The intimacy of that recall seems natural and reassuring. Therein the genesis of this thesis, at the midpoint of my career, and as a catalyst for change. It is a thesis that looks at development in the form of the practice as much as it does the content.
As with the story that opens this thesis, the area of research was derived from an intuitive understanding of the nature of my own design practice, but underscored by the motivation to understand it with more rigour and universality, and in a larger context that seems to have become more urgent. The metaphorical shrinking of the coastline is becoming real, and (not only) designers are considering the consequences of what they do and how they might adapt. Despite the warnings of Victor Papenek (1972) close to the year I was born, we make more, sell more, and collectively we dispose of more. But we are compelled to continue to function, to contribute with meaning, and for many, to apply our skills to reversal and repair in a world that is anxiously accelerating.
This preface was conceived as a story about trying to make sense of the motivation behind the research project. What binds the simple joy of boyhood, and a career as a designer in an eclectic range of contexts? What, if anything, separates a design practice from a personal life? How has this affected the choices made in commercial design, and the ability to function within its conventions? Why has a small scale of practice and a proximity to the process of making always seemed important?
What this thesis therefore seeks to achieve is a moment of pause that allows for reflection, substantiation, and understanding of the practice within a more rigorous and extendable context. This requires a questioning of the intuition that has served the practice over time. A more formal framing of 8 the research question that this thesis poses is therefore as follows: PREFACE
In this Anxious World, what is the relationship between an intimate scale of design practice and that of a larger network of design agents? How can a designer respond to this generalised state of anxiety, using the roles of maker, storyteller and activist to work outside the dominant ideologies of commercial design?
When the title of the thesis – Cold Sweat: Making it in an Anxious World – was developed, it drew on the conventions of communications practice. We are trained, when designing for communication, to strive for a deceptive simplicity, and to imbue words with a more complex multiplicity of meaning. Communications design, perhaps like advertising, seeks to be clever. Research in commercial design can tend to be rapid, reactive and built on experiential knowledge – what do I need to know now in order to solve this problem? The work often responds to someone else’s challenge, so how does that affect the creative authenticity of that which is being produced?
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My story as a boy reminds me of this ‘moment’ of scholarly enquiry – both are underpinned by the curiosity that accompanies any rite of passage. Perhaps reaching 50 is a little like reaching 13 – a time to again disassemble things that have been made, in order to move forward.
Childhood making and adult design practice seem, on reflection, to be one and the same thing – they are expressions of an artist-like relationship with the world. What separates the two is a sense of urgency that has come with experience and adulthood – and that makes the transformation into a new period of practice all the more vital. Turning to popular culture to begin this thesis: after a long and painful stumble, the famously theatrical character of Billy Elliot describes a feeling of electricity when he is in a creative moment of dance. In her exploration of authenticity (albeit in the context of consumption and the ‘blockbuster’), Helen Freshwater recounts the character describing the feeling he gets in that moment:
‘I can’t really explain it, I haven’t got the words’ (Freshwater, 2012, p.158).
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9 1 Transformations
10 CHAPTER 1 TRANSFORMATIONS
Cold Sweat is a reflective exploration of more than 25 years of design practice, conceived as a catalyst for transformation. Donald Schön describes this type of reflection as ‘an alternative to the traditional epistemology of practice … [leading] to new conceptions of the professional-client contract … (Schön, 1983, p.345). More specifically, I am seeking to critically understand the professional practice that has come before, in order to develop a framework for the designerly research which might follow (Yee, 2017, p.155).
When Robert Dessaix speaks of transformations in (and so forth) (Dessaix, 1998), he does so as an author seeking to not only ‘think or see “differently” from the way society would urge us to, but to live differently’ (p.225).
Making things new is not my forte. Seeing things anew – from an odd angle, in an unexpected light, coloured differently – somehow suits my nature better. It comes naturally, I suppose, to someone who believes he is living a completely different life from the one he’s actually in the middle of. Anyway, in these post-modern times the difference between the making and the seeing is often comfortably blurred.
Robert Dessaix, introduction to On Transformations (Dessaix, 1998, p.223)
Transformations through design research are derived from a different series of circumstances from those to which Dessaix was referring. One motivation is to go beyond the dominant service-based interaction between the design professional and client, and to critically situate design outputs in a more independent and authorial space (McCarthy, 2012). My practice has always partially operated in that context, and this research can be seen to build on that – using the knowledge as a transformational trigger. The research crystallises tacit knowledge in order to map a research path for the practice in the future.
Your practice-led PhD isn’t about carving off a safe piece of knowledge and becoming an expert in it … it contrives the circumstances within which you have a greater chance of achieving meaningful and positive transformation of your practice. (Yuille, 2017, p.206)
The lens for this research is one of autoethnography – in that I am using personal experience to analyse or frame a broader cultural experience (Ellis, 2004; Holman Jones 2005 as cited in Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2011, p.273).
Autoethnographers recognise the innumerable ways personal 11 experience influences the research process. (2011, p.274) CHAPTER 1 TRANSFORMATIONS
Adams, Holman Jones, and Ellis see a need for autoethnographic researchers to ‘bridge the academic and the affective’, and to communicate through both the heart and the head (Adams, Holman Jones & Ellis, 2015, p.42).
As the preface to the thesis suggests, one propensity in my life has been to understand work and life as a single entity. In his book Creative People at Work, Howard E. Gruber notes:
The network of enterprise impinges on the creative person’s self concept in a number of ways. First, and most important, by constituting the person’s organization of purpose, it defines the working self. Each person has certain conceptions of his or her life tasks. (Wallace & Gruber, 1989, p.12)
In the concluding chapter ‘Creativity and Human Survival’ Gruber completes this train of thought:
As the creative life unfolds, work proceeds on many fronts; this is expressed in the diversity of the creator’s network of enterprise: the work is organized in hierarchical structures – problems within tasks, tasks within projects, and projects within enterprises. The creator must not only organize the work itself but must manage the diverse demands of a creative life. (1989, p.278)
A useful task in the research was to create a visual map of projects I have undertaken in the course of my practice and identify key transformational moments in the outputs mapped against the media they employed (FIGURE 01, P.10). These were situated concurrent to a holistic view of practice intertwined with age and location. Key moments of insight emerge as epiphanies – ‘remembered moments perceived to have significantly impacted the trajectory of a person’s life’ (Bochner & Ellis, 1992; Couser, 1997; Denzin, 1989, cited in Ellis, Adams & Bochner 2011, p.275).
The visualisation was achieved by indicating years in which there had been a project of significance within a practice stream, scaled where there were multiple projects. Any project that was identified as having a place in the narrative of this thesis was marked as a darker circle, and from that, key islands of practice were located. This cartographic approach is symbolic of both physical and career trajectories.
The identification of projects was drawn from practice archives, with the area of communications design indicated only symbolically. The largely commercial projects within that region number several thousand and are of the least interest to this study, which has a focus on design authorship 12 and autonomous practice. FIGURE 01 Goddard, S. (2017). Design practice map demonstrating the mapping of projects against time and media.
HISTORICAL TRAJECTORY TO THESIS
SIGNIFICANT PROJECT
MULTIPLE PROJECTS
SIGNIFICANT PROJECT CLUSTERS (ISLANDS)
CONNECTION POINTS FOR POSITIONING THESIS IN PRACTICE
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To position this thesis, the narrative themes within the title can be examined.
1.1 Cold Sweat noun A state of sweating induced by fear, anxiety or illness. (en.oxforddictionaries.com)
Cold Sweat captures the personal storytelling that is inherent in this research project. It expresses a disposition tending towards nervousness, worry and hyper vigilance – certainly a sensitivity to the scale of our impact on the world (and how we therefore seek to interact). Cold sweats are a physical and psychological reaction to anxiety and stress on the Beck Anxiety Inventory (Guest, 2017, p.99). As one symptom of the excessive emotion that characterises anxiety as a disorder, there may be a tendency toward patterns of avoidance (Campbell-Sills et al, 2014, p.394). Our individual responses to anxiety and stress vary with our own disposition. The idea of avoidance might be better thought of as a pattern of negotiation, in which personal decisions on whether to engage with a project are made.
Such differences can also arise from a combination of innate biological perturbations or a precipitating stressful event in the environment. (Guest, 2017, p.95)
To sweat has the overtone of an act of labour. The career progression in mainstream design practice over time affects the nature of labour involved – generally from the hands-on crafting of design works, to a position of creative and strategic management. Small scale practice enables a close proximity to the mechanics of the process of design to remain, and is a key motivation in the form that my own practice has taken.
Cold Sweat is also an evocation of place. Cold recalls the southerly island of Tasmania in which I was born, and which was a fertile, productive, and highly creative training ground as a designer. Significant possibilities around projects as a young designer were achievable through the localism of the practice and support through a range of opportunities – indeed, flexibility was what was required to be sustained in small scale practice. Tasmania is a small island that now bases its economy around the creative industries, such as those which have emanated from the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in recent times. The so-called ‘MONA Effect’ now resonates broadly throughout the cities and regions of the state 14 (Crompton and Zengerer, 2018). CHAPTER 1 TRANSFORMATIONS
Sweat has been my life of the most recent twenty years, spent professionally in Sydney and connected personally to Bangkok. The conjunction of these places in the title of the research – cold and hot / south and north / known and acquired – is a poignant situating device. Further embedded in the term ‘sweat’ is the transformation that our world is undergoing as the climate changes. This brings additional urgency to Cold, Sweat, and Place.
1.2 Making it
Making it is the first of two critical themes and is one that has been reworked at several points. When the thesis was originally proposed, Making it was originally referred to as Design, then Repair and Regeneration, and later as Hybrid Practice. What became clear as the research has progressed, particularly through placement within an autoethnographic frame, was a questioning of what is being referred to when using the term design and therefore its removal in favour of something more active. An intertwining of the process of design with art and the craft involved in making illustrates a specific, though far from unique, relationship inherent in my practice which results in ‘blurred boundaries’ (Shiner, 2012). This is tacit knowledge that has influenced the scale of the practice; philosophical underpinnings; and how the practice has been situated in terms of livelihood. There has been a consistent tension between a personal creative practice and one that is mediated by a client, as well as the numerous partners involved in the making process – whether they be fabricators, printers, or partners of other sorts. The case studies that form that latter part of this research will evidence this phenomenon. Tacit knowledge might also include more deeply situated personal traits.
The notion of tacit knowledge points towards dimensions of something ‘known’ but not articulated, as well as to specific modes of ‘knowing’ akin to ‘experiential knowledge’ and ‘operational knowledge’, which can be shown, exhibited and demonstrated rather than made explicit in discursive and conceptual ways. (Blythe & Stamm, 2017, p.60)
Despite the placement of the practice within small scale commercial industry (albeit almost exclusively at the ‘softer’ cultural edge) a key concern has been the criticality of making. This can be traced back to a nurtured childhood predisposition, described in the catalogue essay 15 ‘A Ballet of Giants’ in Steel: art design architecture: CHAPTER 1 TRANSFORMATIONS
The Derwent Park factories were a playground for the many weekends of our childhoods, and have remained a strong memory. Unlike my younger brother, I didn’t become an engineer, but I’ve never been able to separate my own design work from a love of making. Over time I’ve embraced the balance of the evolving nature of design practice with the endurance of craftsmanship – whether that be in the creation of sets for theatre and television as it was in my early days, or the bulk of my work as a communications and exhibition designer as it is now. (Goddard, 2017, p.30)
Making it is merely one way in which the practice of a designer can be understood. One of the challenges in this research has been to situate that understanding alongside more singular definitions of design, and this has become the focus of the theoretical framing in Chapter 2.
By way of example:
Design is the applied science of mass; the mechanical engineering of mass production and the social engineering of mass consumption. There is never just one of any design; this is what differentiates design, which is always industrial, from craft. When Victor Papanek claimed that design is one of the most harmful professions, it was because it operates at unlicenced volume. (Tonkinwise, 2009, p.236)
Much of that which Cameron Tonkinwise proclaims here in an introduction to his review of Godfrey Reggio’s filmKoyaanisqatsi (1982) is undoubtedly perfectly correct. On the other hand, his declaration that there is never just one design is indicative of the limitations of any singular statement on the nature or scale of a design practice. Using Tonkinwise’s framing, what is the place of the theatre designer, the exhibition designer, the designer-maker who works with the one-off? Where does a designer sit if they deliberately use their communications and material skills to work in an activist modality, or as a questioning agent and provocateur in alternate spaces? The amateur designer? The designer as boundary agent (Star & Griesemer, 1989; Bowker, Timmermans, Clarke & Balka, 2015)? In all these cases, there may be a singular outcome.
Understanding that designers work in a range of modalities (some of them minor, or small in scale at least) was a key moment of insight and a philosophical construct that underpins this research. It recognises the importance of a range of design individuals and practices as part of an 16 overall network. Returning to the earlier map of practice projects, what is CHAPTER 1 TRANSFORMATIONS
needed in a suitable design model is the pliability to allow multiple agents at different points in their lives and careers to bring a range of knowledge types to the network. This network theory will be explored in Chapter 2.
The second implication of making it is one of survival. Engagement in the practice of design and making is not only a question of livelihood but also suggests the nursing effects of a balm. This will be further discussed in the context of the first case study in this thesis,Obsessed: Compelled to make (Australian Design Centre, 2018). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s psychological model for Flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997, p.31) (FIGURE 02) gives great insight into an understanding of the activity of design as a counter to the anxieties of a creative soul. His is a theory in which a person’s optimal state of happiness exists when both the challenge and the skill level of their task are at their highest. In the zone of highest challenge, to exist in a state of flow (happiness) as distinct from a state of anxiety, requires moving from a low to a high level of skill. The ambitions of my practice have always been for equal engagement with high challenge and high skill.
FIGURE 02 AROUSAL Csikszentmihályi, M. (1997). Y FL T O Flow diagram from IE W X N Finding Flow: The A Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. HIGH CHALLENGE LEVEL Diagram: Stephen Goddard C
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1.3 The Anxious World
The Anxious World, the second major theme to which the thesis title refers, is best described as the generalised state in which it could be argued that we now exist. This autoethnographic framing uses personal knowledge to frame a broader cultural experience (Ellis, 2004; Holman Jones 2005 as cited in Ellis et al, 2011, p.273). Living with a susceptibility to nervousness has framed the form in which my design practice has emerged – and may draw on the earlier link with avoidance as a maladaptive symptom of an anxious state (Campbell-Sills, Ellard & Barlow, 2013, p.394). It is a dull tendency which pulsates constantly in the background – rarely debilitating as is often the case, but certainly uncomfortable at times.
At the outset of this research and at a point when my commitment to teaching increased, so did my anecdotal awareness of the number of students being affected by anxiety in their studies. It is an observation supported by a comprehensive study by Headspace and the National Union of Students in 2016. The study reports alarming levels of student anxiety and issues of mental health in tertiary students, with around two thirds reporting, at best, poor to fair mental health. (Headspace: National Youth Mental Health Foundation, 2016, p.42) Ironically, this moment of situated reflective practice (Malthouse, Roffey-Barentsen and Watts, 2014, p.600) crystallised the conceptual approach the research could follow – it was a clue to understanding the nature of my own decision-making in the practice over time.
This recognition can be mapped back to formative times in my own life. The ‘anxious core’ (FIGURE 03) which grounded an early (now somewhat redundant) research map (FIGURE 04, P.19) was not just a graphic mark but also symbolic of a recollection. Anxiousness and sleeplessness have often seemed to co-exist. To recall as an adult a visual teenage memory of what that anxiety ‘looked like’ in half sleep makes it a powerful icon.
There are many bodies of evidence that suggest we are living in an anxious time. Ironically, this is at a point in history which Neil Halloran refers to as ‘The Long Peace’. In the extraordinary interactive data visualisation fallen.io he paints a picture of our being safer than ever before from the dangers of conflict (Halloran, n.d.). The dangers that we live with in terms of the damage of unbridled consumption, global climate change, and ocean warming at this moment in history are potentially far 18 more catastrophic. CHAPTER 1 TRANSFORMATIONS
FIGURE 03 Goddard, S. (2016). The Anxious Core extracted from an initial rendering of a proposed thesis mapping (Figure 04, P.23).
As a limitation to the study, it is important to establish from the outset that the Anthropocene specifically is outside the scope of detailed consideration in this research. The Anthropocene is a term suggesting ‘(i) that the Earth is now moving out of its current geological epoch … and (ii) that human activity is largely responsible for this exit from the Holocene, that is, that humankind has become a global geological force in its own right’ (Steffen, Grinevald, Crutzen & McNeill, 2011, p.843)
The Anthropocene nonetheless remains highly relevant for the influence on the future of design practice and design study (Slaughter, 2012) – ‘re-orienting [the] most powerful gate-keepers of education as a whole away from the past and toward the threatened and emerging futures (2012, p.126). As a design practitioner, the Anthropocene is now an ever- present force mediating our decision-making, bringing us back to Victor Papanek’s preface to Design for the Real World in 1972:
There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them. And possibly only one profession is phonier. Advertising design … (Papanek, 1972, p.xxi)
The intertwining of economic growth with ongoing technological advancement is discussed by Mokyr, Vickers, and Ziebarth in their article 19 ‘The History of Technological Anxiety and the Future of Economic Growth: CHAPTER 1 TRANSFORMATIONS
Is This Time Different’ (Mokyr, Vickers & Ziebarth, 2015). They argue that:
Technology is widely considered the main source of economic progress, but it has also generated cultural anxiety throughout history. (Mokyr et al, 2015, p.31)
They go onto argue that it is not a new phenomenon, but that ‘the developed world is now suffering from another bout of such angst’ (2015, p.31). ‘There has been anxiety over the moral implications of technological progress for human welfare, broadly defined.’ (2015, p.32)
The definition for the Anxious World that has emerged for this research is therefore a combination of the significant pressures of the world’s wicked problems and the dominant ideology that ‘the individual consumer is God … the belief system that propels the economy’ (Wood, 2007, p.11). When combined with a propensity toward a disordered state of generalised anxiety – clinically described as a combination of anxiety with apprehensive expectation or worry (Monnier & Brawman-Mintzer, 2003, p.51) – I have concluded that my individual design practice has been shaped over time as a reaction to negotiating these significant forces.
In the introduction to his book Design for Micro Utopias; Making the Unthinkable Possible, John Wood signals an awareness that ‘society is pondering its own extinction’. He subsequently takes ‘[comfort in knowing] that some people have been paying attention’ (Wood, 2007, p.1). This thesis will establish Wood’s ethos as a central tenet, in particular the potential future he saw of utopia as network of micro-utopias, in which we optimistically remain empowered to dream and act, within the range of practice typologies in which we work (2007).
