Category: projectos

 

Bonjour! First I would like to thank ELO team organizers in Montreal, The University du Quebec and ELO organization, for hosting us in this gorgeous city.  

I am privileged and honored for having the opportunity to share this paper with this delightful audience of academics, thinkers and artists.  Mercy Beaucoup

Thanks Lori Emerson for sharing her presentation “Against ‘Lab’ as Free-Floating Signifier” with me. Kathi Imman Beren and Rika Colpeart for her suport and feedback.

My name is Vinicius Marquet, I am independent designer, researcher, author and so on. All previous features and my name, both can be attached to my cv and to my passport, respectively. Today I prefer being called just as Nosotros (we) or as Nadie (nobody):

Nosotros make this project possible.

Nadie is the owner of this project and the secret collection.

This presentation is called “Secrets, a pedagogic tool for e-lit practices”  this paper aims to contribute a theoretical framework model for workshops and accessible pedagogic tools regarding electronic literature theories and art practices. This proposal is based on memories of “Cuéntanos un Secreto ” project – Tell me a secret project– . It focus in two different objets: the workshop, that is probably the most valuable element of the project since this activates the social cultural exchange of experiences. And two samples of pedagogic material used during the workshop while we explore e-lit practices and digital culture.

Those theories and art samples are coming from Ulises Carrión and Augusto de Campos. Both of them, fundamental artists and thinkers that question written language and its dissemination.  

Finally, I’ll present Los discretos collection, a self contained secrets collection as a way of conclusion. 

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1.I ll be your mirror
Nico and the Velvet Underground

Tell us a secret project (TuSp) is a secret sharing project between communities during a visual communication workshop. The workshop explores visual depiction in form of illustrations, animations, videos and electronic objets that enlighten text stories in form of secrets.

As result, the project holds an extensive archive of popular storytelling, composed by text and graphic elements. Both of them, the original text and its depiction are considered a secret. 

The project, itself, is a tool for self explorations and expression

The project was born in 2012 when I was the leader of the design workshop at Faro de Oriente in Mexico city. Since then, the main objective of the project was to link communities by sharing their secrets during the workshop.

TuSp rather of being an objective or a destination. It has been always a process and playful place  to experiment visuality. As the project advanced, our archive grew up.  Then it became necessary to preserve and distribute the secrets by using diverse methods and techniques: printing small publications — as posters, flyers invitations and digital zines —  A website, that I haven’t updated yet  And doing small exhibitions and presentations about the secret project.

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Until this moment,  we have done communities as, internet user, military young scholars, nurses schools , art schools, women in jail, retired old people, galleries and so on.

The project holds, mostly, secrets in Spanish from Mexico city, but the collection owns, few samples in english, italian, dutch, turkish, portuguese and korean as well. This international collection  or “Encryptor (prototype)” are even a secret for myself, a Spanish native speaker

The project has three main objectives:

• Explore visual communication through narratives applied in diverse visual manifestations 
• Build communities by exchanging anonymous hidden experiences
• Preserve and distribute popular story telling  in form of secrets.

Generally, as introduction to the visual communication workshop, we explore visuality by drawing. Those visual exercises are most of them based on Betty Edwards theories “Drawing on the right side of the brain”  while, as principle, they explore visuality to understand reality rather than looking to draw a good copy of reality. Her theories far to understand drawing as a virtuoso gift, find in drawing a way to explore, communicate and validate your visual world

Some other exercises comes by  reviewing elemental concepts of design and visual communication as: format, size, direction,  texture, color, readability and so on  coming from Bruno Munari or Wucious Wong .

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Nevertheless, as you previously have seen, we have used secrets depiction to explore a big array of objets and activities in diverse communities: from 5 years old kids to women in prison . Each community is contextualized by its own needs and characteristic. Thereby the workshop looks to adapt and develop content for the community needs and characteristics. 

For the project framework,  I call this flexible feature of the study content ESO or Exchangeable Study Objet. This allow the secret project being always open to the visual needs of the community.

