Introduction Welcome to my GAMSWEN article where for the next 12 weeks i’ll be documenting 12 lectures that Mark Ingham have organized for us of different topic from different artist and designer. The process began in early january where we had a lecture every wednesday from different artist and designer. In process of that we had to document each lecture into our own words that i could understand and be easy for me to comprehend. We had lecture from many sorts of people such as Vaughan Oliver, Nic Clear, Stracy Pitdillies, Rachel Armstrong, Neil spiller, Simon Herron and Mark Ingham himself. In our first lecture mark introduced to the brief and explained what was needed at the end of this 12 weeks program, a full and well documented lectures either through laptop or hand written notes and then convert that into a magazine, video, blog or newspaper, which ever is the best option to suit your writing The first lecture wasn't all about introduction and what was expected, but also a quick start to the GAMSWEN program, where Mark Ingham showed us few videos about ‘Magazine is Born’. Personally i would the video really interesting as it was showing us the real process of designing a magazine. I really liked the video ‘A magazine is born- the making of little white lies’. i found that video highly interesting and amazing. I have never saw the process of magazine design from the scratch and this was a really good video of how they design magazine. From the video you can see how they lay the layouts and how much effort and time is put on to produce one single magazine. its a very time consuming process. For the next 12 weeks i’ll be taking notes on my phone and books for each lecture or recording them for future reference. It will be a very good experience and learning for me as they explain they vision. At the end of my 12 lectures i’ll be planning to design a blog on all the lectures with one extended written pieces that i have enjoyed a lot. The reason why i wanted to do a blog and not a magazine or any other material is because in todays generation a lot of people are using digital such as iPad, phones, tablets and other devices to view contents such as newspaper, magazine and books, so therefore i wanted my to be interactive and viewable to everyone. having said that i’m also going to create a small magazine for people who don't have access to the device and prefers to read whilst on journey to they destination. http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/the-magazine/issue-33
Transcript
Introduction
Welcome to my GAMSWEN article where for the next 12 weeks i’ll be documenting 12lectures that Mark Ingham have organized for us of different topic from different artist anddesigner. The process began in early january where we had a lecture every wednesday fromdifferent artist and designer. In process of that we had to document each lecture into ourown words that i could understand and be easy for me to comprehend. We had lecturefrom many sorts of people such as Vaughan Oliver, Nic Clear, Stracy Pitdillies, RachelArmstrong, Neil spiller, Simon Herron and Mark Ingham himself.
In our first lecture mark introduced to the brief and explained what was needed at the endof this 12 weeks program, a full and well documented lectures either through laptop orhand written notes and then convert that into a magazine, video, blog or newspaper,which ever is the best option to suit your writingThe first lecture wasn't all about introduction and what was expected, but also a quickstart to the GAMSWEN program, where Mark Ingham showed us few videos about‘Magazine is Born’. Personally i would the video really interesting as it was showing usthe real process of designing a magazine.
I really liked the video ‘A magazine is born- the making of little white lies’. i found thatvideo highly interesting and amazing. I have never saw the process of magazine designfrom the scratch and this was a really good video of how they design magazine. From thevideo you can see how they lay the layouts and how much effort and time is put on toproduce one single magazine. its a very time consuming process.
For the next 12 weeks i’ll be taking notes on my phone and books for each lecture orrecording them for future reference. It will be a very good experience and learning for meas they explain they vision.
At the end of my 12 lectures i’ll be planning to design a blog on all the lectures with oneextended written pieces that i have enjoyed a lot. The reason why i wanted to do a blogand not a magazine or any other material is because in todays generation a lot of peopleare using digital such as iPad, phones, tablets and other devices to view contents suchas newspaper, magazine and books, so therefore i wanted my to be interactive andviewable to everyone. having said that i’m also going to create a small magazine forpeople who don't have access to the device and prefers to read whilst on journey to theydestination.