The Qatsi film triology of Geoffrey Reggio, briefly referred to earlier, has long appealed to my intuition and vocabulary as a designer, and it was only in the course of this research that I recognised a broader connection to scholarly discourse. Cameron Tonkinwise presents an image from the title sequence to Koyaanisqatsi in opening his article ‘Design for Transitions – from and to what?’ (Tonkinwise, n.d.).
20 CHAPTER 1 TRANSFORMATIONS
Koyaanisqatsi ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi language), n.
1. crazy life. 2. life in turmoil. 3. life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating. 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.
As an expressive statement, the power of image, sound and a small amount of written language in this film comes closest to capturing the creative motivations of this research.
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1.4 What will this research achieve?
Many designers are endeavouring to reconsider their practices in response to another way of living, to coin words from Koyaanisqatsi. This posed the specific question of how thedesigner as activist might use ‘design thinking, imagination and practice applied knowingly … to create a counter-narrative aimed at generating and balancing positive social, institutional, environmental and/or economic change’ (Fuad-Luke, 2009, p.27)?
There has been a profound transformation in the field of critical practice- based design research (Vaughan, 2017, p.1), which has provided an opportunity for the transformational moments to which the research refers. Vaughan documents a range of possible doctoral-level models in Practice Based Design Research (2017), and concludes with several chapters of reflections on the PhD graduate experiences of Pia Ednie-Brown, Katherine Moline, Joyce Yee, Lisa Grocott, Zoe Sadokierski, Neal Haslem and Jeremy Yuille.
Yee’s reference to the ‘researcherly designer’ (a practicing designer trained in research) was notable as a term to ‘discuss and highlight … how research skills contribute to a design practice’ (Yee, 2017, p.155), and how it enabled her to ‘… [transition] from a design practice into a hybrid practice consisting of research, teaching and design’ (2017, p.155). Vaughan frames the book with an introductory statement:
… being able to name what they do as a practice rather than a job or a 21 skill set is the first step toward undertaking a PhD. (Vaughan, 2017, p.13) CHAPTER 1 TRANSFORMATIONS
In her PhD thesis, Lisa Grocott is able to locate the value of the design artefact in design research from the perspective of deepening theoretical understanding by applying practice knowledge:
… our predominantly theoretical understandings of praxis would be richer for being further informed by the experiential knowledge of a designer … his or her capacity to reflect upon and communicate on a way of thinking and making that might only be understood tacitly … (Grocott, 2010, p.30)
Grocott also connects this to the perspective of audience engagement, which is critical in my own background in audience-centric communications:
A design PhD is about making ideas tangible. What is interesting is how different research artefacts engage audiences in different ways. The material artefacts afford multiple ways for people to engage briefly, in contrast to written texts that call for deeper engagement by fewer people. (Grocott, 2017, p.166)
Linda Candy offers two important definitions of research in relation to practice, and both have a place in the context of this investigation. Candy definespractice-based research as ‘new knowledge [gained] partly by means of practice and the outcomes of that practice’. She compares this with practice-led research which is ‘concerned with the nature of practice’ with particular regard to the ‘operational significance’ it might have (Candy, 2006, p.1). The original intent of the research appeared to have its basis within the former practice-based approach, in which I understood the transformation to be measured by the outcomes that might emerge. What has become increasingly evident through the framing achieved in Chapter 2 is that the modelling of the practice itself represents a signifcant research output, and therefore leads the intent of the investigation at times. The research therefore occupies a fluctuating space between the two.
In short, the rigour of the research affords the time and criticality to progress the practice into the future. This is a transformational moment, at an ‘historical juncture’ in my practice (UNSW APR panel, November 2017).
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22 CHAPTER 1 TRANSFORMATIONS
FIGURE 04 1.5 Goddard, S. (2016). Initial General Methodology thesis mapping, including a broader curatorial context, Grocott undertook a range of detailed mappings in her own thesis proposed in the early stages Design Research and Reflective Practice (Grocott, 2010) to establish an of research development. understanding of the relationship between research and practice. Based on these principles, initially I adopted a technique of rudimentary 3D visualisation to map my own design research. The diagram above is the final iteration of that visualisation in which the scope was defined tightly around a practice-based research outcome (the research originally proposed a more expansive and reflexive curatorial approach)(FIGURE 04).
The context in which this research seeks to be understood was initially considered in terms of Godin and Zahedi, in their ‘Aspects of Research through Design: A Literature Review’ (Godin and Zahedi, 2014). To that extent, the model of Research for Design might have been seen as the 23 most appropriate; that is ‘treating the designers and their practice as the CHAPTER 1 TRANSFORMATIONS
object of [the] study’ (2014, p.2). Godin and Zahedi’s definition ofResearch through Design in which moments of experimentation lead to insight emerged as the more appropriate, however was limited by the concluding observation:
… the artefact is not the goal of RtD; knowledge and understanding is. (2014, p.11)
The production of artefacts as active provocations was present in the original intent of the research, suggesting the initial characterisation as practice-based or RtD.
Design Academy Eindhoven’s (DAE) Lexicon of Design (Design Academy Eindhoven, n.d.) is immediately more appealing in providing definition around this research, as well as the clearest reference point for the design responses in the latter case studies. In particular, DAE’s Lexicon for Thinking through making:
includes collecting, documenting, mapping, analysing, reflecting, translating, synthesising, and concluding. Thinking is not only expressed through text, but also through everything we make. Making includes crafting objects, organising activities, telling stories, and designing systems and experiences … The making or designing could be taking place intuitively. Reflecting on what has been made helps create knowledge and insights. (Design Academy Eindhoven, n.d.)
Based on this, the research therefore adopts a mixed research methodology of documentation, practice case study, literature study, visual analysis, exploratory installation, and reflection resulting in both a portfolio of case study projects, and an accompanying shorter thesis – a combination recognised as characteristic of design research (Yee, 2010, p.4). In the concluding chapter of the thesis, the former thesis map has been further iterated to position this Masters thesis as a precursor to ongoing research.
1.6 Specific Methodology
Seam practice is the term I now use to describe the specific creative methodology which has defined my practice over time. This term will be further explored in Chapter 2 and it is used to frame the two case study projects in Chapter 3. It draws on the observations which emerged from mapping the practice, in which projects and client relationships have 24 linked the disciplines of theatre design, communications design, exhibition CHAPTER 1 TRANSFORMATIONS
design, publication design, curatorship, art, craft and writing. This is a fluid interaction with a range of modes of working in practice, in which the designer may be seen, in many cases, as author (McCarthy, 2013).
Poetically, the breadth of the practice can be considered in light of Robert Dessaix’s now famous essay Loitering with Intent (Dessaix, 1997, pp.321- 344). He argues that the rise of an invasive culture of professionalism (read expert) has assigned the status of the intentful loiterer to that of the dilettante. It might instead be simply considered as a de-siloing of the media of a practice in favour of fuller possibilities of creative engagement. The intentful loiterer is one of the ‘everyone that designs’ (Manzini, 2015).
To return to the notion of activism, though he makes a slight distinction between the dilettante and the amateur, Dessaix argues amateur activity as potentially subversive, speculating that;
… that is what Roland Barthes meant when he cryptically wrote in that note on L’amateur that the amateur is the ‘counter-bourgeois self’. (Dessaix, 1998, p.335)
As this reflection traverses key moments of my practice over time, it has become evident that the loitering with intent has been more aligned with personal and creative engagement than it has with any commercial imperative (short of being able to survive in small-scale practice). In this context, working in the seam space has emerged as the dominant ideology of my practice. The focus of this initial chapter is on positioning my practice as it has existed historically and understanding that in terms of the broader conceptual frame of personal and global anxiety.
Chapter 2 will examine the theoretical basis for the designer acting into alternate spaces in the role of artist and activist, and understanding this as a network of design agents. It will look to establish and interpret the co-incidences and limitations of a number of design models, in particular the Bauhaus Scheme for Stage, Cult and Popular Entertainment, Ezio Manzini’s Design Mode Map, Richard Buchanan’s Four Orders of Design and Garry van Patter’s understanding of Design 1.0 to 4.0. It will return to John Wood’s Rudimentary Map of Utopias as well as considering Wood with minor reference to Jonathan Crinion to establish a more pliant and holistic network model.
Chapter 2 will also review the precedent practices of John Warwicker; A Published Event (Justy Philips and Margaret Woodward); and Ji Lee to frame the case study projects in the second half of the thesis.
25 ❉ 2 Rotational Fields and Seam Practice
26 CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
In the initial chapter of this thesis, the nature of my own practice was established through an historical mapping and a positioning in relation to multiple islands of practice. There has been an enduring connection to the craft of design across these islands which has been a strong influence on the intimate scale of the practice. This can be coupled to an emerging motivation to engage with the role of the designer as activist (Fuad-Luke, 2009) or producer (Lupton, 1998; McCarthy, 2013). This chapter will now place the practice within a range of historical and contemporary design models in order to better understand the seam space in which it operates.
The genesis for this theoretical interest came from early work in design for theatre, and this is at the core of my own agency within the exhibition space – whether as a conventional designer, or as an exhibitor and maker. Models proposed by the Bauhaus – specifically Oskar Schlemmer’s Scheme for Stage, Cult and Popular Entertainment (Gropius et al, 1925/1961, p.19) – first emerged in my practice in the context of theatre design. This diagram was a key motivation for this research project, with the particular moment at which I became aware of it in 1997 (epiphany) mapped on the practice diagram (FIGURE 05):
FIGURE 05 Goddard, S. (2017). Design practice map [detail] showing the placement of Schlemmer’s Scheme as a moment of epiphany. This leads to the thesis mapped in the centre.
SCHEME FOR STAGE, CULT AND POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT
27 CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
Looking specifically to Schlemmer’sScheme (FIGURE 06), theatre is depicted as the central arena – a fertile and public space. It traverses the territory between ‘religious cult activity’ and ‘folk entertainment’. This diagram was conceived in the specific context of the Bauhaus’ relationship to the production of theatre, and sought to understand the arena as a ‘moral institution’ (1925/1961, p.18). The model uses a stratified order to arrange the agents acting into this space alongside the media at their disposal. Whilst this is useful and compelling in terms of the complexity it captures, it is problematic in its suggestion of a binary hierarchy. The original moment of insight relating to this thesis, however, was in a recognition of the regions described as ‘borderline’.
PLACE PERSON GENRE SPEECH MUSIC DANCE
TEMPLE PRIEST RELIGIOUS CULT ACTIVITY SERMON ORATORIO DERVISH
ARENA CONSECRATED STAGE ARCHITECTURAL • ANCIENT EARLY OPERA MASS STAGE PROPHET FESTIVAL TRAGEDY (EG HANDEL) GYMNASTICS STAGE STAGE STYLIZED OR SCHILLER SPACE STAGE SPEAKER BORDERLINE (’BRIDE OF MESSSINA’) WAGNER CHORIC DANCE
THEATER OF ILLUSION ACTOR THEATER SHAKESPEARE MOZART BALLET
WINGS AND PERFORMER FRAME’) (’PICTURE IMPROVISATION OPERA BUFFA MIME BORDERS (COMEDIAN) BORDERLINE (COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE) OPERETTA & MUMMERY PEEP SHOW
CABARET SIMPLEST STAGE • CONFRENCIER MUSIC HALL CARICATURE OR APPARATUS ARTISTE VARIETÉ (MC) SONG & PARODY & MACHINERY • JAZZ BAND (VAUDEVILLE) CIRCUS PODIUM SCAFFOLD ARTISTE ARENA CLOWNERY CIRCUS BAND ACROBATICS
FAIRGROUND FOOL DOGGERAL SIDESHOW JESTER FOLK ENTERTAINMENT BALLAD FOLK SONG FOLK DANCE
In a consideration of a range of creative practices, Schlemmer’s model can FIGURE 06 be adopted to illustrate any number of (seemingly) polar comparisons: Schlemmer, O. in Gropius et al (1925/1961) art vs craft Scheme for Stage, Cult and Popular Entertainment. art vs design Diagram: Stephen Goddard craft vs design traditional design vs design thinking
This is by no means the limitation of these types of comparisons, 28 which will be in constant flux as progressive modes of design emerge – CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
for example, transition design (Tonkinwise, n.d.). Applying a contemporary and audience-centric lens to Schlemmer’s diagram, the exhibition space is influenced by both the formal arts and popular media (such as online or reality television, or personal action cameras), as well as any number of participatory or community events.
Designers and educators do this in aggregate for all visitors by designing varied spaces, punctuating object experiences with interactives, and offering different kinds of programs. (Simon, 2010, pp.58-59)
As I am applying this framework to my consideration of the projects case- studied in this thesis, Schlemmer’s diagram is considered alongside a range of more contemporary models of design practice. To connect this to the initial frameworks proposed in this thesis, the central arena, or stage, is considered as the Anxious World in which we are operating and the theater [sic] as its anxious core. The theatre space can be equated to any public exhibition space, with craft and making occupying one pole, and complex design thinking occupying the other. The latter of these is complicated by the commercial imperatives which constantly hijack genuine and innovative design thinking. This has been considered recently in the book Innovation Methods Mapping: Demystifying 80+ years of Innovation Process Design in a complex mapping (Van Patter & Pastor, 2016) and as such provides a good starting point for this comparative analysis.
Garry Van Patter’s strong rhetoric is predicated on establishing a commercial case for his company NextD’s strategic position. Van Patter orders design numerically – moving from Design 1.0 (traditional design) through Design 2.0 (products and services), Design 3.0 (organizational transformation), to Design 4.0 (social transformation) (nextDesign + Humantific, 2015, p.4). He promotessensemaking as the critical prerequisite to changemaking, noting:
In new practice design thinking, sensemaking is needed to get ready for changemaking. Making sense of fuzzy complexity (not just data analysis) is what sensemaking is all about. (NextDesign + Humantific, 2015, p.3)
Van Patter’s model diagrams increasing sensemaking in parallel to decreasing strangemaking. He identifies strangemaking as the traditional territory of commercial design; creating differentiation between products 29 and services (FIGURE 07). CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
STRANGEMAKING FIGURE 07 ABSTRACT NextD / VanPatter, G. (2015) Mapping of design practice DESIGN 1.0 visualised in terms of TRADITIONAL increasing sensemaking Diagram: Stephen Goddard DESIGN 2.0 PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
DESIGN 3.0 ORGANISATIONAL TRANSFOMATION
DESIGN 4.0 SOCIAL CONCRETE TRANSFORMATION
SENSEMAKING
Richard Buchanan’s Four Orders of Design (Buchanan, 2001, p.12) is similarly structured, and is arguably the basis for the NextD approach. Graphic design and industrial design are seen as simple and traditional in approach and sit in the First and Second Orders, a strategic distance from what he refers to as the Third and Fourth orders of ‘action’ and thought’ (FIGURE 08, P.31). Buchanan goes on to consider the role of definition in design, which he describes as ‘serv[ing] strategic and tactical purposes in inquiry’ (2001, p.8). He makes a distinction between ‘descriptive’ and ‘formal’ definitions of design, with the former tending to:
… identify a single important cause of a subject and point toward how that cause may be explored in greater depth and detail, allowing an individual to create connections among matters that are sometimes not easily connected. (2001, p.8)
Schlemmer, Van Patter and Buchanan have models which all articulate a range of design interactions and some aspect of definition around the nature of practice, however none are entirely satisfying. They tend to adopt a linear structure in which one mode of action appears to be preferenced in opposition to another. This concept is easily understood in linguistics through Ferdinand de Saussure’s Structuralist theory of binary opposition, ‘a structurally derived notion which acknowledges the human 30 inclination to think antagonistically’ (Fogarty, 2005). Jacques Derrida later CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
ABSTRACT FIGURE 08 Buchanan, R. (2001). SYSTEMS Mapping of the Four Orders AND CULTURE of Design, to suggesting an THOUGHT increase in complexity and PROCESSES AND abstract thought. INTERACTIONS ACTION Diagram: Stephen Goddard INDUSTRIAL OBJECTS THINGS
GRAPHICS SYMBOLS
CONCRETE SIMPLE COMPLEX
adopted (and adapted) the concept, seeing binary opposition as ‘a violent hierarchy’ in which one philosophical position governs the other, rather than occupying any ‘peaceful coexistence’ (Derrida, 1972/2002, p41). It is the broad concept of hierarchical preferencing that has led to an expanded examination of design models, in order to establish a robust philosophical platform for my own position as a designer, or indeed, human being. A final comparative model therefore comes from Ezio Manzini, who adopts a quadratic rather than a linear approach in his Design Mode Map (FIGURE 09) (Manzini, 2015, p.40).
EXPERT DESIGN FIGURE 09 Manzini, E. (2015) 4 3 Design Mode Map. DESIGN AND DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY COMMUNICATION Diagram: Stephen Goddard AGENCY AGENCY
PROBLEM SOLVING SENSE MAKING
1 2 GRASSROOTS CULTURAL ORGANISATION ACTIVIST
DIFFUSE 31 CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
Within this kind of definition, there is a much easier placement of my own practice in the fluctuating space between the role ofcultural activist, and design and communication agency, both of which emphasise sensemaking. The appeal of this model is through an inherent democracy in which the practice can be seen in direct relationship to a range of design agents, expert or otherwise, as well as a range of design technologies.
Drawing on Manzini’s own definitions, cultural activists:
… play an active role in the cultural systems they are part of … they must design the specific contents they want to present. (Manzini, 2015, p.42)
Design and communication agents are in the:
… design mode of experts who use their specific knowledge and tools to conceive and develop original products, services, and communicative artifacts. (2015, p.42)
Overlaying this final model (and the principle that binds these positions) is Wood’s map of micro-utopias:
One way to describe ‘micro-utopias’ is to imagine different types of wisdom that are joined together. Hence, we might transcend the idea of an ‘information society’ or ‘knowledge economy’, and make it into a ‘wisdom economy’. (Wood, 2007, p.12)
Viewing the models in this way introduces the malleability needed for a range of design practices, acting in harmony and at a variety of scales. This includes those that work at the collision point of design and art, as well as those that work in the redesign of systems and technologies. They all work toward the greater goal of ‘ … connect[ing] their “micro-utopias” together … to achieve a global “synergy of synergies”’. (2007, p.13)
Wood later explores the additional concept of the autopoietic team, capable of reproducing and maintaining itself. This is a concept that comes originally from Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (Maturana and Varela, 1980):
Autonomy and diversity, the maintenance of identity and the origin of variation in the mode in which this identity is maintained, are the basic challenges presented by this phenomenology of living systems to which men have for centuries addressed their curiosity 32 about life. (1980, p.73) CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
Stafford Beer gives some useful clarity to this idea in his preface to Maturana and Varela’s essay, in which he posits:
A man who can lay claim to knowledge about some categorized bit of the world, however tiny, which is greater than anyone else’s knowledge of that bit, is safe for life: reputation grows, paranoia deepens. … understanding of the world actually recedes, because the world is really an interacting system. And since the world, in many of its aspects, is changing at an exponential rate, this kind of scholarship, rooted in the historical search of its own sanctified categories, is in large part unavailing to the needs of mankind. (Beer, 1980, p.64)
Jonathan Crinion proposes the concept of an Holistic Design Ecology, positioning this systemic thinking outside the recognized economies of design.
