Des 22: World Building

Trace: • active-archive

Active Archive (Design Fiction)

To be archived is passive. The archive pulls inward. Found ephemera is indexed and secured within physical spaces or behind institutional paywalls. To be archived is to wait — for preservation, validation, security. To be archived legitimizes some histories and de-legitimizes others.

To archive is active. In situations where the archive is absent or unattainable, imagining suggests possibilities. To archive is an impulse — to fight against loss, to insert, to project…

Mindy Seu, To Archive the Imagined

Worldbuilding involves developing systems of history, culture, politics, magic, lore, knowledge, aesthetics, etc. etc., which form the substrate from which narratives can play out. A useful phrase here might be something like ‘meta-authorship’. An even more useful phrase might just be ‘creating a vibe.’

Poetry involves creating substance — the poems themselves, or whatever unit of poetry one wishes — out of a substrate that is based on the poet’s own personal world of interrelated symbols. ‘Creating something that embodies and implies a larger vibe.’ Reading poetry often involves a degree of opaqueness, but you usually still get a sense of the poet’s inner world.

Can graphic designers do these things too? Be author and meta-author at the same time? My goal is to outline a methodology for graphic designers to think of their practice as worldbuilding, and to consider the potentials and poetics that lie in such an endeavor.

Tiger Dingsun, Chimeric Worlding

Now that you’ve created your archive, and given us as viewers access to them via a publication, poster, interface, etc. How do you “activate” them into a new artifact(s) that suggests a “world”?

Once we have created the components – words, artifacts, buildings, symbols, etc – that suggest a topology, how do we then reform them into narrative within which we can participate? How can a designer act as a poet, and build on their underlying substrate to form a structure for others to inhabit?

In his book “Immutable: Designing Histories” Chris Lee cites how the standardization of measurement are both an attempt to rationalize and objectify activity and concepts for exchange, and also preclude further imagination or alternatives outside of those in power's control. While these units of measurement create an objective truth, they are also used to spin out abstract “truth” (or fiction depending on your perspective…). If a kilogram of wheat equals $1 US dollar, at one time in history this dollar would be linked to an amount of gold sitting in the US Federal Reserve – meaning 1 kilogram of gold equals x amount of gold. In the intervening years however, when the US moved away from the gold standard, this kilometer of wheat may still equal $1 US dollar, however, a dollar no longer correlates to a concrete rare metal. Instead a dollar signifies a complex ledger of debt, military power, domestic and foreign resources, and much more.

In the project “G-Series” created for Which Mirror Do You Want to Lick, the designer (named Gemma Holt) created the G-Series, a new paper size based around the hyper-personal measurements of her body. Inspired by the words of the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras, “Man is the measure of all things,” which can be understood to refer not to a conceptual “man,” but instead to each and any person in the world.

From this paper format we can then imagine the printers that need to be designed and built to accommodate it. The truck’s flatbed size needed to efficiently hold boxes filled with G-Paper. Folders, envelopes, picture frames, and books designed around the G-specification and so on and so forth. What began as a simple meditation on the personalization of paper formats, through the definition of an alternative logic can achieve something more provocative, or poetic[1].

Based on your work in P1, you will activate your archive – either a factual “world” through direct inspiration, or by imagining something new based on your research – via a narrative object(s). This object should demonstrate its underlying logic - and could range from a flag or currency for a micronation, to the artwork sprites for a video game. At the end of the semester, we will present our objects in an object fair.

In summary:

  • Using your archive from P1, extract a narrative that helps define a new logic from which to build a “world”
    • Example: Looking at methods of standardization, you have decided to construct your own paper sizes
  • Create an object(s) that validates and demonstrates how the logic you’ve created builds into a new world
    • Example: based on your paper format, you reformat existing objects and technologies to suit your paper format
Step 1

Design exercises that illustrate various ways this methodology of Chimeric Worlding can be applied. – 1 week
As a warm up we’ll read and then conduct an exercise from Chimeric Worlding: Graphic Design, Poetics, and Worldbuilding by Tiger Dingsun using our archives as a starting point.

Due: Nov 15

Step 2

Object Proposal – 1 week
Based on your archive, propose a narrative and corresponding object used to validate it. Reviewing your results from “Design exercises that illustrate various ways this methodology of Chimeric Worlding can be applied.” create two proposals for narratives that speak to new underlying “worlds”, and corresponding objects they relate to.

Due: Nov 22

Step 3

Object Fair – 2 weeks
Manufacture your object and create a poetic description of its history as a printed A3 broadsheet for exhibition in an object fair.

Due: Dec 6

Reading
References

1. Poetry seeks to make new meaning through novel configurations of elements (words) from an already established system (language). Graphic design, being related to the organization and presentation of information, can also be seen as making meaning through novel configuration of various elements, which are not just limited to language and text, but also might include images, symbolic meaning, and visual culture writ large

projects/active-archive.txt · Last modified: 2023/11/01 07:52 by 147.47.22.13