Vaughan Oliver is a British Graphic Designer based in south london, Epsom. it was agreat honor and privilege to be lectured by him, as he gave a very interesting andpowerful lecture about his work and his idea of design.
Vaughan Oliver who had a tremendous career has flourished in many part of design fieldsuch as art director, graphic design and typographer, but he has mainly focused andbeen well known for choosing the pathway of music design. As the lecture went on hestarted to tell us stories about his work and how he became a graphic designer andwhere it all started for him. it was quite interesting to listen as we all young designercrave for inspiration and build that mentality of been successful grabbing a opportunity.
Around the 70s a man named Ivo-Watts Russell was about to start a business named4AD and he wanted to recruit a designer who could design for him, after much time Ivo-Watts Russell invited Vaughan Oliver and from there on began a chemistry betweenthose two and went on to make successful and beautiful album designs. the most notableand popular design known to any ordinary man is Pixes and Cocteau twins. Vaughan’sstyle was unique and dynamic to other designers at that time, he stood out in many otherdesigners.
I was particularly moved by the design Vaughan Oliver had made for David Lynch. Ithought the design was very interesting and different from other sort of music albumdesign that you would see around, it sends out clear message of the genre of music and ireally thought the concept was very good by having scratch effect.
A very interesting and intriguing lecture with good sample of work, which had interestingcomposition and typographic effect.
Neil Spiller
Neil spillers lecture began as any other lecture, introduction of himself and the topic hewill be lecturing us about. it was informed that we will be having a lecture aboutsurrealism and i was really looking forward to it as i have been studying surrealism frommy college days to now and it always interested me in someway.
Just to give a quick introduction about Neil spiller. Neil spiller is architect, artist and awriter and he is well known for releasing ‘digital architecture now’ and visionaryarchitecture, and currently he is a dean of the school of architecture, design andconstruction at The university of Greenwich.
Neil spiller started talking about by his vision of a island that he had for a what presumedto be from very long time ago, properly since his childhood. throughout the years fromworking in design company he gained a experience and skill to build the island or morerealistically construct it into a smaller version. the island consisted of gates made frombush that grows at different times and a greasy water, it was a surreal sort of imaginationthat made it link with surrealism. he also mentioned about his inspiration that came tomake this project such as salvador dali, zodiac mindwarp and Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
I personally thought the lecture would be great after Vaughan Oliver but i found thelecture confusing and hard to understand, maybe it was because of early start and mybrain cell didn't start kicking until sometime later, but after watching those recorded videoi got to understand that he didn't wanted to just talk about surrealism for hours,he wantedto mix it with one of his surrealism project, hence its more easier to understand but i don'tthink many of us found it insightful as he had expected.
Nic Clear
Nic clear according to the greenwich university website he is a architect and currentlyacademic leader in architectural design. he also ran his own company named ‘clearspace’ for many years. He is also a teacher at university of london, so from that you cansee that he has a good background in the field he is interested and it is always great tolook at his work and understand his idea.
Nic Clear is one of the finest architect i have ever met and i believe that his idea andvision are extraordinary and something to really research and understand his work. Thelecture was very well organized and well constructed. it got me and many other studentto be glued and interested, mainly because he showed us a lot of interesting clips andinsightful narrative, which consisted of interesting techniques. As his work and professionmainly to do with video and animation i was really excited and interesting because ireally enjoyed those subjects and a very big fan.
in particularly i loved the ‘robots of brixton’ as it was interesting and a very powerfulanimation, created by Nic Clear student Kibwe Tavares. In simple and sort words toexplain the animation to people who hasn't watched it, it is about disregarded areainhabited by london’s new robot workforce. Robots designed to carry out human jobs asthey are no longer to do so and towards the end of the video you see a riots between therobots linking it to the riot that happened in brixton 1981. The video has a really good plotas well as texturing and sculpting.
I have quite enjoyed this lecture and may be one of the finest so far. it had mixture ofevery good element to make it successful lecture and presentation, and the credit goes toNic Clear for presenting it beautifully.