Non-material social innovation is predominately seen as the new role for designers working within self-empowered communities …
The concept of Holistic Design Ecology offers creative people an innovative and growing set of building blocks that may be used to change course and find a new way forward … propos[ing] that ‘design creativity’, as it currently manifests itself through the various creative professional fields, such as architecture, graphic design, engineering, urban planning and industrial design, is one of the forces currently jeopardising human existence. (Crinion, 2008)
As an expression of this principle, Wood uses Leonhard Euler’s visual schema in which the tetrahedron graphically represents the possibilities and opportunities of a network of design agents. They coexist in a simultaneous relationship to the other. Wood notes that the appeal is not so much the form of the tetrahedron, but the fact that it can be applied to any set of players (Wood, n.d). He applies this model to the structure of a team, in which he speaks of the six interrelationships which can be achieved by the quadratic consciousness of four players. He cites Buckminster Fuller in referring to this as ‘Nature’s abundance’ in which the number of players is less than the number of synergies that their interrelationships is able to produce (Wood, n.d.).
For the purposes of this thesis the synergies that such a model illustrates are considered in terms of the interrelationship of a number of design practice models, rather than discrete members of a team. Design practice 33 operating in any of the three earlier models of Van Patter, Buchanan CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
or Manzini can be viewed in this way (FIGURES 10 & 11). What emerges is a networked harmony, in which traditional and non-traditional design practices maintain an active role within an overall system. This addresses and replaces the limitations of the previous stratified models. The latter case study chapters of this thesis will begin to consider this in terms of an inherent human motivation to maintain simpler and more traditional design practices.
In this same essay, written as a draft chapter titled ‘A Quadratic Model of Consciousness’, Wood considers avarice (the tendency to respond to industrial success by scaling up) alongside ‘strident forms of individualism’. This solipsistic consciousness is undoubtedly drawn from a need to ‘… create or bolster … self-image as a unique individual’ (Wood, n.d.). In this context of this thesis, this same individualism is seen as the independent design practitioner’s compulsion to interact and communicate at a smaller scale, and it is here that I have come to understand my personal motivations. Scale and pace of practice have been an important tool for managing an anxious relationship with the world and an intimate connection with making. This sits outside the dominant ideologies of a commercial design practice, and in the territory of the designer as the sense-making artist.
FIGURE 10 Goddard, S (2017). DESIGN AND Ezio Manzini’s Design COMMUNICATION Mode Map viewed AGENCY using Leonhard Euler’s visual schema. Diagram: Stephen Goddard
CULTURAL ACTIVIST DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY AGENCY
GRASSROOTS ORGANISATION
34 CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
FIGURE 11 Goddard, S. (2017). EXHIBITION DESIGN AS A Notional model for creative THINKING SEAM PRACTICE activity viewed using Leonhard Euler’s visual schema. Diagram: Stephen Goddard
MAKING AND CRAFT
ART
TRADITIONAL DESIGN
2.1 Rotational Fields
It is timely to return to Schlemmer, whose Scheme was the original provocation for this comparison of design models. He argues that the stage could be considered as an arena for ‘successive and transient action … as fluctuating, mobile space and as transformable architectonic structures’ (Schlemmer, 1925/1961, p.22). It is in light of this that his diagram remains a compelling starting point to consider a concept which I’m referring to as rotational fields.
It is the limitation of the preferencing in the earlier design maps, combined with Woods’ optimism for a more complex network, that has led to this proposition. We can reimagine Schlemmer’s Scheme multi- dimensionally, in which design hierarchies are in constant rotation. In doing this we create a map that appears to reflect, literally,universal thinking. The borderline regions acting into the communications space include higher order design thinking, as well traditional acts of design and craft – that is, one is not preferenced over the other. The map creates ill-defined areas of practice that acknowledge a need for complex problem- 35 solving simultaneous to a simpler, humanistic need to create and reflect. CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
Donald Schön presented this principle in the chapter of his book The Reflective Practitioner entitled ‘Design as a Reflective Conversation with the Situation’.
In some professions, awareness of uncertainty, complexity, instability, uniqueness, and value conflict has led to an emergence of professional pluralism. (Schön, 1983, p.17)
We have begun to see cultural evolution as an informal, collective, generational process of design … Herbert Simon and others have suggested that all occupations engaged in converting actual to preferred situations are concerned with design. (Schön, 1983, p.77)
A combination of these principles might be demonstrated by a simple rotation of the Buchanan/Van Patter model in a planar form (FIGURES 12 & 13). This nods to Manzini by suggesting a closer relationship of the varying orders of design. In particular, Design 4.0 can be seen as being adjacent to Design 1.0, suggesting a more complex relationship between a variety of design agents.
FIGURE 12 Goddard, S. (2017). DESIGN 3.0 ORGANISATIONAL Richard Buchanan’s Four TRANSFORMATION Orders of Design viewed in planar collaboration. Diagram: Stephen Goddard DESIGN 4.0 DESIGN 2.0 SOCIAL PRODUCTS AND TRANSFORMATION SERVICES
DESIGN 1.0 TRADITIONAL
FIGURE 13
PROCESSES AND Goddard, S. (2017). INTERACTIONS NextD / Garry VanPatter’s mapping of design practice viewed in planar collaboration. SYSTEMS INDUSTRIAL Diagram: Stephen Goddard AND CULTURE OBJECTS
GRAPHICS
36 CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
The principle of the autopoietic team can be applied dynamically to Schlemmer’s Scheme, creating a much more contemporary understanding of the complexities of practice. Not only are the relationships non-linear, but the mapping shows the shadowy boundaries that Schlemmer originally referred to as borderline (FIGURE 14).
THEATRE CABARET, AS A BORDERLINE VARIETÉ SPACE OR CIRCUS
CONSECRATED OR FESTIVAL STAGE RELIGIOUS CULT ACTVITY
FOLK ENTERTAINMENT
Woods’ principles of the autopoietic team’s central concern with varying FIGURE 14 forms of consciousness, alongside his networked utopia of players, become Goddard, S. (2017). Extracts from Oskar the glue in this thesis. This allows the ambiguities of my own practice – Schlemmer’s Scheme for between the practices of communication and spatial design, craftsmanship Stage, Cult and Popular and art making – to be better positioned. It refers back to the earlier Entertainment viewed using Leonhard Euler’s incumbency I suggested for designers to consider their own practices with visual schema. a view to their contribution to design futures. Diagram: Stephen Goddard The emphasis on smaller scale and nimble seam practices, that play into the public arena are linked with solipsistic motivations. My ultimate contention is that we need to defend slower, smaller and highly individualistic design practices within an overall network of agents to achieve the equilibrium of Wood’s Quadratic Consciousness. There is some synergy with Benjamin Gallagher’s The Wooden City, in which he looks 37 to idleness in a post-apocalyptic world as a response to a pressured future CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
through his personal industrial design practice – a reward for doing less as distinct from success measured by productivity (Danes and Ryan, 2016, p.13). My own thinking through making is better described as employing a slower meditative process of making as a contemplation on our own patterns of consumption and redundancy, imperfection and repair.
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2.2 Seam Practice
The seam is a place of disruption. The seam is a place of electricity. The seam is evidence of repair. The seam is beyond binary definition. The seam is imperfect.
As with the collision point of tectonic plates, seams are in constant motion, under pressure from the anxious core that moves within.
Seam practice is an evocative construct I refer to in order to capture the vibrant borderline space in which the communications designer can act. The concept touches on the pursuit of an energetic and creative optimism and provides a counter-framing to the neo-liberalism that Guy Julier has identified as supporting and promoting design culture over the last 30 years (Julier, 2013, p.216). He references this as a generalised world state:
The debt crises in Europe, the foreclosures and unemployment in the US, bailouts of banks, the dramatic rise of commodity prices, climate change getting faster than predicted, the Arab Spring, Iraq and Afghanistan, massive migration piling pressure on urban infrastructures, the drug cartels in northern Mexico – they all produce a sense of a world in turmoil. (2013, p.216)
He is able to put some definition around the designer as activist, acting ‘not necessarily independent of design culture’, instead, ‘pick[ing] up and run[ning] with some of its key themes’ (2013, p.213). He suggests that design activism ‘implies intention – an enthusiasm to act on a situation (2013, p.218).
I take design activism to include the development of new processes and artifacts, where their starting points are overtly social, environmental, and/or political issues … Designers, professional 38 and otherwise, curators, critics and historians are still experimenting CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
with alternate modes of practice and representation to the dominant narrative of design culture. (2013, p.219)
The particular form for this activism, explored in Chapter 3, will look to the storytelling object in the context of case-study projects and client relationships from my own practice. It is useful to conclude this current chapter with a consideration of communication designers who operate within the seams of communications design and art making.
2.3 Precedent Practices
Derrida’s deconstruction of binary opposition emerges in Ellen Lupton and J. Abbot Miller’s essay Deconstruction and Graphic Design, in which they describe it as a ‘strategy of critical form-making which is performed across a range of artifacts and practices’ (Lupton & Miller, 1999, p.3). This concept is captured in John Warwicker’s The Floating World: Ukiyo-e (Warwicker, 2008) and given consideration in what little critical positioning of the work that can be found (O’Reilly, 2012). Warwicker goes beyond the literary deconstruction that Lupton and Miller are referring to, and has produced a designerly thesis in which scholarly reference, personal memory and visual research are intertwined (FIGURE 15).
Such a philosophy has been played out visually in design books such as John Warwicker’s The Floating World … with its luxuriously deconstructed layouts, and words and sentences that connect randomly with other words and sentences throughout the book and beyond in that intertextual way beloved by Derrida (his meaning almost always never arrived).
The fascinating moments in Warwicker’s book are when he loses himself in citing others. Anecdotes about his grandfather run through the book and it is as if the authority of Derrida and others were there in his stead to steady the ship … (O’Reilly, 2007)
The Floating World exists between genres. It is at once conventional in its bookmaking form and is certainly poetic in its intent. It is a literary form which combines academic writing with anecdote; fluid and non-linear cross-referencing (connected and codified through a key of graphic symbols); and an intertwining of various forms of analogue and photographic mark-making. Whilst the work operates within the language of communications design and conventional publishing, the intent is interpretive and based in the language of the designer as artist. 39 Warwicker refers to: CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
… the lenses through which we experience and interpret our world. They locate the self within the world and define its cultural boundaries. These lenses continuously interchange and overlap. Every moment of our lives is shaped through the sensorial process of accumulation. All within the ebb and flow of memory. (Warwicker, 2009, p.39)
FIGURE 15 Warwicker, J. (2008). Page from The Floating World: Ukiyo-e, 2008.
In the public version of this thesis, this third party image has been removed. The project can be viewed at: www.johnwarwicker.com/ the-floating-world (accessed 23.05.19).
Justy Phillips PhD thesis Scoreography: compose-with a hole in your heart! (Phillips, 2014) provided an initial reference point for the development of my thesis. Phillips is described as ‘… an artist, writer and publisher’ (A Published Event, n.d) and, as with Warwicker, her thesis challenged conventionality in its presentation as 190 numbered pieces of ‘prose’. 40 These varied in length from a single line to several paragraphs. They were CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
interspersed with a significant suite of ‘events’ that might range from a found object such as a burst bag of ice on the road (Ice Bag, Mexico, 2012) to a typographic installation such as All of this (Mexico, 2012). In this work, Philips had her words Because all of this may never come true / Porque todo esto no puede hacerse realidad handpainted onto the front wall of a house in Morelia, Mexico. The house belonged to the father-in-law of her taxi-driver friend Jesus, whose hope was that the intervention might act as a deterrent to the more usual graffiti. Whilst the intervention uses the language and tools of the designer, the intent of the work (indeed all the works in Phillip’s thesis) is that of an artist using various forms of still and moving digital storytelling.
Phillips describes the artist relationship through both the actual and symbolic hole in the heart with which she has lived:
While a hole in the heart is commonly understood as a congenital cardiac defect, this thesis activates visual art, creative writing and process philosophy to re-conceptualise this relation as a living hole – a self-organising assemblage of vital matter. We might experience these material holes as histories, as loss, as desire. The aim of this research is to develop new ways of experiencing and sharing the material holes that compose us and address the complex problem of how to transform a hole into an opening. (Phillips, 2014, p.V)
This is poetry that speaks of a visceral connection to self. A more recent and ongoing project of Phillip’s takes the form of Lost Rocks, 2017-21, which is an ambitious slow publishing project with collaborator Margaret Woodward under the title their collaboration A Published Event (Phillips & Woodward, n.d.). Phillips and Woodward, both graphic communicators working within an art practice describe the work as follows:
She touched the board first, held its frame high overhead. Signalled across the tip shop floor. Found my eyes swimming in a sea of armchairs and bedside tables, snooker cues, suitcases, preserving jars. ‘We’ll take it’.
And so becomes the conceptual heart of this artwork – a discarded rock board, found by the artists at the Glenorchy tip shop in Hobart’s northern suburbs. Forty of its fifty-six Tasmanian rock specimens are missing. Over the next five years, we will commission forty contemporary artists to each select an absence from this incomplete board and re-compose it, not with a geological specimen, but with a ‘fictionella’ – a new kind of novella drawn from lived experience. 41 (Phillips & Woodward, n.d.) CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
FIGURE 16 Phillips, J. and Woodward, M. / A Published Event. (2017-21): The first seventeen fictionellas from the Lost Rocks library, 2017–21. Collection of Stephen Goddard. Image: Stephen Goddard
The first seventeen of these have been published (as at November, 2018), and as they arrive by mail on completion they take the form of sculptural library with which the owner lives (FIGURE 16). Again, the publishing tools of the designer have been co-opted into a reflection on place, memory and storytelling that sit in the transitional space of the designer-as-artist, or artist-as-publisher.
The seam is not new, though its application to models of practice is. Phillips and Woodward make ongoing reference to the ‘geology’ of the book collection, as ‘Forty single traces, ten dynamic seams, or one spectacular forty-rock Lost Rocks Library’ (Phillips & Woodward, n.d.). The layering of the books when stacked, is symbolic of the geological seam, just as the seam welding of pipes from my father’s factory, or the stitched seam of a garment represent a point of intersection. The seam practice as a theoretical construct is one that acknowledges all these readings, and just as the borderline in Schlemmer’s Scheme 42 captures a transitional space. CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
A final precedent comes in a different form, that being the work of New York-based Ji Lee. Lee’s career is well described in an interview with Debbie Millman (Millman, 2015) in which he tracks personal mentorship by Stefan Sagmeister, through to his various roles in creative direction with Saatchi&Saatchi, Droga5, Google and now Facebook. It is his self- described personal projects for which he is perhaps best known, and about which he indicates that he has several in progress at any one time (Lee, 2015). It is a frustration with conventionality of the commercial advertising agency that has had him act into public spaces with his personal projects. The most significant in the context of this paper are his well-known, and now global, The Bubble Project, launched in 2002 and Clownify Stickers (FIGURES 17 & 18) which began 2014 and is ongoing.
The Bubble Project is a self-initiated intervention that brushes against illegality. Lee (and now any number of international ‘followers’) prints and installs temporary blank voice bubbles on existing advertising which act as an invitation for the public to write comments. They challenge the one- way advertising monologue that has become dominant, and makes this both a conversation and a commentary (Lee, n.d.). Lee then documents the responses which form part of the website www.thebubbleproject.com. This work is significant both in its activist intent, as well as a call for humour and imagination, therein having a synergy (albeit differently expressed) to that of Wood. Lee speaks of the thrill of that act and the threats of action against him that he receives (Millman, 2015).
FIGURE 17 Lee, J. (commenced 2014). Clownified Stickers installation view in Happyness (2015) at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery. Collection of the designer, New York, NY. Image: Stephen Goddard
43 CHAPTER 2 ROTATIONAL FIELDS AND SEAM PRACTICE
FIGURE 18 Lee, J. (commenced 2014). Clownified Stickers installation detail in Happyness (2015) at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery. Collection of the designer, New York, NY. Image: Stephen Goddard
Lee’s Clownified Stickers (FIGURES 17 & 18) were shown in a documentary form in Australia at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery in the show Happyness (Goddard & Ryan, 2015). The work is a simpler intervention of clown nose stickers onto existing public advertising in New York, then documented and published in part on Lee’s website www.pleaseenjoy.com. It is the process of acting into the banal ‘to make something new – and funny!’ (2015, unpaginated). Lee’s placement between commercial design and the development of personal projects is highly relevant to this research
❉
This chapter has sought to understand my own practice within a network of design models. That place can be described through the work of John Wood, who I’m interpreting as arguing for a network of differently- placed, and differently-scaled design agents. It is here that the emphasis on practice-led research strongly emerges. The later consideration of practices of Warwicker, Phillips and Woodward, and Lee are all precedent examples of designers operating in some way or other within this idiom. What has been crystalised through these precedent studies is the power of personal storytelling which can be seen in the practice of design. This is a theme which will be explored in the case studies that form the second half of this thesis, and a clearer conceptual relationship with these precedent practices will emerge.
44 ❉ 3 Case Studies
45 CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDIES
The initial two chapters of this thesis have explored the way in which my design practice has developed over time and positioned its agency within a network of typologies. This can now be considered in terms of two live projects occurring within the duration of the research. In general terms, a case study ‘investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth and within a real world context’, acknowledging that ‘the boundaries between phenomenon and context may not be clearly evident’ (Yin, 2014, p.16). In the case of my research question there is both substance (they are projects that can be located within my practice map) and form (I have a working knowledge of how the projects were conducted). For that reason the case study can be justified as a methodology (Yin, 2014, p.11).
Both projects have been undertaken for clients with whom I have had longstanding and complex working relationships, which have traversed a range of project types. These describe the seam space which has defined my approach to practice in recent times. The first of these, an exhibition design for Obsessed: Compelled to make, was undertaken for the Australian Design Centre, previously known as Object: Australian Centre for Craft and Design, opening in 2018. The second is the exhibition Book Club for Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery in 2017, on which I worked both as an exhibitor as well as catalogue designer.
