Month: January 2025

This workshop was aimed at troubling the idea of an index.
• Example: Imperfect Index, where the index is at the front and not set up traditionally, that viability giving it authority as ‘para text’ or the main text, organised as a map to move you around in different ways
• To consider when making an index: western knowledge frameworks, ignoring marginalised groups, local knowledge often considered as secondary, language
• Language and colonial power dynamics, latin alphabet dominates
• Queer Arab Glossary example, collects slang, organised by sound, theme, image, illustration
• Coral Dictionary
• Hives / Aladin Boriolo
Parallel Encyclopaedia / Suter – a NOT book, non-sequential
• Decoding Dictatorial Statues / Yoon
• LATCH theory / Wurman
• Snowglobes / Nancy Duarte

As a group we combined our BT Archives choices, mine wad a rotary phone from my childhood, into an offline visual index that included manual/tactile use, phone box window designs and other unexpected factors, we rendered it in the form of a large phonebox.

• Hack based on reversing the process of letterpress, where ink is replaced with adhesives and then removed leaving negative space.
• Through iterative practice, discovery that I was printmaking by removing the printed matter. Space was left behind simply because of the existence of the paper and our interaction with it as communicators.
• Destructive nature and imperfections left behind very interesting, how can that be used?
• Discussion about capturing the process of printing, then removing a type block using film or moving image. Interesting opportunities regarding editing, sequence etc etc
• Could it work with a short quote about reclaiming, or revenge, giving then taking back, or personifying the type blocks somehow?
• To iterative now by sourcing a quote, executing prints and documenting for next week
• Form of final essay draft to use process as drop caps, to experiment with this if possible before next tutorial.

Tutorial 1 21/2/25

• How can I disrupt this tool?
• The beauty and insight is in the making
• Use this method in a way it was not intended to be used
  
  Having been intrigued by the imperfections of the hand stamped letterforms, and the experience of type outside of a digital space, my intention now is to ‘anti-stamp’…
  
  Letterpress or hand stamping GIVES ink to a surface, it adds, augments, usually in a very direct and confident way (ref Anthony Burrill’s work). I would like the wood type to TAKE or SUBTRACT from the surface. Instead of a clean and refined, typeset piece of printed matter with a clear message, I’d like to use wood type blocks to take away pages, images and form from printed matter.
  
  I intend to collate a set of printed matter, coat a wood block ampersand with glue, wallpaper paste or turpentine and place is on a page. Then after drying, I will take it away in the opposite action of stamping, pulling away. This will create insight into the space left behind, what is revealed.
  
  Can I use other surfaces like plaster on a wall, wallpaper, food, the bark of a tree?
  
  Can I reprint with what I take away?
  
  Some experimenting to do this week…., and also keep in mind the written element and how I view my work through it.

• Amazing session, complete eye-opener about quilting’s place as a craft of history, civil and social protest particularly for women
• Incredible examples: The Queen’s Quilt, Rajah Quilt and above all Aids Memorial Quilt (largest community art project in the world. I was particularly engaged by the rationale of every segment being the standard size of a US gravestone)
• “DO NOT MISTAKE THE SOFTNESS OF QUILTS AS WEAKNESS”
• Themes of fortifying, armour, comforting. Something intended as warm, protective can be considered in a historical and protest sense
• Loved the practical side of this, my sewing skills were awful
• My segment was intended to reflect my MAGCD journey so far using abstract shapes, from red, pointed shapes to calm colours and calm seas over the course of the first semester