Stacy Pitsillidies gave us a lecture about digital death. Now many of you must bewondering ‘what death to digital’?, it must sound crazy and a topic that we might havenever heard of or came up with or in this case understood, but stacy really explained indetail with illustration in the presentation and tried to make us understand her idea, andto be honestly i sometimes wondered about this topic but never really expanded on it.
For a year Stacy Pitsillidies has been teaching Graphic principle at greenwich universityand after doing a research on her, i have found out that she has had a good link to thedesign industry and has obtain qualification in design. I always found stacy a very goodteacher and a composed designer who has the ability to point out key design skill ineach individuals.
In the lecture which placed a question upon us ‘what happens to your digital data whenwe are no longer present in this world?. it was a question which started many students inthe lecture. During the lecture Stacy started talking about virtual world and how people intodays generation have or create they own pet to accompany them during times they arenot productive. Its at that stage of time when stacy really questioned herself about thecreation of the ‘pet cemetery’ why it was there and the point of having it?. when shereceived a opportunity she asked the owner of the pet cemetery who at that times wasappearing as a penguin, the owner replied by saying that he had a cat that was veryclose to him in real life for 21 years and he treated it as one of his own, but when the catpassed away he wasn't allowed to bury it so he used the virtual world to bury it. Thereason why i wanted to mention this is because we see this happening a lot in Facebook,myspace and many other sites, creating a second life in the digital.
This may not be the lecture as Nic Clear’s who had presented with video clip andinteresting narrative but it was a very good lecture with really good narrative and veryinteresting idea.
Rachel Armstrong
This lecture given by rachel armstrong was of different genre. she was not fromarchitecture field nor from the design. she actually from the science department, nowbefore you start jumping at me let me tell you the full story. Rachael Armstrong is amedical doctor. At very early age she always wanted to be something to do with biology,her obsession lead to her playing in mud, feeling things, eating, touching, sensing andcapturing it, which made her realize that there was something in this world that hadcapability of creating form.
The point when Rachel Armstrong caught my attention was when she started talkingabout if’s and but’s question, and she gave a good example of a rabbit which shereferred to a artist that thought the same way.when Rachel Armstrong travelled to india, she worked at leprosy hospital, where shewas taken by a surprise when she saw the people contacted with the diseases has hadappearance changed. for people who are not familiar with the leprosy disease, its a verychallenging disease to live with and very hard to cure as it starts eating away all the bodyparts, especially the nerves making the person paralyzed. the first sign is normally whenyou start noticing depigmentation of skin.
While she was still in india working for the leprosy hospital she saw the connectionbetween technology and humanity. the technology were used to mould they mouths andcame to realization that technology doesn't control us, we control technology.
At the begin i knew this lecture was going to be very different from others and i was quiteright about it, nevertheless i thought the lecture was really good and very interesting howshe spoke about humanity and technology and the link that they share. I’ll always willremember this lecture as she proved that you can link design into any sort of filed ratherits medical or postman.
Time to reflect
No, this is not a organized lecture where a designer or doctor for that matter comes andgives us a lecture, but it is actually a review time where we look back at the previouslectures and reflect on what we have done and what we have learnt so far. I think its agreat idea as we can take a breather and look back at the lecture and see what we reallyenjoyed and what we really liked.
What have i learnt so far?. In all honestly i don't think i would have able to learnanything if i hadn't written down notes or recorded video/ audio of the lecture, but havingdone one of them i was able to digested some of the informations. Some of the lectureshave been inspiration and sometimes reflect on your own life and career.
Which lecture did you enjoy the most? personally every lecture had its own agendaand appeal. for example Nic Clear who showed us a lot of clips and was very expressivewith his narrative, Stacy Pitsilldies who had a great interaction skill and interesting idea,and Rachel Armstrong was not from design field but somehow made a link to design.
Do you think these lecture would help? i think these lecture would help a lot maybe notnow but defiantly in the future when we are out in design industry. some of the keyswords from artist/designer would really hit us and make us think about it.