46 3.1 Case Study Obsessed: Compelled to make
47 CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – OBSESSED: COMPELLED TO MAKE
3.1 Case Study Obsessed: Compelled to make
My relationship with the Australian Design Centre (ADC) began with the relatively conventional publication design commissions for Art on a String (2002) and Design Island (2004) when the organisation was still known as Object: Australian Design Centre. Over the period of the subsequent 7 years I was engaged with an organisational rebrand and accompanying exhibition-specific promotional materials, art-direction of many issues of Object Magazine, a number of exhibition designs, and a period of in- house employment as a Senior Design Associate, working on design-led organisational transformation, strategic direction, design, and curatorial collaboration (FIGURE 19, P.49). A portion of the history of ADC can be found at https://australiandesigncentre.com/about/history/australian-design- centre-timeline/
3.1.1 Project Concept
Obsessed: Compelled to make, co-curated by Lisa Cahill and Penny Craswell, was open at the Australian Design Centre between 8 February and 24 March 2018. The original inspiration for Obsessed was as a response to the exhibition The Power of Making (Australian Design Centre, n.d. [b]) which was developed and shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London between 6 September 2011 and 2 January 2012 (Victoria and Albert Museum, n.d.). Curator Lisa Cahill alongside Jo Higgins from ADC undertook research into a context for a similar exhibition in Australia (Cahill & Craswell, 2018, p.6).
The research was funded through the Federal Government’s Visions of Australia Program (https://australiandesigncentre.com/latestnews/ special-announcement-acquisition-major-research-grant/), with the final concept formulated through workshops in Sydney at ADC and in Adelaide at JamFactory in July and August 2016. By the end of the research period, Cahill and co-curator Penny Craswell had named the show Obsessed: Compelled to make, and had determined that a group of 14 artists would have their practices showcased. The realisation and tour of the project was funded by a grant of $210,176 (Australian Government Department of Communications and the Arts, 2017) through the Visions of Australia program (Cahill & Craswell, 2018, p.6) and fees paid 48 by the individual tour venues. AGE 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 COLD FIGURE 19 15 16 17 Goddard, S. (2017). 18 19 Design practice map 1990 20 EXHIBITED WORKS 1991 21 illustrating Australian 1992 22 WORK PLACE Design Centre projects 1993 23 1994 24 HOBART and commissions. These 1995 25 1996 26
D demonstrate action into 1997 27 N A MELBOURNE RL OW E SH P 1998 28 D T IDEN S H N A A OR T M O O H M R H EA U W T ! W C R IG R a range of design media PS A O THEATREN E DESIGNE E D T O S P P 1999 29 I L I TH F R S A B H IV IA RN E R O R ’ IR J OR :L O O IC U D Y M T S EC IN T G L C N D R H D T A R E 30 A IE A E O IG O S N ED 2000 SNORRKE H M F N H W H G SYDNEY A T O G ER AP NS O E M EA C IN silos, and have been shown B W D E K M D O P TAI BI 31 H I O IL D A O Y G 2001 T OS O SUMH A K NE R (PARIS) C L D C E ER C S S ’M I D H N LU S I M IE ’S OP LI B 2002 32 A R R ’S S BY E AR TOOW A DO here in blue. BUILL G ITE S LO , B AN K G B TE L M 33 BE VE BI A ’S 2003 O E SW E OMLEI L V LU H EL LO D B GO R 34 AR LY A CO 2004 H OL N N P AN AI W PT 2005 35 CA 2006 36 37 2007 38 2008 39 2009 40 2010 (PARIS) 41 2011 42 2012 43 MELBOURNE 2013 44 2014 45 SYDNEY 2015 46 2016 47 2017 48 2018 49 2019 50 2020
CURATORIAL SWEAT EXHIBITION DESIGN DESIGNING OUR CITY STRAHAN MAPPING ADC PROJECTS IG VISITOR CENTRE B VICTORIA ON SHOW I SPY ACON FLOAT HAPPYNESS CENT S ENARY OF FEDERAT BRIGHT FUTURE BUCHAN CA ION PARADE DESIGNING IM VE VISITOR CENTRE PORT EXPORT SIGNIFICANT PROJECT SIGHTIN GLOBAL LOCAL BO G THE PAST MBAY SAP LEBAN PHIRE DESIG BO ON N DISCOVER MBAY SA Y AWARD BOMB PPHIRE DE D AY SAPP SIGN DIS ESIGNIN HIRE DES COVERY A DES G OUR C IGN DISC WARD IGN NOW ITY OVERY AW MULTIPLE PROJECTS SMALL ! ARD EGY MATTER PTIAN S BIG TREASUR TARO ES: ART P NGA OF TH ICTUR ZOO U E PHAR HYP ING N PPER E OAHS B ERCLA EW SO NTRY IO 21 Y UTH W PRECIN WOO ALES CT TR D: AR UE TO T DES ACRO FOR IGN A PO POL M: MO RCHIT L INTS IS DEL ECT OLA OF F S MA URE WR GREE OCU DE FO M ITTE NO S: HI R SC ADE N IN CUL STOR IENC GL IN STO TURA IC PHO E T ASS: 17 H NE L JE TO HE AR OU WEL GRA ST POO T DESI RS S PHS O EEL: L GN FRO BSE ART AR M TH CO SSE DE CHIT E PA NCR D: C SIGN ECT CIFIC ETE OM AR URE : A PEL CH RT D LED ITEC ESIGN TO TUR MA E ARC KE HIT ECT URE
PUBLICATION DESIGN
P S L HO IN Y S U S S P S T Y SP S GE L T O L I E S PS I P D N T T O T I L Y N IS T SC Y F T A A P IA E E CH F IN E M E T T L R G G E F A F R E OU P D AP F E A A V O A H H O W T A N S R E N TH RE S G H M N T O R A E T N A SY E I SP IO G M : V E I B D U L E IN D E L Y L J A E IA O N T A S S L R A ON D N XH S I A A U O N R R M U RL C U R W I T B A O M G T E E I T E G E R S Y EI B Y T UR L IN A O O IT R C O R N S U AN C D A D R T IO A G B T A N L G N ES L NEYI ON A I N S N I C I L N R CH I Y SI O E U S L S EXH F E NN IG SI D T E O A F N L M IN S A E L E O N MS IN R R S P O A G O G I G Q M IR J U U A I M L O N U IBIT U R R U L SL I G TR IN R T N R O C N I M D M L E C A E H D I A R K E E I A A W A I E L OF O D T OU E E N T N NS R S K S L C T O N T M H HO A T H LA R SS D T C IN A C S N E C T E A M WR Y T Y N O O G O E CRITICAL WRITING L H N D G CH DN L L G A ND J A N E E A W A D A O E + D I G R K E E G Y C R N M G W T E EY L H H C M M E E F H L O A E U E T G I ER RO Z W I U R P H E T E 2 J S FE R V S Y U P O L I A NT U NIV N L E C 0 J OO P I E A E E E W O K SI N A N 0 L O Y U O V H DI I N D D A 4 O N C T T Y I G I I O N E T WR I N M O N J N A L B AL HE D R T LA T D R I W L L N V D U D E Y ED G BOO PP T G A BO H H E S A O E ER J : OU C DI V R S ES A AR R R S U I F COMMUNICATION DESIGN T E S T S G WR S O I T E T YNE O FEC S EE S I O A S: E D P T TE D I I M C R R A N I N H F T L U R K B S E O H EE E Y T L: A I I C O N H D L G D T F W T I R C O WR S O ING R N R E A ? N NO O H A S E AE L L IN T A N E O C S ND R U D T T S T I D IG S U W E T B G D E F C ES R T S S : H N D RE L E
A O O T S E I A G I R E N S U R I R T M N N I E E G D C
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The curatorial premise was described in the exhibition catalogue:
The stories are about exceptional work by these artists but, more importantly, they give us an insight into that, sometimes inexplicable, compulsion to make. (Cahill & Craswell, 2018, p.6)
The opportunity with Obsessed emerged from a lineage of design projects in my practice for both the ADC and JamFactory in Adelaide, all of which dealt variously with the exhibition and interpretation of art, design and architecture. When the series of outcomes for those projects are mapped, what becomes evident is that I have often contributed across multiple areas of project delivery (FIGURE 20, P.50). The original commission for Obsessed was for the design of the exhibition only, and whilst I was later asked to also design a catalogue to accompany the show, in this instance the demands of my position as a lecturer in design at UNSW and a tight production schedule precluded me from being able to accept that commission. The project brief was extended to include a reflective piece for the catalogue, which was similar to an engagement for Steel: art design architecture (Goddard, 2017) additional to the exhibition and book design. Obsessed is case-studied primarily as an exemplar of this entire lineage of exhibition projects concerned with design and materiality, given their criticality in the development of my practice in recent years.
A central consideration in the brief for this project was the extensive national tour of the exhibition. Through ADC on Tour, the show will visit 12 additional venues through until October 2021 (Australian Design Centre, n.d.[a]). The design therefore required the flexibility required for a wide range of regional venues with finite resources to support installation, and on a limited production budget given the ambition of the project.
50 AGE 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 COLD FIGURE 20 15 16 17 Goddard, S. (2017). 18 19 Design practice map 1990 20 EXHIBITED WORKS 1991 21 1992 illustrating a lineage of 22 WORK PLACE exhibition design projects, 1993 23 1994 24 HOBART from 2006 to 2019. 1995 25 1996 26
D 1997 27 N A particular emphasis MELBOURNE LA R OW E SH P 1998 28 D T IDEN S H N A A T M O O H OR H U W T W C M RR G EA P A O THEATRE! E DESIGNE E I R ST O S P P 1999 29 IN L I H F R D on projects involving the A B H IV IA RN E R T O R ’S IR J :L O O U D Y M T S E OR I T G LIC C N D R H D C R N A IE A E O IG O T A E E 30 NORRKE H F N W S N D 2000 S A T M G R H H G SYDNEY M A O N E AP NS O E E C KI M B T B W D E I LD exhibtion of design and O P AI IG 2001 31 TH O UM I D A O Y OS O S H A K NE R (PARIS) C L D C E ER C S S ’M I D H N LU S I M IE ’S OP LI B 2002 32 A R R ’S S BY E AR TOOW A DO BUILL G ITE S O , B AN K G B TE LL M craft has been extracted 33 BE VE BI A ’S 2003 O E SW E OMLEI L V LU H EL LO D B GO R 34 AR LY A CO 2004 H OL N N P AN AI and shown in green. W PT 2005 35 CA 2006 36 37 Diagram: Stephen Goddard 2007 38 2008 39 2009 40 2010 (PARIS) 41 2011 42 2012 43 MELBOURNE 2013 44 2014 45 SYDNEY 2015 46 2016 47 2017 48 2018 49 2019 50 2020 CONCRETE: ART DESIGN ARCHITECTURE CONCRETE: MAKE TO COMPELLED OBSESSED: ART DESIGN ARCHITECTURE STEEL: ART DESIGN ARCHITECTURE GLASS: JEWELS GREENO: CULTURAL LOLA ART DESIGN ARCHITECTURE WOOD: HYPERCLAY AWARD DESIGN DISCOVERY AWARD DESIGN DISCOVERY AWARD DESIGN DISCOVERY CURATORIAL SWEAT EXHIBITION DESIGN DESIGNING OUR CITY STRAHAN MAPPING DESIGN EXHIBITION PROJECT LINEAGE IG VISITOR CENTRE B VICTORIA ON SHOW I SPY ACON FLOAT HAPPYNESS CENT S ENARY OF FEDERAT BRIGHT FUTURE BUCHAN CA ION PARADE DESIGNING IM VE VISITOR CENTRE PORT EXPORT SIGHTIN GLOBAL LOCAL BO G THE PAST MBAY SAP PROJECT INDICATORS LEBAN PHIRE DESIG BO ON N DISCOVER MBAY SA Y AWARD BOMB PPHIRE DE D AY SAPP SIGN DIS ESIGNIN HIRE DES COVERY A DES G OUR C IGN DISC WARD IGN NOW ITY OVERY AW SMALL ! ARD EGY MATTER PTIAN S BIG TREASUR TARO ES: ART P NGA OF TH ICTUR ZOO U E PHAR HYP ING N PPER E OAHS B ERCLA EW SO NTRY IO 21 Y UTH W PRECI WOO ALES NCT T D: AR RUE T T DE ACRO O FO SIGN P PO RM: ARC OINT LIS MOD HITEC LOLA S OF ELS M TURE WR GR FOC ADE ITTE EENO US: HI FOR S MADE N IN CU STO CIEN G IN ST LTURA RIC P CE LAS 17 ONE L J HOT THE S: AR HOU EWE OGR ST PO T D RS LS APH EEL: OL ESIG S FRO OBS AR N A M T CO ESS T D RCH HE P NC ED ESIG ITEC ACIF RE : CO N A TU IC TE: MP RC RE ART ELL HIT DE ED ECT SIGN TO M URE A AK RCHI E TE CTU RE
PUBLICATION DESIGN
P S L HO IN Y S U S S P S T Y SP S GE L T O L I E S PS I P D N T T O T I L Y N IS T SC Y F T A A P IA E E CH F IN E M E T T L R G G E F A F R E OU P D AP F E A A V O A H H O W T A N S R E N TH RE S G H M N T O R A E T N A SY E I SP IO G M : V E I B D U L E IN D E L Y L J A E IA O N T A S S L R A ON D N XH S I A A U O N R R M U RL C U R W I T B A O M G T E E I T E G E R S Y EI B Y T UR L IN A O O IT R C O R N S U AN C D A D R T IO A G B T A N L G N ES L NEYI ON A I N S N I C I L N R CH I Y SI O E U S L S EXH F E NN IG SI D T E O A F N L M IN S A E L E O N MS IN R R S P O A G O G I G Q M IR J U U A I M L O N U IBIT U R R U L SL I G TR IN R T N R O C N I M DI M L E C A E H D I A R K E I A A W A E L OF E O D T OU E E N T N NS R S K S L C T O N T M H HO A T H LA R SS D T C IN A C S N E C T E A M WR Y T Y N O O G O E CRITICAL WRITING L H N D G CH DN L L G A ND J A N E E A W A D A O E + D I G R K E E G Y C R N M G W T E EY L H H C M M E E F H L O A E U E T G I ER RO Z W I U R P H E T E 2 J S FE R V S Y U P O L I A NT U NIV N L E C 0 J OO P I E A E E E W O K SI N A N 0 L O Y U O V H DI I N D D A 4 O N C T T Y I G I I O N E T WR I N M O N J N A L B AL HE D R T LA T D R I W L L N V D U D E Y ED G BOO PP T G A BO H H E S A O E ER J : OU C DI V R S ES A AR R R S U I F COMMUNICATION DESIGN T E S T S G WR S O I T E T YNE O FEC S EE S I O A S: E D P T TE D I I M C R R A N I N H F T L U R K B S E O H EE E Y T L: A I I C O N H D L G D T F W T I R C O W S O ING R N R E A ? N NO O H A S E AE L L IN T A N E O R C S ND R U D T T S T I D IG S U W E T B G D E F C ES R T S S : H N D RE L E
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3.1.2 Concept Development
In collaboration with curators Cahill and Craswell, the concept was developed that the crafted works of a selection 14 designers, artists and makers would be framed as evidence of a process, and in doing that their personal stories of obsession would be presented with more primacy than the objects themselves in the design resolution. As ADC described in an online report regarding the exhibition research:
Perhaps the most valuable takeaway from the discussions concerned the need for a tight curatorial focus that wasn’t afraid to stake a claim and demonstrate a clear opinion, experience or perspective on making, one that located the experiences of makers making as central to the discussion. (Australian Design Centre, n.d.[b])
Design decisions were made on the basis of the maximising the production resource available for digital storytelling – this represented a dramatic departure from previous projects of this nature that I had worked on.
In my initial design presentation, I drew on experiments I was conducting at the time for Book Club in the use of the Go-Pro action photography (SEE BOOK HACK, P.91), as a way of experiencing a process through the eyes of the maker. We were to ultimately engage with filmmaking in a more conventional documentary manner. This became an important signifier for the Australian Design Centre in terms of the unique voice this show would have. The films would exist not only in the exhibition space, but as an online resource for the duration of the show and beyond, vastly increasing the reach of the work.
The project team included Angus Lee Forbes (film maker); Big City (exhibition construction); and Michael Donohue (catalogue designer); alongside Cahill, Craswell and myself. The fourteen designers, makers and artists who were showcased in the exhibition were Gabriella Bisetto, Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Honor Freeman, Jon Goulder, Kath Inglis, Laura McCusker, Elliat Rich and James B Young (Elbowrkshp), Kate Rohde, Oliver Smith, Vipoo Srivilasa, Tjunkaya Tapaya, Louise Weaver, and Liz Williamson (Australian Design Centre, n.d.[a]).
52 CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – OBSESSED: COMPELLED TO MAKE
3.1.3 Packing Crates as a Vernacular Language
The display solution for the works that was explored and ultimately adopted was one of employing the simple and recognisable vernacular of packing crates for the exhibition furniture as a strategy for both displaying and transporting the objects themselves (https://www.iasdas.com.au/art- crating/). The intention was to have the audience feel that they were in the studio of the maker as much as they were within a gallery setting,
FIGURE 21 de-formalising their interaction with the works (FIGURE 21). The sizing of Goddard, S. (2017). all elements allowed for the transport of a small riser for the work to also Initial concept render be transported within the crate (FIGURES 22–24). A more refined paint finish for Obsessed: Compelled to make. on the riser enhanced the visual presentation of the works. Both elements Collection of the designer. were harmonised through the use of white paint finishes(FIGURES 25 & 26). CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – OBSESSED: COMPELLED TO MAKE
FIGURE 22 Goddard, S. (2017). Design drawing examples for Obsessed: Compelled to make. The riser can also been seen marked in an internal position for transport. Collection of the designer.
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Internal timbers to locate 980 800 900 Crate painted white low sheen white suitable for retouching 100
JOB: 2323 ISSUE STEPHEN GODDARD DESIGN PTY LTD T/A PROJECT TWO © ALL CRITICAL DIMENSIONS MUST BE VERIFIED ON SITE © PROJECT TWO OLIVER SMITH – ABN 96 080 359 913 PRIOR TO COMMENCEMENT OF WORK. WRITTEN DIMENSIONS 900x600 (1 off) / 600x600 (1 off) G TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER SCALED DIMENSIONS. THE CONCEPTS, Oliver Smith x 2 units STUDIO: 5 GOODSELL STREET ST PETERS 2044 NSW AU DESIGNS AND METHODOLOGIES CONTAINED IN THIS DRAWING TELEPHONE: 0415 146 230 ARE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT. THIS DRAWING MUST NOT BE JOB: OBSESSED: COMPELLED TO MAKE SCALE: 1:10 EMAIL: [email protected] COMMUNICATED OR REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE WRITTEN CLIENT: AUSTRALIAN DESIGN CENTRE DATE: 10.01.2018 04 PROJECTTWO.COM.AU PERMISSION OF STEPHEN GODDARD DESIGN PTY LTD.