How have i learnt this? I have learnt this by listening to the lecture and understand theyidea, only then can you fully follow the lecture. another important factor is having ainteresting and really engage in the lecture. I think the most important aspect of how ilearnt is the videos and images that was presented in the lecture.
What is record?. Recording is taking evidence of what you see/hear. for example inlecture its vital to take video recording or audio to capture the words been spoken so youcan revisit them. it is not only about recording video or audio but also making notes inyour book, phone, iPad or even your hand.
Manifestos
This lecture was taken by Mark Ingham and the topic of today was ‘Manifestos’. Just sothat people would follow and understand this lecture, Manifestos is public declaration ofintensions, opinion, objective and motive. Now that we all know the meaning of the word“Manifestos” we can all move on to the next stage, if your still having trouble with theword, i suggest you leave go back to nursery. I’m just joking, don't take it personally.
Right!. Mark Ingham started off the lecture with a poster which read ‘ Be the type ofperson you want to meet’. it wasn't the most interesting or creative piece of poster but iguess it didn't have to be as the statement was powerful on its own. When moving onMark Ingham wanted us to make our own manifesto about anything, rather its to do withchanging the world, ambition, goal or even a funny one, as he repeated that many timeshe showed us one of the iconic video of human kind and am sure each individual arevery familiar with this video from martin luther king, where he made a speech aboutfreedom, a speech about his dream ‘I have a dream’ and still in present time it still echothrough the world. The speech made by Martin Luther King is called verbal manifesto. the next video mark ingham showed us was of Nancy Duarte and the only thing thatcaught my attention was her fluid and smooth accent, most likely to be american. I foundher accent very complying to follow her voice and listen. It may seem weird to somepeople but hey, everyone is different from each other. Before the video was been playedMark Ingham gave a short description of Nancy Duarte, where he described a secret talkand how you can change the world with talk. Nancy Duarte gave a really good andinteresting presentation at the TEDx east about speech and how it can be effective. Sheanalyzed one of a speech from steve jobs product launch, where she went in deep tolook at every detail such as when they laughed, clapped and cheered. In a way shetalked about the genius of steve jobs speech and presentation skills and how it wasmastered by involving key elements. Nancy Duarte then looked at visionary leader Martin Luther King and presented with aline graph of a speech he made about ‘I have a dream’. She analyzed every speech andword of Martin Luther King and how he used Metaphor, repetition, visual words andphrase to connect to the people. its possible to change the world and be effective if youdo it right and as Nancy Duarte finished the presentation by cropping a image of MartinLuther King face and replacing it with a quote. Signally that anyone can change theworld if your presented intellectually and composed speech, along with that a lot ofsacrifice and time needed.
I found these video quite useful and interesting because my manifesto is based onchanging the world and Nancy Duarte presented with two of my favorite inspirationpeople Steve Jobs and Martin Luther King.
Mark Ingham ended the lecture by showing a video of what he does. the video had aseries of images, some very ordinary and some really good composition. I found thislecture very interesting and easy to understand then any other i have been too. it wasvery well structured and very informative. As part of this lecture i had to write my ownmanifesto and i always wanted to write my own but didn't have a platform too but know ido and i’ll want to make the most out of it.