FIGURES 23 & 24 Goddard, S. (2017). Riser and works designed for transport within furniture for Obsessed: Compelled to make. Images: Stephen Goddard
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3.1.4 FIGURES 25 & 26 (PREVIOUS PAGE) Easels for Screen Installation Goddard, S. (2018) Easels were used as a simple and economical means of installing the large Obsessed: Compelled to make exhibition design number of screens, and again supported the studio vernacular. I observed installation views, February the use of these in the installation Andes Shadow by the firm Elton Leniz 2018. Australian Design at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale (http://www.eltonleniz.cl/en/ Centre, Sydney, NSW. andes-shadow/) and established that the flexible and simple infrastructure Images: Stephen Goddard would be suitable for Obsessed. I had equated this work with an earlier design that I had realised for ADC and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) in 2014 as an exhibition technique for the display of delicate jewellery pieces by Tasmanian Indigenous elder Lola Greeno as part of the ADC Living Treasures Series. The design of that work has recently been documented in a film by Angus Lee Forbes https://player.( vimeo.com/video/272465842 timecoded 6’59”). The Greeno exhibition design had received an Award of Distinction at the Australian Design Biennale in 2014 (Australian Graphic Design Association, 2014). Drawing from past experience to realise a design solution is a phenomenon that Steven Johnson refers to as ‘The Slow Hunch’, in which it is ‘hindsight [that] tends to blur slow hunches into eureka moments” (Johnson, 2010, p.78). In particular the discoveries made in the development of ‘island hubs’ to cluster technology in Hyperclay: Contemporary Ceramics (which I had designed for ADC in 2011) (FIGURE 27) and then in the development of tripods for the installation of Lola Greeno’s work in 2014 (also for ADC) (FIGURE 28), overlapped with the observations of Elton Leniz’s installation in Venice in 2016 (FIGURE 29), and the resulting concept for Obsessed emerged (FIGURE 30).
FIGURE 27 Goddard, S. (2011). Hyperclay: Contemporary Ceramics exhibition design installation view at Object. Object: Australian Design Centre, Sydney, NSW. This view shows discrete exhibition ‘islands’ which allowed for the clustering of technology. Image: Jamie Williams, courtesy of Object: Australian Design Centre
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FIGURE 28 Goddard, S. (2014). Lola Greeno: Cultural Jewels exhibition design installation view at QVMAG. Designed for Object: Australian Design Centre, Sydney, NSW and QVMAG, Launceston, Tasmania. Image: Stephen Goddard
FIGURE 29 Elton Leniz (2016). Andes Shadow at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. Image: Stephen Goddard
FIGURE 30 Goddard, S. (2018) Obsessed: Compelled to make exhibition design installation view, February 2018. Australian Design Centre, Sydney, NSW. Image: Stephen Goddard
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Easels could be acquired economically as a proprietary item and then retrofitted to securely support the monitors. Purchasing existing furniture was consistent with ensuring the maximum budget was available for filmmaking. They were clustered into ‘islands’ for installation – minimising the infrastructure needed to power each grouping of screens. The creation of small boxed power hubs both resolved the issue of multiple power leads and were also used as physically limit the space between the clusters of easels, which was a safety concern of the curators (FIGURE 31).
Installing technology poses a challenge in touring exhibitions to regional venues, and I had used a range of previous projects for ADC and JamFactory to develop techniques in response to this. In this instance, we embraced the exposed workings and powering of screen technologies, simply securing them to achieve an acceptable level of visitor safety. This technique enabled simple installation across a range of small venues. A general sense of the resource challenges associated with touring exhibitions to regional venues is illustrated in the National Touring Survey Report (National Exhibition Touring Scheme (NETS), 2013) which found that 54% of galleries spent between only $2501 and $5000 on the fees for a touring exhibition, with 30% of surveyed galleries spending $1000 or less on any additional expenses (NETS, 2013, p.20). Given the scope of regional tours (in the case of Obsessed, the tour is across 12 venues in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland) this gives some sense scale, logistics and economic challenges involved.
FIGURE 31 Goddard, S. (2018) Obsessed: Compelled to make exhibition design installation view demonstrating the use of power hubs. Australian Design Centre, Sydney, NSW. Image: Stephen Goddard
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3.1.5 Floor Plan and Installation Principles
The floorplan that we developed for ADC established installation principles for communication with the touring venues. The primary principles for installation de-formalise the installation through what
I described as organised chaos (FIGURES 32 & 33).
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FIGURE 32 Goddard, S. (2018) Obsessed: Compelled LCN to make floorplan for GB
Australian Design Centre The parallel installation of some VS2 JG cluster elements will help to achieve an overall unity. VS1 showing principles of KR2 organised chaos. OS2 KR1 OS1 Collection of the designer. LW1
LMc LW2
42”ENTRY SCREEN 42”ENTRY LWill
The parallel installation of some
HF KI cluster elements will help to
achieve an overall unity.
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FIGURE 33 Three easels, spread at even angles, Goddard, S. (2018) LCN form the ‘spokes’ of the cluster. Obsessed: Compelled to make cluster detail for
Power box centralised in furniture cluster Australian Design Centre GB showing principles of organised chaos. Collection of the designer. VS2 JG VS1
Try to limit only KR2 one large work to each cluster.
Screen, with accompanying maker’s work, run at the same angle to maintain a relationship between the two. OS2 KR1 OS1 © PROJECT TWO EXAMPLE CLUSTER LW1 JOB: OBSESSED! COMPELLED TO MAKE CLIENT: AUSTRALIAN DESIGN CENTRE 7 59
LMc LW2
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Gallery plan Scale: 1:50 @ A3 ENTRY CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – OBSESSED: COMPELLED TO MAKE
3.1.6 Digital Storytelling Digital content is central to Obsessed as the point of difference signifying this exhibition for ADC.
Digital technologies can offer a wide array of learning opportunities in the discovery, representation, dissemination, and use of information objects … [they] can be used to stimulate interest in a broad array of viewers and result in greater levels of engagement with the real objects in museums. (Frost, 2010, p.244)
The budget and scope of the project limited the use of digital content to the creation of a series of films to replace more usual printed didactic panels (as distinct from fully interactive content). Film-maker Angus Lee Forbes was commissioned by ADC to interview, shoot and edit the films of the artists and designers. In line with the original conceptual approach, the narrative focussed on the reasons for, and obsession with the process of making rather than the techniques that the makers employed.
The final film series were highly atmospheric and in their native format were shot in an anamorphic screen aspect of 2.39:1 (FIGURES 36–39). One of the key moments of design collaboration between Forbes and myself came in a prototyping session with Lisa Cahill in which we collectively negotiated the more regular display of the films in 16:9 aspect in the gallery (FIGURES 34 & 35). This was critical to ensuring that the moving image had primacy in the gallery space by being displayed full screen. The balance of moving image in relation to the objects themselves was core to the original conceptual premise of the project. In general terms, the range of formats and delivery platforms for new media pose a range of ‘spatial and aesthetic challenges’ to achieve MIVI (Maximum Instantaneous Visual Impact) as defined by Bob Garfield (Cossar, 2009, p.3).
FIGURES 34 & 35 Prototyping the display of the films in full screen 16:9 ratio versus 2.39:1 letterboxed anamorphic ratio at Australian Design Centre, January 2018. Images: Stephen Goddard
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FIGURES 36–39 Forbes, A. L. (2018). Obsessed film stills featuring (top to bottom) Liz Williamson, Tjunkaya Tapaya, Honor Freeman and Vipoo Srivilasa. Reproduced with the permission of Australian Design Centre. 36 https:// australiandesigncentre. com/obsessed/
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The films are available for viewing in their native format on the ADC website (https://australiandesigncentre.com/obsessed/). This level of acccessibility is an important consideration in contemporary museumology:
The expanded view of the museum embraces the fact that the digital presence of an organization is just as extensive – and expected – as the physical manifestation. This overall view of the museum focuses on the core strengths and values of collection, content, and storytelling. These things can appear anywhere – online, in an exhibition, part of a publication, as part of a mobile experience – because they are counterparts of the same core strengths. (Wyman et al, 2011, pp.462-463)
3.1.7 Critical Review
Marjorie Lewis-Jones wrote an extended review in the South Sydney Herald which concluded:
If you missed Obsessed at the Australian Design Centre in Darlinghurst (February 8 to March 24), the films of the artists are all online and well worth viewing … The exhibition will also tour across Australia over the next four years … Whichever way you connect with Obsessed, it should be a mind-expanding experience. You’ll meet some fascinating artists, each zealous about making, whether it is ceramics, furniture, sculptural weavings, jewellery, conceptual art or metal and glass objects. You’ll see the sweat on their brows, the nimbleness of their hands, and the grit and physicality of their making.
You’ll glimpse how their minds work – and it’s compelling. (Lewis-Jones, 2018)
Stephen Todd reviewed the exhibition in the Australian Financial Review, noting that:
The objects are displayed on repurposed packing crates – an allusion to the fact that the Obsessed exhibition will tour through to 2020 – with extended videos of each artist in their place of practice. (Todd, 2018)
Sophie Davies, in the UK Crafts Magazine review titled ‘Lost in the moment’ noted that:
Whilst the diverse, hand-made pieces are strong, it’s the psychology that’s most gripping, as seen in the beautiful short films by Angus Lee Forbes. (Davies, 2018, p.60)
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3.1.8 Meta-reflection on Obsessed This thesis has posited seam practice as fertile creative territory, in which design and making has traversed multiple areas of project delivery. It addresses the complexity of working beyond a singular discipline in the delivery of a project, which has become a central interest in my practice. With that in mind, Obsessed diverged from the lineage of projects outlined earlier when I was unable, for quite practical reasons, to design the publication as well. Reflecting on that circumstance drew my thinking to the work of Michael Rock, and the concept of design authorship. Rock argues that:
The rejection of the role of the facilitator and call to ‘transcend’ traditional production imply that the authored design holds some higher, purer purpose. (Rock, 1996, p.113)
In being asked to contribute to the catalogue through a written piece, I was able to use the project as something beyond the creative and pragmatic delivery of an exhibition design. The piece Playing in our bare feet (Goddard, 2018, p.98) went some way to reflect on that, and I was able to identify a greater personal meaning in the project. The piece focussed on the collaborative process and connected the project to an earlier island of work in theatre design.
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Playing in our bare feet
The (under)design of Obsessed: Compelled to make came as a small idea – a language that was intended to be simple, ubiquitous, maybe even a little ordinary. The use of crates and easels imply that the works may still be in the studio of their maker, where for all their beauty and rigour, in this show they are less important than the journeys of the makers themselves. The approach is not designerly – rather, simple and without pretence.
Collaboration was the key to making this small idea bigger. In collaborating we are making together (just as in theatre, many years ago, where my own craftsmanship was often realised). Sitting down with the curators at the Australian Design Centre and talking through the project, we all felt that the stories needed to be unmistakably alive. Digital storytelling and insightful interviews became larger, richer and far more beautiful than we could have imagined through the filmic 63 poetry and stills photography of Angus Lee Forbes. CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – OBSESSED: COMPELLED TO MAKE
The rewards of collaboration grew as Michael Donohue joined the team. His is an obsession with experimentation. Flirting with the potential of failure can fill a creative soul with fear. For Michael, this approach to making has been embedded in the formation of the book. As psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi so eloquently explores in Finding Flow, when skill and difficulty are embraced equally and fully, our state moves from one of anxiety to one of happiness. At its core, perhaps that is the power and importance of making in our world – some chance to be absorbed in Csikszentmihalyi’s state of flow(Csikszentmihalyi, 1997, pp.30-31).
There’s a moment of danger in the collaborative process when you wonder; will this survive as a singular and complete thing? Perhaps obsession emerges from the anxious fear of letting go. How much making is enough to keep the demons at bay? Through collaborative harmony, we have the potential to create a storytelling theatre of people, objects, words and images more than we’ve made an exhibition. The conversation with an audience will change from time to time, and place to place, as our collective obsessions travel around the country – but in the process, new tales will no doubt be uncovered.
Over time I’ve come to realise that I think about design in the same way I think about art. Whilst that sits outside the dominant ideologies of both design and art which some would argue have different motivations at their core, the borderline has always seemed to me to be a fertile * The seam space is a term seam space*. The writer, Robert Dessaix, toys with the creative moment I’ve recently coined as part of in his essay of the same name; my research at UNSW Sydney Art & Design, made possible If you want not only to create, but also to be read, I think that in through the Australian Government’s Research some way or other you also have to tap into the central anguish of Training Scheme. The your times. (Dessaix, 1998, p.424) working title of the thesis is Cold Sweat: Making it in Dessaix’s sentiments feel close to the heart – a need to make something an Anxious World. known or to find something out. In understanding an idea and you might just know a little more about yourself, one small fragment at a time. At least, that’s my story.
From within my own small place in a much larger ecosystem, storytelling is at the heart of the design process. Therein the danger of being solitary – an obsession can become a self-obsession. To really hear the stories of others, the boots of self-obsession need to be discarded at the door leaving us free to play in our bare feet.
Stephen Goddard / October 2017 64 (Goddard, 2018, p.98) CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – OBSESSED: COMPELLED TO MAKE
This reflection looked particularly at the manner in which the collaborative process manifested itself and related that to one of the core differences between a project that has the client rather than the designer-as-author at the core. It argues that collective output and muddied authorship transcends any role of the individual as auteur. (Rock, 1996, p.113)
The final dimension of the collaborative design project is facilitating communication, maintaining the group, harmonising contributions, and keeping sight of purpose and process. (Maciver and Malins, 2016, p.23)
Returning to my own transformational trigger, Obsessed was particularly timely in its curatorial premise – that of understanding the obsessions that underpin a maker’s process – to the extent that it collided with my own research. In reviewing the films from the exhibition, two particular themes emerged from the interviews Forbes conducted that were resonant with my own research. These transcripts had a particular connection to the reflections that I notated whilst in the process of making the pieces for the second of my case studies.
Several of the exhibiting artists spoke in their respective films of making as a meditative process which enabled deeper existential consideration of their practices. This established an expanded and more holistic framing of my own reflections.
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… obsession is about growing your understanding but also growing the potential impact or the particular impact you would like work to have … it’s kind of the self-improvement process as well.
Oliver Smith (https://australiandesigncentre.com/obsessed/oliver- smith/ time-coded 2’36” and 2’51”)
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… making objects is my way of understanding the world.
Louise Weaver (https://australiandesigncentre.com/obsessed/louise- weaver/ time-coded 0’57”)
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… when you think about it, there’s not very many jobs, I think, that you get to fire on all aspects of what it means to be human. So, there’s a total holistic part of it that where your head is connect to your hand … it’s an authentic experience.
Laura McCusker (https://australiandesigncentre.com/obsessed/ laura-mccusker/ time-coded 0’29” and 1’50”)
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It’s – I suppose it kind of – it quiets the mind down … When I’m actually physically making, it really brings me down into that moment and it’s very present and quietens things down …
Kath Inglis (https://australiandesigncentre.com/obsessed/kath- inglis/ time-coded 1’11” and 1’18”)
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Definitely starts with me trying to come to terms with what that idea of existing is …
And I also like doing something very meditative.
Gabriella Bisetto (https://australiandesigncentre.com/obsessed/ gabriella-bisetto/ time-coded 1’13” and 2’22”)
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The second resonant theme is that of making being embedded within our psyche, and personal/family history, and idea which will emerge again in the second case study of work for Book Club. In particular, John Goulder and Honor Freeman explain this as family-based or generational, whilst Elbowrkshp reflect on the expansion of a personal practice into adjacent cultural contexts.
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I grew up in a factory – in a country town in Mittagong in Bowral. So, I would basically – I swept the factory floor every afternoon after school and I worked with dad on Saturday mornings.
I just love going there and making stuff for the sake of it.
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I think it’s taken fifteen years for me to really understand what my aesthetic is and how to make what I do unique.
My practice is an ever-evolving thing.
Jon Goulder (https://australiandesigncentre.com/obsessed/jon- goulder/ time-coded 1’10”)
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And I think I just really – I just really like to make stuff – I think from when I was a kid.
Like my mum’s been a maker, my dad has tinkered away in the shed making trolleys and trailers and whatever else, so I think it’s just something that I’ve seen, and I have known, and I’ve been shown, so I can make sense of the world with my hands, I think.
Honor Freeman (https://australiandesigncentre.com/obsessed/ honor-freeman/ time-coded 1’58”)
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… and it’s kind of bringing all our personal stories, as well as our kind of – the broader of cultural stories of the region together into objects.
Elbowrkshp (https://australiandesigncentre.com/obsessed/ elbowrkshp/ time-coded 0’27”)
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The collaboration on Obsessed was productive and collegial, which resulted in an effective rendering of the conceptual premise that was presented to us as a team. The most significant insight that seemed to emerge through documenting this project as a research case study is the importance of the act of authorship and engagement in design as making. This emerged more distinctly from the stories of the makers themselves, than it did from my specific input into the design collaboration.
The question of the empowerment of authorship and direct connection to making segues into the second case study that this thesis will consider – Book Club (Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, 2017).
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67 NOTEBOOKS
Notebooks
The two Case Studies in this research are separated by a fissure, a space for pause and imperfection.
As a noun a fissure is:
1 A long, narrow opening or line of breakage made by cracking or splitting, especially in rock or earth.
2 A state of incompatibility or disagreement. eg ‘a fissure between philosophy and reality’
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fissure
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Here, the fissure is represented by a handful of soft pencil lines (a tool deliberately chosen for notating this research work) from the two complete notebooks that accompanied the research.
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3.2 Case Study Book Club
The second of the case studies in this research project documents and reflects on the work conceived and produced for the exhibitionBook Club, curated by Meryl Ryan and which showed at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery (LMCAG) between 25 August to 15 October 2017. The project provides a forward facing example of the seam space in which my practice has existed, and best describes the moment of transformation that the research endeavours to understand.
3.2.1 Working with Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery
Book Club built on a series of projects with Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery that began in 2005 with colour(less) (National Library of Australia: Trove, 2005). Anecdotally I am aware that at around that time Senior Curator Meryl Ryan had seen a book in Tasmania that I had designed for Devonport Gallery and Art Centre in 1993 and on that basis approached me to work periodically with the Gallery on publication design. By coincidence, Ryan forwarded an email she had printed and then accidentally discovered in 2018 during the period of this research (FIGURE 40):
FIGURE 40 Ryan, M. (2018). Printed archive of a 2005 email forwarded by text message 5/8/2018. Image: Meryl Ryan, reproduced with permission.