Manifesto
When i was a child! yes, this manifesto is going to start with a story and please be patientas its going for a deep roll-coaster ride. well, i hope so. As a child growing up in suburbpart of india i always wondered why there was so much division within human kind andwhy there was hate amongst people. As a child i always thought to myself about theworld rather then myself. My friends were more of a carefree and adventurous and sowas i but there a little part within me that wanted answer to these question. As i grew up and moved from india to england i started go on a quest to find out answermyself. I spent many days throughout my 22 years of life asking people about they beliefand they hate for other race/religion and some of the answer i got were beyond myimagination and i could not share in this manifesto. There was a point in my life when ithroughout to myself that this world cannot be changed and i cannot change it by myselfalone. It was really hard for me to accept the fact that there is no cure to this world idecided to accept defeat until a man gave me a book on Mahatma Gandhi. People whodon't know who Mahatma Gandhi was, he was a leader in freeing indians from the britishempire. What i really liked about mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy was that he believed inlove and peace, he never thought that fighting is the answer to any conflict. At one pointin gandhi’s life when he marched to the beach along with any indian fellow to stop britishfrom taking they salt, they were attacked and hit my clubs on the fellow gandhi’s men, butgandhi’s gave a instruction not to fight back but to defeat them by showing love and withthat he was victorious. In relation to that i want to change the world without any violence and i believe that withthe knowledge i get from design i can really make a difference in this world and be thechange i want to see, just like mahatma gandhi. A quote from mahatma gandhi. I alwaysasked question why is he judged and treated differently because of his race/religionbelief. Maybe i wont be as confident speaker as Steve jobs or many other leaders but ibelieve that i can make a difference by using my own power, which is my design skill. Iwant to reach out to everyone and make them realize that we are one and there is nodifference between you and I. i want to create this mentality in everyone if not majoritythat ‘he is none other then my divine brother’, only then we can live with each other inpeaceful and in a divine world. A religion where everyone follow humanity. This manifesto may sound very crazy and out of the world, but if you don't stand foranything you will never fall for anything. People like mahatma gandhi, steve job, martinLuther king didn't set out to be a famous inspiration, they followed they heart and wentwith it. I don't hope to change to the world but if i make a little contribution then maybehopefully someone in future will take inspiration from me and help my dream live on.Everyone in this world needs a purpose to live and i believe i have one, its just matter oflooking for it. If you have a dream and a good intention to help the world, i say go for itbecause the only thing that will stop you is yourself. Thank you for reading my manifesto and i hope you understand what i’m trying to say. itsnot something i want to achieve in few years time, its a target thought-out my life until i’mno longer to breath. There is this music video on youtube about mahatma gandhi andbasically he raps about some of mahatma gandhi’s highlight point of his life.
Mark Ingham (Animated Robots)
This was the second lecture form mark Ingham and he was going to lecture aboutanimated robots. At the beginning of the lecture he asked why animation is calledanimation. this left many students in early morning of Wednesday startled, hence no onehad a answer and Mark Ingham gave the answer to the group. I was looking forward tothis lecture as am very big follower of animation world and had a desire of getting intothat industry.
“Animation = Movement+ Drawing”
Dr. Joseph Antoine Plateau (a Belgian scientist) and Dr. Simon Rittrer constructed amachine called a phenakitstoscope. This machine produced an illusion of movement byallowing a viewer to gaze at a rotating disk containing small windows; behind thewindows was another disk containing a sequence of images. When the disks wererotated at the correct speed, the synchronization of the windows with the images createdan animated effect. In the year 1895 the lumiere brothers shocked many people aroundthat time by producing first ever moving image. If my sources are correct in 1995 toy storywas the first ever to be released. Ever since then animation has excelled in producingmore realistic characters and scenes that sometimes its hard to identify if its animation ornot. I was watching a animation program and i couldn't tell if it was animation or not. itwas very real and hard to believe that it was actually a animation.
Mark Ingham talked about what makes its different from drawing and animation,explained that the key element is the movement, which true and you cant argue with that,but i find drawing every boring and personally i’m not a huge fan of drawing, in otherhand animation is more interesting and full of life. after a while of discussion markshowed one of Nic Clears ex student video ‘Robots of Brixton’. The video is very welldesigned and made realistic as much as possible. He also showed a clip from Tv showcalled ‘Futurrma’.
In this weeks lecture we were introduced two a new member of the program and hisname was Simon Herron, he is well known for his work ‘The Walking City’. As simonHerron was going to give a lecture about drawing i wasn't too keen on it but was hopingto change my mind. did he manage to change my mind? find out at the end of this articleif he was able to convince me to fall in love with drawing.