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To understand context for the case study, the client/design relationship can again be mapped as projects and media (FIGURE 41). What becomes evident once more in that process is that the projects traverse a range of practice areas. Most significantly, my role has changed over time from that of a publication and organisational brand designer, to co-curator of exhibition projects, and finally to the recent opportunity to exhibit works in Book Club (2017). Additionally, I designed the accompanying exhibition catalogue for Book Club. There has always been a significant degree of design autonomy in the project work for LMCAG with catalogue design projects often being more akin to creating artist’s books. Book Club was significant in solidifying authorship in an emerging new practice.
3.2.2 Book Club Concept
Ryan’s catalogue essay describes Book Club as an exhibition that ‘brings together book-related artworks by a group of contemporary artists who recognise the power of books in their artistic practice’ (Ryan, 2017, p.7) Ryan concludes that ‘ … a book’s diverse and unique characteristics [have] persuasive allure – from the cover to the content – size, shape, purpose, craftsmanship, paper quality, images, text … the object history, the personal, political and emotional history … For the artists in Book Club, books are the stuff of bigger stories.’ (Ryan, 2017, p.14) The exhibition was comprised of the work of the work of Chris Bond, Deidre Brollo, Simryn Gill, Julia Gough, William Kentridge, Archie Moore, Brigita Ozolins, Patrick Pound, Cyrus Tang, Ahn Wells and myself; alongside writers Deidre Brollo and Naomi Riddle. In addition to a resonance with the overarching themes of Book Club that Ryan articulated, the show enabled an opportunity to create works that spoke to the themes of Making it and Anxious World which specifically situates my own authored works in the context of this research.
82 AGE 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 COLD FIGURE 41 15 16 17 Goddard, S. (2017). 18 19 Design practice map 1990 20 EXHIBITED WORKS 1991 21 illustrating Lake Macquarie 1992 22 WORK PLACE City Art Gallery projects 1993 23 1994 24 HOBART and commissions. 1995 25 1996 26
D These demonstrate action 1997 27 N A MELBOURNE RL OW E SH P 1998 28 D T IDEN S H N A A OR T M O O H M R H EA U W T ! W C R IG R into a range of design PS A O THEATREN N E DESIGNE E D T O S P P 1999 29 R I L I TH F R S A B H IV IA E R O R ’ IR J OR :L O GO IC U D Y M T S EC IN T L C N D R H D T A R E 30 A IE A E O IG O S N ED 2000 SNORRKE H M F N H W H G SYDNEY A T O G ER AP NS O E M EA C IN media silos and are shown B W D E K M D O P TAI BI 31 H I O IL D A O Y G 2001 T OS O SUMH A K NE R (PARIS) C L D C E ER C S S ’M I D H N LU S I M IE ’S OP LI B 2002 32 A R R ’S S BY E AR TOOW A DO here in purple. BUILL G ITE S LO , B AN K G B TE L M 33 BE VE BI A ’S 2003 O E SW E OMLEI L V LU H EL LO D B GO R 34 AR LY A CO 2004 H OL N N P AN AI W PT 2005 35 CA 2006 36 37 2007 38 2008 39 2009 40 2010 (PARIS) 41 2011 42 2012 43 MELBOURNE 2013 44 2014 45 SYDNEY 2015 46 2016 47 2017 48 2018 49 2019 50 2020
CURATORIAL SWEAT EXHIBITION DESIGN DESIGNING OUR CITY S TRAHA MAPPING LMCAG PROJECTS IG N VISITOR CENTRE B VICTORIA ON SHOW I SPY ACON FLOAT HAPPYNESS CENT S ENARY OF FEDERAT BRIGHT FUTURE BUCHAN CA ION PARADE DESIGNING IM VE VISITOR CENTRE PORT EXPORT SIGNIFICANT PROJECT SIGHTIN GLOBAL LOCAL BO G THE PAST MBAY SAP LEBAN PHIRE DESIG BO ON N DISCOVER MBAY SA Y AWARD BOMB PPHIRE DE D AY SAPP SIGN DIS ESIGNIN HIRE DES COVERY A DES G OUR C IGN DISC WARD IGN NOW ITY OVERY AW MULTIPLE PROJECTS SMALL ! ARD EGY MATTER PTIAN S BIG TREASUR TARO ES: ART P NGA OF TH ICTUR ZOO U E PHAR HYP ING N PPER E OAHS B ERCLA EW SO NTRY IO 21 Y UTH W PRECI WOO ALES NCT T D: AR RUE T T DE ACRO O FO SIGN P PO RM: ARC OINT LIS MOD HITEC LOLA S OF ELS M TURE WR GR FOC ADE ITTE EENO US: HI FOR S MADE N IN CU STO CIEN G IN ST LTURA RIC P CE LAS 17 ONE L J HOT THE S: AR HOU EWE OGR ST PO T D RS LS APH CONNECTION POINTS FOR EEL: OL ESIG S FRO OBS AR N A M T CO ESS T D RCH HE P NC ED ESIG ITEC ACIF POSITIONING THESIS IN PRACTICE RE : CO N A TU IC TE: MP RC RE ART ELL HIT DE ED ECT SIGN TO M URE A AK RCHI E TE CTU RE
PUBLICATION DESIGN
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3.2.3 Past imperfect. Future tense.
Past imperfect. Future tense. (FIGURES 42–44) was the first piece to be completed and is the simplest in form. The piece physicalises a simple word play which speaks to a time in history in which the harmful effects of human endeavour, particularly abundant design, have become manifest (Papanek, 1971). In the course of collecting redundant objects, two identical Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriters were obtained, suggested the conceptual opportunity to have these engage in ‘a futile tug of war’ (Ryan, 2017, p.13).
Past imperfect. Future tense. required only a small amount of design detailing – primarily the resolution of the stock choice (160 gsm Waterford watercolour paper) and the sizing of the piece relative to available sheets. In early sketches the typewriters were imagined installed horizontally and with a much longer paper roll, which is a possible future iteration.
FIGURE 42 Goddard, S. (2017) Past imperfect. Future tense. [two Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriters, Waterford paper; 31 x 102 x 12cm], installation view, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery. Collection of the artist. Image: Stephen Goddard
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FIGURE 43 Goddard, S. (2017) Past imperfect. Future tense. (detail) [two Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriters, Waterford paper; 31 x 102 x 12cm], installation view, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery. Collection of the artist Image: Stephen Goddard
FIGURE 44 Goddard, S. (2017) Past imperfect. Future tense. (detail) [two Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriters, Waterford paper; 31 x 102 x 12cm], installation view, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery. Collection of the artist Image: Stephen Goddard
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Various design solutions for the piece were considered (FIGURE 45), ranging from creating bespoke cases with an acrylic lid; to installing the piece at floor level with an accompanying wall print; or installing the typewriters on plinths constructed from stacks of paper. The particular problem that needed to be solved was our perception that audiences would want to use the typewriters, which we wanted to avoid with this piece. Whilst exhibiting the work under acrylic covers was necessary for the other pieces in the exhibition, as much as possible Ryan had hoped to avoid these barriers.
The design breakthrough in the piece came from mounting it vertically to the wall. This not only created an intriguing displacement through an unusual viewing perspective, but it went some way to solving the problem of the typewriters being touched.
There were various other interactive pieces in the exhibition, including my piece Blind Sight (2017) and Diedre Brollo’s timekeeper (2017). In both cases the audience was invited to interact. For that reason, the typewriters were still used by some audience members, supporting research that suggests that where possible audiences look for opportunities to interact, particularly where other objects in the space are designed for handling or interaction (Candlin, 2017, p.256).
FIGURE 45 Goddard, S. (2016-17) Past imperfect. Future tense. sketchbook pages exploring installation treatments. Collection of the artist. Images: Stephen Goddard
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Past imperfect. Future tense. and a short description of all three works were FIGURE 46 featured in a review for the exhibition by Nathalie Craig in Newcastle Reproduction of Book Club review by Nathalie Craig, Sunday (10 September 2017) (FIGURE 46). Newcastle Sunday, ❉ 10 September 2017. 3.2.4 Book Hack
As with Past imperfect. Future tense., Book Hack is a meditation on process that was again initiated through the chance discovery of found objects. The piece uses A World Beyond Healing: The Prologue and Aftermath of Nuclear War by Nicholas Wade published in 1987 and Creative Arts and Crafts: A Handbook for Teachers in Primary Schools by Henry Pluckrose, published in 1966. Both books were sourced in a visit to Gould’s Book Arcade, described on their website having been ‘[e]stablished in Sydney in 1967 Goulds [sic] Book Arcade is Australia’s largest retailer of used, remaindered, out-of-print and rare books under one roof. A local, family-run bookshop …’ (Goulds Book Arcade, n.d.). The act of making began at the 87 point of embarking on a search for two suitable books. CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – BOOK CLUB
FIGURE 47 & FIGURE 48 (P.78) Goddard, S. (2017). Book Hack (detail) [two books (A World Beyond Healing, 1987 and Creative Arts and Crafts, 1966), 2-part epoxy glue, tape, video; dimensions variable]. Collection of the artist. Image: Stephen Goddard
There was no prerequisite theme for the books – they were chosen in the moment, and on the basis of a contrasting and resonant meaning which built on the Anxious World narrative. The framework for the design of the piece was established as a mismatched rejoining of two books (FIGURES 47 & 48). For that reason they were also chosen for their similarity in scale and thickness, and for their contrasting colour (red and black). This referred back to the colours of the typewriter ribbons used in Past imperfect. Future tense.
The search was for books with content that spoke to each other – in this case the positivity normally associated with creative learning in contrast with the destructive realities of a nuclear world. At the time of making the work, new threats of nuclear combat were emerging. There are numerous cases of this in daily news – for example, a US News article by Louis René Beres on the 4th July 2017;
Dangerous Nuclear Decisions A July Fourth warning about President Trump and the nuclear command structure. (Beres, 2017)
or this by Evan Osnos on 18 September 2017 in the New Yorker Magazine;
The Risk of Nuclear War with North Korea On the ground in Pyongyang: Could Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump 88 goad each other into a devastating confrontation? (Osnos, 2017) CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – BOOK CLUB CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – BOOK CLUB
The piece challenges the book as a precious artefact through the act of severing and rejoining. The creation of a hacked form embeds a new way of reading the texts. Using a laborious process of rejoining the covers and each page from the front to the back, random conjunctions emerge – reactivating the words and meanings of each page. The covers were rejoined using a 2-part epoxy resin, the mixing of which is in itself a poetic reflection of the joining of two halves. The pages were reunited, ironically, with archival grade Filmoplast® book repair tape (FIGURE 49).
The process of making Book Hack was documented by way of Go-Pro action photography, and as a performative piece brought a new process to my practice that had hitherto been limited to the design production of books as new (and generally commissioned) outputs. Co-opting a popular FIGURE 49 medium such as the Go-Pro Hero 5 challenged the more usual uses of that Goddard, S. (2017). hardware in the context of extreme sports and leisure. The full video can Process documentation for Book Hack. be found at https://vimeo.com/322352014/217c95de11. A short version Image: Stephen Goddard is available at https://vimeo.com/322388219/646f1bf400. CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – BOOK CLUB
FIGURES 50–58 Goddard, S. (2017). Video stills from Book Hack [two books (A World Beyond Healing, 1987 and Creative Arts and Crafts, 1966), 2-part epoxy glue, tape, video projection; dimensions variable]. Collection of the artist. Images: Stephen Goddard
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The resulting exhibition piece had two parts. Two books were exhibited – the combination of alternate halves. One was exhibited open to highlight the nature of the text conjunctions. The page which was featured, headed Rough Games, is a good example of the chance collision of two unrelated ideas (FIGURE 59).
The boys who were fighting looked wicked and cruel with scratched faces and bleeding noses; groaning and crying they still went on. … Then one cried, ‘Oh, here comes a copper’. (Pluckrose, 1966, pg.7)
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This powerful triad of nuclear forces is under the control of an elaborate command structure. … its behaviour is critical to the initiation FIGURE 59 and outcome of any nuclear conflict. (Wade, 1987, p.23) Goddard, S. (2017). Book Hack (detail) [two The second component of the piece was a showing of the Go-Pro footage books (A World Beyond of process documentation. Approximately 6 hours of footage was Healing, 1987 and Creative edited down to 1 hour and colour treated to black and white to establish Arts and Crafts, 1966), a more controlled visual hierarchy. Ryan and I originally discussed 2-part epoxy glue, tape, video; dimensions variable]. projecting the work onto the floor alongside the books, but due to Collection of the artist. technical limitations in the gallery negotiated the display on a small Image: Stephen Goddard monitor adjacent to the piece (FIGURES 60 & 61).
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FIGURE 60 Goddard, S. (2017). Book Hack installation at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, September 2017 [two books (A World Beyond Healing, 1987 and Creative Arts and Crafts, 1966), 2-part epoxy glue, tape, video; dimensions variable]. Collection of the artist. Image: Stephen Goddard
FIGURE 61 Goddard, S. (2017). Book Hack installation at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, September 2017 [two books (A World Beyond Healing, 1987 and Creative Arts and Crafts, 1966), 2-part epoxy glue, tape, video; dimensions variable]. Collection of the artist. Image: Stephen Goddard
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3.2.5 Reflection on Book Hack
Returning to the underpinning of this thesis as an examination of practice, the observations and recollections from the act of making were more significant in reflection on this piece than the artefacts themselves. Several observations were noted in the making of Book Hack.
It became clear early in the process that the resulting artefact was less seamless in the reconstituted form than had been envisaged. Initially that felt like a significant compromise to the work – a challenge to the emerging methodologies of the accompanying works for the exhibition which were highly planned, and in which I had understood that the process as a mediation would require a significantly higher level of craft. Perfectionism and anxiety have been found to have a significant causal link (Lessin & Pardo, 2017). The process required far more brutality to complete than imagined, but ultimately embedded a richer layer of meaning through the imperfections in the final object. Conceptually, the piece seemed to become a stronger reflection of a wounded and imperfect world in need of repair. There was a lengthy and meditative process as each page was rejoined front and back – the accompanying film has moments of pause as particular conjunctions emerge.
The work is perhaps more easily situated alongside an act of making art than with design, and this may signify a critical moment of development through the Book Club pieces. The work of Francis Alÿs comes to mind in this context – three pieces in particular demonstrate this synergy. In Cut (Mexico, 2015) the artist uses a circular saw to dissect a small landscape painting whilst it is attached to the gallery wall. At its conclusion the painting and the cut, which extends onto the wall itself, have become one, now coexisting as a new piece (http://francisalys. com/cut/). Both the performative act and the subsequent artifact have resonance with the piece Book Hack.
In his earlier piece Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing (Mexico City, 1997), Alÿs pushes a large block of ice through the streets of Mexico until it is fully dissolved. In this piece, there is both a futility of production and labour coexisting with the act of creation of both an ephemeral piece and its accompanying documentation. In particular, this creative act, with its light material touch, aligns with the ambitions of Book Hack (http://francisalys.com/sometimes-making-something-leads- 96 to-nothing/). CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – BOOK CLUB
Finally, in Painting / Retoque (Paraisó, Panamá, 2008) Alÿs laboriously repaints the yellow dividing lines on a section of road (http://francisalys. com/painting-retoque/) as an act of healing in an area previously subject to the political turmoil from establishing the Panama Canal. In this piece, it is the performative act of the artist as symbolic healer that has resonated most strongly. In all, the work of Alÿs is a precedent alongside which I can situate my own works.
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3.2.6 Blind Sight
Blind Sight was the third of the pieces developed in response to Book Club and was the most complex of the three. The creation of the piece aligned several areas of research and reflection. The starting point, as with both Past imperfect. Future tense. and Book Hack, was with a redundant object – in this case a vintage optometrist lens testing kit which I found some years ago in a second hand shop in Newtown, Sydney. Again, the redundancy of the object in terms of practical use was offset by a tactile appeal. Historical objects can seem untouchable – that their history is somehow complete. Blind Sight sought to challenge this redundancy by hacking the delicate object in such a way that it could no longer be the artefact it once was – therefore beginning a new history (FIGURE 62).
FIGURE 62 Goddard, S. (2017). Blind Sight (detail) [vintage optical testing kit, laser engraving, Huon pine, printed paper; dimensions variable]. Collection of the artist. Image: Stephen Goddard
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The genesis of the work emerged blind sight from the concept that the lenses of nervous heart the kit could be digitally hacked broken hand through laser engraving with anxious head a series of word pairs – one in bright memory each lens – which would act as an dark times audience provocation. A series of shining light word pairs were authored as follows, bleeding soul which then acted as a piece of raging fight concrete poetry: gentle life fragile thoughts delicate hold vibrant dream hungry mind black hole making whole inky balm knotted now half full never empty imperfect past future tense another way bleeding edge lost art dull ache silent spell flawed things left over right touch slowing fast speeding spirit quiet space frantic place real love electric shadow blood rising sober moment no knowing 98 am eye CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – BOOK CLUB
The kit was repackaged in a contemporary form (FIGURE 63) – a Huon Pine base board, CNC-routed to contain all the kit elements and finished with Osmo Polyx® Matt. This was a designerly approach that contemporised the historical object, and drew on my skills as a maker as well as established relationships with suppliers to my practice.
FIGURE 63 Goddard, S. (2017). Blind Sight (detail) [vintage optical testing kit, laser engraving, Huon pine, printed paper; dimensions variable]. Collection of the artist. Image: Stephen Goddard
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3.2.7 The Process of Making
Reflections on the making process were notated in the course of the process. The Huon Pine baseboard (or package) was handcrafted alongside my father in his shed in southern Tasmania, and as with Book Hack, the subtleties of process were highly resonant. Sourcing the relatively rare Huon Pine, endemic to Tasmania, was as a result of a number of conversations – maintaining the familial link to place that the practice map uses as one of its metrics. I was reminded of the timbers native in Tasmania, such as King Billy Pine, that my father milled for us to use in childhood projects.
The particular length of timber needed to be cut to allow joining on the longer edge. There was a moment in cutting when the power saw jammed. I suspected that it was the result of a decompression of internal stresses in what was a large piece of timber – a reminder of the significant age (likely to be at least several hundred years) and consequential importance of this material. Huon Pine (Lagarstrobos franklinni) grows at a rate of only 0.3 to 2mm in diameter every year, reaching ages of up to approximately 3000 years old (Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment – Tasmania, 2011). My father (an engineer) watched on as I rejoined the pieces, and I felt that this might be a symbolic reflection of the intimate understanding of making we share. My brother, also an engineer, can be seen in the background on a project of his own (FIGURE 64). The shed had become a meeting place.
FIGURE 64 Process documentation for Blind Sight (2017) – joining timber halves Image: Stephen Goddard
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The rarity of the timber made the finished blank block unique and significant. We were to complete this block with CNC routing in order to repackage the kit, with only one chance to achieve a successful process. Several iterations of the layout were explored before the final was confirmed(FIGURE 65).
FIGURE 65 Process documentation for Blind Sight (2017) – mapping lens pieces for laser engraving. Image: Stephen Goddard
FIGURE 66 Process documentation for Blind Sight (2017) – Huon pine test piece for determining machine speed, bit type and number of passes required. Image: Stephen Goddard
Despite advance testing, the final block had more pronounced router bit traces than were ideal, which resulted in a laborious process of sanding and finishing. I came to realise that the meditative process of this labour was critical to the place of the piece in this research – de-mechanising the previous processes I had employed. I noted the smell of the Huon Pine when sanding, and a connection and respect for the history of the material. There was a similar meditation in applying the matt finish to the timber. These processes amplified small details and imperfections – for example, the minute crack which reappeared in the join of the two pieces after some time. Through a process of meditative making, the piece became greater 101 than the sum of its parts (FIGURES 67 & 68). CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – BOOK CLUB
FIGURE 67 Process documentation for Blind Sight (2017) – CNC routing of Huon Pine at Signwave Newtown, NSW Image: Stephen Goddard
FIGURE 68 Process documentation for Blind Sight (2017) – hand finishing of Huon Pine. Image: Stephen Goddard
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Similarly, the process of laser engraving the lenses carried equal risk, as the digital hack was again irreversible. Several tests were conducted to establish that a double pass of the laser was required to achieve a suitable density with the engraving. The lenses were positioned and engraved as one assemblage (FIGURES 69–71). That risk, as with the routing of the Huon Pine, becomes integral to the piece. I saw these processes as a reactivation in response to the aforementioned redundancy.
The level of detail that I was aiming to achieve in Blind Sight was integral to my ultimate satisfaction with the making of this piece. Moreover, the piece was representative of numerous conversations and production collaborations. The retelling of these anecdotes in the form of this thesis captures a critical layer of meaning for all of the pieces, that has permeated the complete thesis project as an autoethnographic study.
FIGURES 69–71 Process documentation for Blind Sight (2017) – sorting and laser engraving of lenses at UNSW Art & Design, NSW. Images: Stephen Goddard
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3.2.8 Blind Sight as a Research Provocation
A participatory installation piece accompanied Blind Sight. The engraved lenses of the piece itself were a provocation for the gallery audience and represented the first substantial work in my practice that adopted a participatory and research-based approach. A smaller and unrelated work was created in collaboration with photographer Hamish Ta-mé as part of Sydney Design in 2013, and could be seen as the genesis of an interest in creating participatory design provocations. That piece was titled Quietly in a busy place … and involved the installation of a piece of concrete poetry on the exterior walls of Ta-mé’s studio in Mary Street, Surry Hills in New South Wales (FIGURES 72–74). In that case the words were drawn from informal crowd-sourced responses to questions and provocations posed on social media – questioning our relationship with the city.
FIGURES 72–74 Goddard, S. and Ta-mé, H. (2013). Quietly in a busy place … [cnc routed alupanel letters, silicon, photographic prints, glue], Sydney Design, installation view, Mary Street, Surry Hills, NSW. Images: courtesy of Hamish Ta-mé and Stephen Goddard
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The interface for audience interaction with the piece Blind Sight comprised a grid of 80 identical images of the glasses from the accompanying lens kit, photographed with blank lenses in place. These hung from hooks and were written on and added to over the course of the exhibition (FIGURES 75–77). The research was approved by the UNSW Human Research Ethics Advisory Panel (HREAP) and generated 710 responses. Despite instructions to not add identifying information to accompany any contributions, 77 responses had first names written on them, but remain effectively anonymous. 33 responses had a name plus one other piece of information (such as a second name, signature or DOB) written on them and these responses were excluded from the project. Therefore, 677 responses available for qualitative analysis.
The provocation for the piece was worded as follows:
What is your view of the world? You are invited to interact with Stephen Goddard’s artwork Blind Sight.
Blind Sight is a work about looking at the world – first through one eye and then through the other. At one moment we might feel inspiration and joy at all that is around us; at another time the anxiety of things and places lost.
• Quietly look at the glass lenses in the exhibition and the words that are etched in them. • Take a sheet of paper and write a word of your own in each lens. • Hang the sheet on one of the hooks. • At the end of the exhibition, all the pages will be bound to make a new book, Blind Sight, that you will be part of.
FIGURE 75 Example of one audience member response to the Blind Sight provocation, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, September 2017.
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FIGURE 76 Goddard, S. (2017). Installation view of Blind Sight at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, September, 2017. Collection of the artist Image: Stephen Goddard
FIGURE 77 Goddard, S. (2017). Installation detail of Blind Sight at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, September, 2017. Collection of the artist Image: Stephen Goddard
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FIGURES 78–93 Examples of audience member responses from the Blind Sight provocation, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, September 2017. 677 responses to the research provocation were generated. The following is a limited selection.
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3.2.9 Blind Sight Data Analysis
A qualitative analysis of the piece was conducted as a dimension for understanding audience participation in the installation. The methodology that was employed to conduct this layer of analysis was to code the responses individually against a series of attributes (FIGURE 94), a process outlined by Johnny Saldana (2009).
A code in qualitative inquiry is most often a word or short phrase that assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language based or visual data. (Saldana, 2009, p.3)
Saldana goes on describe this act of coding as the researcher applying an analytical lens to the interpretation of the data, but recognizing the filter that you apply as a researcher in interpreting that data is critical to the act (2009, p.6). Coding and analysis of the data seemed to be a necessary accompaniment to the generative component of the work, in which the participants became content providers in the creation of a series of books as artifacts. The coding allowed for an evidenced understanding of the participants’ engagement with the provocation – both in terms of the structure that was proposed (a single word written into each lens) as well as an overview of the range of issue-based and emotional responses to the provocation itself. As such, the emotional affordances of the piece were extended outside the bounds of the maker alone.
Saldana describes a series of cycles of coding as being necessary for thorough data analysis (2009, p.8). In the case of this piece, coding was limited to the broadest level of First Cycle coding only. This was due to the number of responses to be coded relative to their importance and insight in terms of the overall enquiry.
There were no specific participant attributes that were gathered as part of this data, as all contributions were made anonymously by the general public. The handwriting and language indicated that the demographics were across a wide range of age groups. The codes that were applied can be classified against various methods of coding that Saldana identifies, primarily within the confines ofelemental and affective coding (2009, p46):
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FIGURE 94 Table of attributes used to code audience responses to the provocation Blind Sight (2017).
ATTRIBUTE BEING CODED FIRST CYCLE METHODOLOGY
Transcript of written text / image description In Vivo Coding (elemental) This is a simple and verbatim transcript of text, using the key: left lens / right lens / other text (outside lenses). Images are described within
Primary expression of feeling or emotion (if determinable) Emotion coding (affective) Where there is a clearly identifiable emotion expressed, this is recorded.
Secondary expression of feeling or emotion (if determinable) Emotion coding (affective) In cases where there is a second and clearly identifiable emotion expressed, this is recorded.
Narrative sequence Versus coding (affective) The written provocation proposed an oppositional view (eg left / right). This attribute records whether contrasting ideas are clearly expressed in each lens as per the provocation, or whether the response employs a more sequenced approach (eg I / am). In some cases the responses were either not definable within this construct, or able to be interpreted both ways.
Language Initial coding (elemental) Records the language used by the participant in written form.
Content Initial coding (elemental) Records whether text, image, or a combination of both was used.
Interpretation Descriptive coding (elemental) The original provocation was created with a poetic intent. This attribute analyses whether participants contributed in a poetic (eg Hind / sight / is a wonderful thing), or literal form (eg the / dog).
Form Descriptive coding (elemental) Did the participant follow the instruction in the provocation to add one word to each lens, or extend outside the boundaries of that instruction.
Point of view Emotion coding (affective) The provocation suggested contrasting ways in which the world might be viewed. Could the participant’s response be viewed as essentially positive, negative, mixed (positive/negative), neutral or undefined.
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The process acknowledges that ‘all coding is a judgment call, and as such opens up possibilities, but always obscures other potential alternatives. … We must be clear that category-building involves our subjectivities: our personalities, our predispositions, our quirks’ (Sipe & Ghiso, 2004; pp 482-483).
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3.2.10 Blind Sight Data Findings
At the conclusion of the coding process (APPENDIX A), a table of results (FIGURE 95) was compiled and the following observations could be made. Of the 677 responses, approximately equal numbers of visitors made contrasting statements in each lens (45%) as distinct from sequencing the narrative from one lens to the next (42%). 13% responses were not able to be allocated to either of those categories.
By far the majority of responses were in English (95%) with only 7 responses in other languages, and 31 responses that did not have a determinable language (for example, were responded to through image only). 83% of visitors responded in text, with 14% responding in text/image and 3% with image only.
Though this is the most subjective of the coded attributes, a majority of 85% endeavored to respond poetically (the inference in this is creatively) and 8% were literal in their responses. There were 15 overtly political responses (a number of which were around the issue of marriage equality, which was current at the time), with the remainder not characterized in any of these categories.
57% of respondents followed the provocation of one word only in each lens, with the remaining 43% choosing to extend their response outside this instruction.
36% of the respondents were clearly positive in the message they were trying to convey, and when combined with those who were neutral in their response, that increased to 79%. 14% responded to the provocation with a response that was mixed, with only 6% responding with a negative view or message. These combined statistics are of some interest, with key findings being that the number of responses suggest that an audience will embrace the opportunity to interact with a creative opportunity, and generally tended to have a positive or balanced message in their responses. 112 CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – BOOK CLUB
FIGURE 95 677 TOTAL RESPONSES Table summarising coding of audience responses to Narrative sequence the provocation Blind Sight 311 Contrasting (2017). 284 Cequenced 82 Undefined
Language 640 English 1 Chinese 2 Chinese/English 1 French English 1 Greek English 1 Japanese 31 Undefined/undeterminable
Content 21 Image 559 Text 97 Text/image
Intepretation 53 Literal 577 Poetic 15 Political 32 Undefined
Form 293 Extended 384 Followed
Point of view 93 Mixed 43 Negative 296 Neutral 241 Positive 4 Undefined (or foreign language)
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The audience was comfortable to use language, as the instruction suggested, but quite happy to extend outside the boundaries of the way the piece was framed, with the inclusion of image, for example. The small number of responses that took the opportunity to create responses based on image-only (regardless of the instruction) was slightly surprising.
When the transcribed text was analysed by way of a word cloud, the key words that emerged were ‘love’, ‘peace’ and ‘happy’, by some majority (FIGURE 96). ‘Hope’ and ‘hate’ were notable secondary themes, as well as a range of words relating to sight and seeing. This makes sense given the context of the provocation.
FIGURE 96 Word cloud created from transcribed text from Blind Sight (2017) audience responses.
A second word cloud was created from any overt expression of emotion, feeling of significant theme that was notated(FIGURE 97). Again – love, peace and happiness were key themes, along with joy and creativity. 114 Expressions around ‘spirituality’, which particularly encompassed CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – BOOK CLUB
responses that referred to God, were much more prominent than expected. To some degree there was a general banality to the collective responses – an eagerness to simply be part seems to be one of the most significant outcomes.
FIGURE 97 Word cloud created from an analysis of suggested emotions from Blind Sight (2017) audience responses.
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Coding was embarked on as both a research training technique and to add rigor to the qualitative research. Of greater interest were individual responses viewed in isolation. On reflection, framing the provocation with a broader or different invitation to respond creatively might result in more of these kinds of responses.
All responses were bound into a series of hard cover books, resulting in a new piece titled Blind Sight Volumes (2019) (FIGURES 98 & 99).
115 CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – BOOK CLUB
FIGURE 98 Goddard, S. (2019). Blind Sight Volumes [5 book volumes bound in red book book cloth, red foil; 17.5 x 14 x 16cm]. Collection of the artist. Image: Stephen Goddard
FIGURE 99 Goddard, S. (2019). Blind Sight Volumes (detail) [5 book volumes bound in red book book cloth, red foil; 17.5 x 14 x 16cm]. Collection of the artist. Image: Stephen Goddard
116 CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – BOOK CLUB
3.2.11 Book Club Catalogue Design
The final piece that I produced forBook Club came in the form of a designed catalogue. It not only joined a lineage of this type of project for LMCAG, but also responded to the exhibition works that I had produced. The book was designed with a double concertina cover housing two small book blocks – one for the written content and one for the image reproductions, on matt and coated papers respectively. This duality served as a mirror to the ‘conversation’ that was embedded in exhibition pieces. The format also turned a single book, conceptually, into a book collection.
The cover was constructed from a rich red card finished with a black belly band, with the title foiled front and back in red and black respectively (FIGURE 100). It is a highly tactile object, that can be interacted with and manipulated in a variety of ways, serving to emphasise the play between the words ‘book’ and ‘club’ (FIGURES 101 & 102). This manner of conceptual thinking underpins the range of catalogue designs I have undertaken for LMCAG, but manifests itself in very different ways depending on the exhibition content.
At the time of writing, the work had won both the Best Small Catalogue and Best in Show across all print categories in the 2018 Museums Australasia Multimedia and Publication Design Awards (MAPDA) [http://www.mapda.org.au/2018-winners.html].
FIGURE 100 Goddard, S. (2017). Book Club catalogue. [two 24 page book blocks in red concertina cover with black belly band, offset printing and metallic foils; 21 x 12 x 0.5cm]. Collection of the artist. Image: Stephen Goddard
117 CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – BOOK CLUB
FIGURE 101 Goddard, S. (2017). Book Club catalogue. [two 24 page book blocks in red concertina cover with black belly band, offset printing and metallic foils; 21 x 12 x 0.5cm]. Collection of the artist. Image: Stephen Goddard
FIGURE 102 Goddard, S. (2017). Book Club catalogue (detail). [two 24 page book blocks in red concertina cover with black belly band, offset printing and metallic foils; 21 x 12 x 0.5cm]. Collection of the artist. Image: Stephen Goddard
3.2.12 Meta-reflection on Book Club
A general observation from the Book Club exhibition came when attending the opening event and taking part in the accompanying panel talk. I was struck by the very direct connections made with the audience and conversation around the pieces that this forum enabled. As an anecdote of that kind of interaction, I was approached by a co-exhibitor 118 with their friendly young child. When introduced as the artist who had cut CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – BOOK CLUB
the books in half (Book Hack, 2017), the young boy backed away, visibly distressed – clearly, he has been told not to damage books, and took that instruction seriously. It was in that moment I realised the powerful and direct connection that these works could enable. As communication designers, we are rarely present for responses to the works we create – the nature of a different audience relationship.
The project began with a structured process and formulation of a series of outcomes that I believe reflected a process of design – the artefacts sought to be communication pieces. However, the resulting works were ultimately strongly driven by process, performance and reflection, and it seemed they might be more appropriately located in the seam space between art and design. The impact on my practice of creating this work reflects the fluctuation between practice-based and practice-led research.
Emergent process themes fall broadly into the following categories:
Materiality and media The pieces can be considered in terms of the materials and tactile qualities of made or found objects. There were several instances in which the relationship with commercial suppliers was co-opted into the making of these one-off pieces. Additionally, as a research project, the works employ a range of processes and technologies as a deliberate strategy to evidence an expansive range of methodologies. The works captured both familiar and new processes.
Reuse and repair The works use found objects and minimise new material use whilst still allowing for a full engagement in the act of making – through both form and meaning. This is an endeavour to reconcile productivity with that of minimising the environmental impact of the work in terms of material use (Papanek, 1972). The works are a response to that concern.
Meditative practice The act of making is a process of meditation, the mastering of which aligns with a state of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997).
Dialogue and communication Ryan in her introductory essay recognised that all three works were an expression of dialogue and communication:
For his three installations in Book Club, the artist repurposes vintage 119 objects from the paraphernalia of reading and writing to give them a CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDY – BOOK CLUB
new and contemporary voice. Founded on dialogue and pairing, the works reinforce their narrative through the titles. (Ryan, 2017, p.13)
This is thought of as an extension of a long history of work as a communications designer, and endeavouring to now operate outside that conventional model (Rock, 1996).
The two case studies that form this Chapter were separated by a visual fissure, the intent of which is to communicate something of the underlying process. The nature of each project determined the tone of reflection, which moved from one of effective and sensitive response to a client brief, to that of an exposed and authorial maker. I am describing this as the difference of being a designer on the outside-looking-in, to being on the inside-looking-out.
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120 4 Conclusion
121 CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION
This thesis began with tacit knowledge, a speculation, and a moment of epiphany. I have an understanding of the scale, range, and nature of client relationships, alongside media and methodologies that have been employed in the practice. The tacit knowledge was that these have been shaped over time by an anxious way of being in the world – a state that has been long-standing and continues to be negotiated on a day-to-day basis. The practice has been informed over time by a proximity to design as an act of making that is close and connected. Making has also acted as a balm to the tensions inherent in an anxious way of being.
My speculation was that these anxieties are more generalised in the world and accelerating – well-described in the filmKoyaanisqatsi (1982), and signalled even earlier by Victor Papanek in his preface to Design for the Real World (1972). Whether they are responses to commercialism, technology, the Anthropocene, or the solastalgia of the rapid loss and destruction of place, both the tacit knowledge and the speculation have ill-defined edges.
There was a moment of epiphany many years ago when I was given Oscar Schlemmer’s Scheme for Stage, Cult and Popular Entertainment (Schlemmer, 1925/1961, p.19). The diagram was a point of departure for the theoretical approach within a research project. What I recognised in this intelligent and economical model was both the appeal of the spaces that Schlemmer described as borderline, alongside the limitation of a system that is based on a binary hierarchy.
Through this combination, a research question was formed. In this Anxious World, what is the relationship between an intimate scale of design practice and that of a larger network of design agents? How can a designer respond to this generalised state of anxiety, using the roles of maker, storyteller and activist to work outside the dominant ideologies of commercial design?
At the commencement of the project, this question suggested that the research could consider design practice generally, whereas, what became more evident was that I was ultimately looking to transform my own practice. In the future, the research can consider the universal application of those principles. I established an autoethnographic process and a mixed design research methodology to document two case study projects, from which a transformational trigger for the practice could be uncovered. This was with a view to creating a platform for a new body of work and 122 research directions. CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION
Once commercialised, design enterprise at any scale tends to demand a particular process and series of conventions drawn from the designer/client relationship. A research breakthrough was to move the examination of practice beyond written historical reflection, and into a mapped and visualised analysis. This methodology had precedence in Schlemmer’s Scheme, and the work of Lisa Grocott by way of example, and has proven to be a robust research outcome. The mapping has been critical in both framing the case studies, and developing the new definition of aseam practice or seam space – akin to the borderline that Schlemmer identified.