Simon Herron gave us a very interesting lecture and very informative. during his lecturehe mentioned some of the techniques and skills that were used without today’s machineand it was really interesting to listen. In a way he was promoting us to use less digital andmore of work from your hands and paper, which i always thought was a ideal fordesigner to start any design.
During the lecture he started talking about ‘Archigram’ and asked if we knew what it was,obviously not as many of us were half asleep. ‘ARCHIGRAM’ dominated the architecturalavant garde in the 1960s and early 1970s with its playful, pop-inspired visions of atechnocratic future after its formation in 1961 by a group of young London architects –Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron and MichaelWebb. It was the first time i have heard about the group and i was looking forward toresearch about them and reading from the design museum website it was a interestingarchitectural group focusing on the future design.
personally i have enjoyed this lecture a lot even though i didn't understand most of theparts but after reading fellow students blog and re-watching the video i was able tounderstand quite a bit. the answer to my question in first paragraph about if SimonHerron convinced me to change my opinion?. I guess he has. He had me look at drawingin a different aspect and made me believe that it doesn't have to be hand drawing all thetime.
http://designmuseum.org/design/archigram
Neil Spiller II
The return of the surrealism knight, as i like to put it. Yes, you have guessed it right NeilSpiller returned again to give us a lecture about surrealism. The last time we saw NeilSpiller was in the second week of GAMSWEN program. will he be able to live up to theexpectation, lets find out shall we?
The lecture was going to be about surrealism and just to give a little gist about thesubject i have picked up a text from surrealism website and this is what it has to sayabout the subject. ‘Surrealism is a cultural movement and artistic style that was foundedin 1924 by André Breton. Surrealism style uses visual imagery from the subconsciousmind to create art without the intention of logical comprehensibility.The greatest knownSurrealist artist is the world famous Salvador Dali’.Neil Spiller began talking about Salvador Dali, a surrealist artist. This name isn't a shockto me as i have learnt and heard of him in my school days but didn't really study his workand i guess i just know little as many other people who doesn't know about salvadordali’s work. During the lecture Neil Spiller showed us some of the work from salvador daliand explained us about his inspiration and style he choose to go with. I found theexplanation quite confusing and hard to follow, nonetheless i had a little idea of whatSalvador Dali was trying to communicate in his work, maybe i had misunderstood it, buthad sense to me. With the talent he was able to communicate a artwork very well thenother surrealist artist i have search.
In all honestly i found it a bit hard to follow and keep up with what Neil Spiller waslecturing about. Some parts where i was able to understand soon ended up in puzzle byNeil spiller adding extra information. I hope that i can really understand his work and NeilSpiller when i re-visit the lecture.
http://www.surrealism.org/
An End and another Beginning and...
Unfortunately we come to the end of our 12 weeks lecture program. as they sayeverything has a end and this is no different. The lectures started from Mark Ingham andwill finish with him as well, drawing to the conclusion and final outcome.
In the final lecture we were told to produce a blog, magazine, newspaper or a video torecord all the documents of the artist and designer who came to talk to us. I’ll be creatinga blog in this matter. My simply reason for that is because you cant produce a magazineor newspaper with a story like ‘today in your lecture we did this and that’, it can only bepublished in blog or website format. Thats what i believe.
This 12 weeks having been a great teaching and a great experience for me. I have got tomeet and learn lots of things and i believe that this will help me in the future someway. Iwould like to thank all the lectures and give them a big round of applauds for taking theytime to come see and give us a excellent lecture, not forgetting Mark Ingham for settingup this program for the benefit of us to learn and become knowledgeable, so therefore iwould like to thank Mark Ingham for making the efforts organize lectures.
There is a lot of things i’ll be taking away from the 12 lectures. It has given me inspiration,direction, teaching and greater knowledge in design world. the lectures were veryinteresting and full of different information. the lectures have had me question about fewthings in design, i may not properly get the answer now but soon i will one way oranother.