Wicked problems have led to multiple ways of thinking about the nature and role of the designer, which has resulted in numerous models of design practice. I believed that I might find a place for my practice in these. As with Schlemmer’s Scheme, the models bring insight but also the limitation of being inevitably reductive. I sought to reconcile this through a new approach to the theoretical form. Using this contribution to network theory, the seam designer is one who uses their skill set to work fluidly across discipline and media borders. Robert Dessaix muses on the notion of loitering with intent (1997) just as he gives insight to transformations (1998), suggesting a practice placement that is poetic as much as it is practical.
Two conditions emerged over the course of theoretical development that both legitimised and enabled the seam space. The first condition was to identify exemplar practitioners who occupy that space, and to understand my own practice as having a position within that community. The second condition was to recognise that the community in itself is just one player in a pliant network of combined wisdom. This is a concept for which John Wood – in applying Leonhard Eular’s visual schema to achieve his Model of Quadratic Consciousness – was responsible. These conditions could be regarded as enablers, the combination of which have been integral in empowering multiple ways to practice (and be) in response to the Anxious World.
This research finding established that the theoretical framing of the seam practice (space, or designer) can be universalised, extended and applied in future research.
If seam practice is the specific creative methodology that has been employed over time, the two case studies with Australian Design Centre and Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery provided an appropriate general 123 methodology. These allowed for an examination and reflection on two CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION
current projects and client relationships, with a view to establishing a clear point of view and transformational trigger for work moving forward. Both clients are considered in light of the practice mapping that was established, and the case studies understood within a lineage of similar projects. They provide a practice-based example of how the seam space has been occupied in the case of my own practice.
The design responsibilities for Obsessed: Compelled to make were for the exhibition design and a short reflective essay. For this reason the project diverged from the lineage of projects of which it was part, and on which I had generally also undertaken the publication design or other aspects of creative direction. Obsessed operated within more established conventions of good design practice – collaborative, holistic, and client-centric. Retrospectively, I have concluded that this reduced remit was beneficial as I was able to reflect on my creative motivations for both case study projects more clearly and comparatively. The relative conventionality of the role brought into question the legitimacy of this project as an exemplar of seam practice. This finding is not contrary to the overall success that was achieved through the design project, but important in clarifying the framework.
The invitation to contribute reflective writing to theObsessed catalogue was both an acknowledgement of a multi-layered working relationship with ADC, but also an opportunity to consider the project in terms of personal practice and the broader concept of ‘obsession’. How much making is enough to keep the demons at bay? (Goddard, 2018). Further, it connected the collaborative nature of the project to early work in theatre design – professional processes which I have come to understand are deeply embedded in my practice. The reflective writing contains ideas that have potential as a precursor to future curatorial or research activity – in particular a stronger return to principles of theatre as an influential form in future work.
The presentation of narratives in the form of systematic digital storytelling through film was a significant departure for projects of this type within my practice. The contribution to the research path of this thesis was indirect and unexpected. Through extracting a range of transcript moments from the film suite created by Angus Lee Forbes, it was the understanding of the role of making in the expression of a range of personal creative philosophies that was most captivating. The transcripts articulated this as 124 an essential insight into transforming my own practice more deliberately CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION
in the near future, and supported the connection to authorship that had emerged. The tone of reflection forObsessed is very different to the second of the case studies, Book Club, in which a greater degree of autonomous authorship was inherent. This has been over a long period of time through publication design and later curatorial opportunities with Lake Macquaries City Art Gallery (LMCAG).
In completing the body of work for Book Club I found the transformational trigger I was looking for. As an organisation LMCAG had recognised a sensitivity in design that led to the invitation to contribute content into the exhibition space itself. For me, the question that arose from this was whether or not these constituted works of design or art. It was during the course of the project, and in particular through the application of Wood’s quadratic network principles, that I saw this argument as not only redundant, but counter to the position of design network pliancy that I have taken.
The decision to experiment with media across three works was an important strategy. Whilst the body of work developed cohesively through the use of the repeated icon of redundancy and the hacked tools of communication, there were deliberate attempts to work with a range of technologies. This was with a view to understanding which might be more successful in a body of work moving forward. Engagement with digital technologies and their intersection with analogue making – whether that be film documentation or the CNC processes that enabled the object hacks – remain the most resonant from a creative perspective. Future research directions will focus more particularly on that intersection of tools and media.
The body of work seeds future practice, but is currently limited in its depth and scope. The acts of labour involved in the works, such as the reassembly of objects and the making and finishing of timber components, were reflective and meditative. Through those processes I was able to reconfirm the critical connection that the process of making enabled. The strong conceptual and communication intent for each piece and their cohesion as a suite of storytelling objects established a starting point for a larger body of work to follow.
The works connected directly with the audience with a form of engagement and interaction that is significantly different from the conventional communications designer. The addition of a participatory component to 125 the last of the works, Blind Sight, and the opportunity to directly engage CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION
through panel discussion was profound and transformative. Whilst I had done this on a number of occasions in the capacity of a designer, this was the most significant opportunity of this sort I have had amongst a group of established artists, in which I was able to discuss personal practice, exploration and making. The direct relationship and feedback loop connected the practice areas of design, communication, art making and potentially theatre in a vibrant, cross-disciplinary platform.
Qualitative research and autoethnographic methodologies call for rigour in order to make reasonable claim to research integrity. The application of data coding to understand the results of the creative responses to Blind Sight and provide a feedback loop for future work added the necessary rigour to a process. It proved difficult to make meaningful (or insightful) observations from the qualitative analysis of visitor responses, though the process was in itself an absorbing act of labour. The most strongly emergent themes were love, peace and happiness. The balance of data suggested that reactions to the provocation on a view of the world range from neutral to positive. Through this, I have understood more explicitly that the Anxious World is not a state felt as universally as I might have expected. Having said that, the responses might be aspirational rather than reflecting an actual state of mind, though this is indeterminable through the research methodology.
What emerged from the quantity of responses was an eagerness for audiences to create and contribute when opportunities arise, and this is an outcome that can be taken forward into future works. Again, this makes reference to the qualities in an audience relationship that may be present in performative acts such as theatre. It can be hypothesised that a different provocation might have elicited a greater depth of response, and this learning can also be taken forward into future projects.
Of greatest interest in Blind Sight were individual responses and the visual intricacies of how they were drawn or written. The participatory component to the works was a successful outcome of the research process, resulting in the creation of a new piece Blind Sight Volumes (2019), which celebrates the thought and individuality of this collection of responses.
The works in Book Club offered the opportunity to contribute and agitate for a new narrative with audiences in my own practice. As this thesis has explored, there is a need for designers to employ multiple methodologies and to work outside the dominant ideologies of design practice, particularly 126 in an environment where wicked problems are prevalent. In the case of Blind CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION
Sight, the closer relationship with the audience and the direct feedback loop have been an important and fulfilling practice outcome.
To signify transformation as a research outcome and position the Master of Design thesis as a precursor to further research and potential Doctoral study, I began new sketch iterations of the practice map to the level of broad concept design. In its first iteration in Chapter 1, the map seemed to converge on a central, target-like point as a finite conclusion. The central region of that map connects the practice moments that comprise this thesis. Reimagining this diagram with a z-dimension introduced the concept of the FIGURES 103–108 central arena simply as a moment in a continuum. Goddard, S. (2019). Sequenced screenshots In this structure, every temporal moment is equal to the one preceding from an animation of a and the next following. Creating this different point of view activates conceptual frame for an new possibilities for mapping the practice going forward which highlight iterated practice mapping. Animation demonstrates an ongoing practice trajectory. To communicate this new iteration, a stronger ongoing the broad concept was animated to express the interplay between practice trajectory four dimensions, adding both the z-dimension and temporality through the application of a z-dimension and (FIGURES 103–108). The short sketch animation can be found at temporality. https://vimeo.com/322342731/401c935cda.
103
127 104 CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION
105
106
107
128 108 CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION
What then emerges is a visual expression of an iterated conception of the ‘anxious core’. The core becomes fragmented and fluid, clustering at various moments within the continuum. The visual expression of the FIGURE 109 core is closer to what I believe I recall from a state of half sleep (FIGURE 109). Goddard, S. (2019). It is also closer to Damien Newman’s now iconic squiggle of the design Current iteration of early diagramatic representation process (Newman, 2009), and is therefore able to be interpreted in light of the Anxious Core. of Newman’s diagram (FIGURE 110, P.119).
129 CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION
UNCERTAINTY / PATTERNS / INSIGHTS CLARITY / FOCUS FIGURE 110 Newman, D. (n.d). The Process of Design Squiggle, licenced for reproduction under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License, thedesignsquiggle.com
RESEARCH CONCEPT DESIGN
Finally, this new Anxious Core with reference to Newman, can be applied FIGURE 111 to both the earlier thesis map (FIGURE 111) and more recent iteration of the Goddard, S. (2016/2019). Initial thesis map, practice mapping sketch (FIGURE 112), signalling potential directions in an with a later iteration ongoing process of iteration. of the Anxious Core.
130 CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION
In summary, the conclusions of this research project were as follows: FIGURE 112 Goddard, S. (2019). • A breakthrough moment was understanding that the research was needed Screenshot from as a trigger to transform my own practice for future research directions. an animation of a conceptual frame for However, such solipsism, whilst necessary in this instance, has a limited an iterated practice place in future research. mapping, overlaid with the Anxious Core. • Through an autoethnographic methodology, I recognised an anxious relationship with the world as being a key to the intimate scale and nature of the practice over time. The practice could be characterised as a place of refuge.
• Initially the tangible outcomes, particularly through case studies, suggested that that the research is practice-based. Over the course of the work, I realised that a key outcome has been through an investigation into the transformation of practice. This is more robustly scalable in future research, and leads to a more appropriate characterisation of the research 131 as practice-led. CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION
• In looking for legitimisation of the practice within existing design models, the limitation of a binary structures emerges. A more pliant model was defined through the application of Leonhard Euler’s visual schema as proposed by John Wood.
• There is an original contribution to design network theory in defining and naming a seam practice as the model that I have employed in my own practice. In this I understood the importance and potential of new knowledge in design research findings.
• Obsessed had significant success as a design project, and crystalised a personal ambition to be closer to authoring and producing works, as with the makers we showcased.
• Book Club signified a breakthrough moment of acting into the art space. It exemplified the modality of seam practice and design authorship.
• Participatory design emerged as a feedback mechanism for this more intimate mode of communication design. The application of qualitative analysis, whilst rigorous and disciplined, was of less interest than individual responses in the gallery context. The willingness of the audience to contribute was demonstrated by the volume of responses. The characterisation of the bulk of the responses as creative or poetic suggested a need for creative opportunity.
• A limitation of this kind of reflective and autoethnographic methodology is the veracity and objectivity of memory, and inconsistent access to accurate archives of practice history. A second limitation in using live case studies has been the relationship between the parameters of a formal design commission and the broader freedom attached to an authored design project. Having established that difference, this can frame (indeed contribute to) a strong narrative.
• A key training outcome for the Masters thesis is to understand the different nature of design research in an academic context as distinct from approaches taken in industry, which is critical in moving forward to doctoral studies.
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To enable transformation to take place, this investigation was necessarily inward-facing in its focus – responding to and understanding a long practice history. To give form to future practice-based research 132 directions, the immediate task is to develop an extended body of objects CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION
and spaces built on current speculations and principles. It would be appropriate to take a less reflective approach to the historical nature of the practice in this future focus. The narrative of the seam practice is a potential point of genesis for future trajectories. An unexpected dimension to the research is that it has (re)activated an interest in the application of technologies in the process of making.
It was in those distant memories of a small workshop at the back of a suburban block that this thesis started, and where the great dangers of nostalgia and the exhilaration of newness can now continue to collide.
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In 2017, unexpectedly the house from my childhood in Tasmania was sold, 30 years after we had moved out. I often wondered how it might now look. It was visited by my brother at the time of the sale. Nothing at all had changed anywhere in the house itself in 30 years – not even a coat of paint. The shelves, benches and coloured walls in the small workshop at the back of the yard were exactly as I had built and left them three decades earlier.
Image: Nick Goddard
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133 CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION
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141 Appendices
142 APPENDIX A BLIND SIGHT CODED DATA SET 1 Notes Diagonal line across both lenses line Diagonal Play on image 'dial' Play Verbatim repetition Verbatim Joke but correct if wearing order, In opposite Sic Sic Conceptual response Full page image Assuming positivity Two different particpants (handwriting) different Two POV Negative Neutral Positive Negative Neutral Positive Positive Neutral Positive Neutral Neutral Negative Neutral Positive Neutral Positive Undefined Neutral Undefined Negative Positive Positive Undefined Neutral Mixed Positive Positive Neutral Neutral Positive Positive Positive Positive Mixed Neutral Neutral Positive Positive Positive Neutral Mixed Mixed Neutral Neutral Positive Neutral Mixed Neutral Mixed Positive Positive Positive Neutral Positive Neutral Mixed Positive Neutral Positive Positive Mixed Neutral Positive Form Followed Extended Followed Followed Followed Extended Extended Followed Extended Followed Followed Followed Extended Extended Followed Followed Extended Followed Followed Extended Followed Followed Extended Followed Followed Followed Followed Extended Followed Extended Extended Followed Followed Followed Followed Extended Extended Followed Extended Extended Extended Extended Followed Followed Followed Extended Followed Extended Followed Followed Followed Followed Followed Followed Followed Followed Followed Followed Followed Followed Followed Followed Extended Interpretation Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Literal Poetic Poetic Poetic Literal Poetic Poetic Poetic Literal Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Literal Literal Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Literal Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Literal Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Literal Literal Poetic Poetic Literal Poetic Content Text/image Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text/image Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text/image Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text/image Text Text/image Text/image Text Text Text Text Text Image Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Image Text Text Text Text Text Language English English English Engliish English English English English English English English Engliish English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English/Greek? English English English English English English English English Nil English English English English English English English English English Nil English English English Undefined Narrative Sequenced Sequenced Sequenced Sequenced Contrasting Sequenced Sequenced Sequenced Sequenced Contrasting Contrasting Sequenced Contrasting Sequenced Undefined Contrasting Undefined Sequenced Contrasting Sequenced Sequenced Sequenced Undefined Contrasting Contrasting Sequenced Sequenced Sequenced Contrasting Sequenced Sequenced Sequenced Contrasting Contrasting Contrasting Undefined Contrasting Sequenced Contrasting Contrasting Undefined Contrasting Contrasting Contrasting Contrasting Sequenced Sequenced Contrasting Undefined Contrasting Contrasting Contrasting Undefined Contrasting Sequenced Contrasting Contrasting Contrasting Undefined Sequenced Sequenced Contrasting Undefined Feeling / Emotion / Feeling Bored Love Hate Peace Optimism Peace Anixety? Strength Happiness Despair Appreciation Sadness Hate Sadness Stress Nostaligia Happiness Amazement Feeling / Emotion / Feeling Discontent Uncertainty Fullness Lost Care Creativity Unsettled Determination Imperfection Love Equity Loyality Power Cynicism Admiration Togetherness Yearning Celebration Love Peace Amazement Hope Happiness Happiness Love Love Neutral Happiness Love Togetherness Happiness Reflection Love Neutral Love Amazement Love Love Wonder Suspicion Love Hope Uncertainty ness / Tahli happy Transcript Greatful / & / happyness Greatful / & happyness Unfulfilled
143 APPENDIX A BLIND SIGHT CODED DATA SET 2 Same sex marriage? Same sex wings life / Chicken across Fantastic Read Literal response to provocatation Literal Sic Unreadable person writing has been translated Young culture Pop Same sex marriage Same sex Chaos written at angle at angle written Text culture Pop as 4 lines across two lenses Written Joke Joke Bike Handwriting Positive Mixed Neutral Neutral Positive Positive Positive Positive Positive Neutral Neutral Positive Positive Neutral Negative Positive Positive Neutral Positive Neutral Positive Neutral Positive Neutral Positive Neutral Positive Positive Neutral Mixed Positive Neutral Neutral Positive Neutral Negative Positive Neutral Positive Negative Neutral Neutral Neutral Positive Neutral Positive Neutral Neutral Neutral Positive Neutral Positive Neutral Neutral Positive Neutral Positive Mixed Positive Positive Positive Positive Positive Extended Followed Followed Followed Extended Extended Followed Extended Followed Followed Extended Extended Followed Followed Extended Followed Extended Extended Followed Extended Extended Followed Extended Followed Extended Followed Followed Extended Extended Followed Extended Followed Followed Followed Followed Followed Followed Extended Followed Extended Extended Followed Followed Extended Extended Followed Extended Followed Followed Extended Extended Followed Followed Extended Extended Followed Extended Followed Followed Extended Followed Extended Followed Poetic Poetic Poetic Political Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Political Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Undefined Poetic Poetic Poetic Literal Poetic Literal Undefined Poetic Literal Poetic Poetic Poetic Literal Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Poetic Text Text Text Text Text/image Text Text Text/image Text Text Text Text/image Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text/image Text/image Text Text Text Text/image Text Text Text/image Text/image Text Text/image Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text/image Text Text Text Text/image Text Text Text Text Text Text/image Text/image Text Text Text Text Text Text Text/image Text English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English Undefined English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English English Contrasting Undefined Sequenced Contrasting Undefined Sequenced Contrasting Sequenced Contrasting Sequenced Undefined Contrasting Sequenced Sequenced Contrasting Contrasting Contrasting Undefined Sequenced Sequenced Contrasting Contrasting Contrasting Contrasting Contrasting Undefined Contrasting Contrasting Contrasting Sequenced Sequenced Contrasting Undefined Contrasting Contrasting Undefined Contrasting Contrasting Sequenced Contrasting Contrasting Sequenced Sequenced Contrasting Sequenced Contrasting Sequenced Contrasting Sequenced Contrasting Sequenced Contrasting Contrasting Contrasting Undefined Sequenced Contrasting Sequenced Sequenced Contrasting Contrasting Sequenced Sequenced Hope Horror Spirituality Health Fun Love Love Shyness Hope Deception Equality Inspiration Happiness Nostaligia Hope Harmony Time Forgiveness Motivation Motivation Growth Life Love Perfection Time Uncertainty Love Life Happiness Joy Happiness Existential Creativity Appreciation Nervousness Love Tolerance Existential Tolerance Creativity Optimism Truth Love Togetherness Love Tolerance Love Perfection Wonder Uncertainty Love Existential Anger Fun Spirituality Anticipation Loss Togetherness Peace Spirituality Love Time Wonder Existential Freedom Existential Treachery Dreams Ambition Happiness Happiness Friendship TAMMY & JACINTA /
154