Besides the community rules, throughout the workshop there is only two guideline that rules :

” you don’t choose the secret . The secret has chosen you”

We randomly distribute the secrets, enclosed by a white envelop. Each secret is unique  as the experience of open it. 

By this guide line, we also mean that the secret is trying to tell you something, that you need to enlighten. Observe what does the blank space of the letters saids.  Perceive the manners of how the author is telling you the story?  Who do you think is this anonymous author ? Where does the author lives ? What is the authors gender?  How old is the author?  Do you have similar experience in your experience repertoire?  Etc.

The secret has chosen you to be depicted, listen the secret story. 

As the secret has chosen you, you need to respect  the story and finish its depiction before you open a new secret.

The other guideline is that all secrets and their depictions are anonymous.  At the end of workshop we ask volunteers to donate an anonymous secrets in order to continue with the workflow. This is done by Nosotros. 

This anonymous feature looks to preserves the originality of the secret and the ownership of the collection. This belongs to Nadie. 

Sharing a secret creates an intimate experience that easily last in the memory of participants And therefore it can bound this experience with any knowledge that workshop offers . By this I mean the pedagogue works comes by creating unique experiences that links knowledge with participants

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Dos.

“Ya lo dijo Freud no me acuerdo en que lado
Solo la experiencia que he experimentado”
“It is said by Freud, I don’t remember exactly where,
It is just about the experience that I experienced”

Rockdrigo Gónzales
El profeta del nopal

In the book the Great didactic, Comenio, the philosopher and pedagogue appeals to our sense as the bastion for modern teaching. He saids ” Everything should, as far as posible, be placed before the sense. Everything visible should be brought before the organ of sight, everything audible before of the organ of hearing . Odours should be placed before the sense of smell, and things that are tastable and tangible before de sense of taste and touch respectively ” (Comenio, 1638)  This is not only a sensual approach to reality,  In fact, and from a materialistic perspective, this is the only way for us to communicate with reality, by our sense.  So, How can we learn if we are not connected with our environment or the other?  How can we teach if we don’t experience the materiality of our study objets ?

So practice has been the most primitive and effective way for learning and teaching. As an example , Looking at my nephew Mateo… – a 6 month old beauty – I would say if tasting, making and imitating is not the oldest pedagogue method, it might be the most natural and primitive way to experiment with the vast outside world. In this moment of his short life, everything is eatable, his mouth is constantly looking for a new experience. Maybe, in his short memory, everything still being just a big breast for him.

Here, under the umbrella of experimenting and doing sensorial the learning process, I would like to talk about the workshop.

Last month I attended a delightful talk called “Against ‘Lab’ as Free-Floating Signifier … “by Lori Emerson at DH18.  The talk inspired to me a couple of thoughts regarding this tendency to call everything a Lab.  –Just here in front of this facilities of UAQM there is a bar named Lab.– 

My first thought, it was about the next image.

 This image is coming from the Act Lab in Austin Tx.  The lab was directed by Sandy Stone,  The image illustrates the term “codeswitching “, meaning in words of Stone ,”the umbrella translates experimental, Trans-ish language into case words, institutional language”

Somehow, this describes perfectly the main idea about Cuéntanos un secreto workshop. – and perhaps of education – So I did this new image trying to illustrate some socio cultural differences.

In essence it still being the same: the work of the umbrella/ lab/workshop is to create a neutral and open space for experimentation by  translating  this “experimentation” into administrative and institutional words. Also this means to neutralize the outside world, allowing the fellows participants to study.   

Safe the students from crime, cartels, weapons, drugs but also from money loans and a huge list outside reality objets and stories .  By this,   I mean far of being a protective space, this is a space where imagination needs to happen: as white sheet of paper. 

Tell me a secret workshop is the golden bastion of the project : It is during the workshop when we do community and we build trust based in daily experiences. As a docent I  wonder to my self  How can I provide with meaningful experiences with lack of trust?  How dare I ask for confidence if I don’t create a human experience ? How can we forget that the learning process is based on the experience with the otherness ? Without otherness We just don’t exist.  Our learning process is based on sharing experiences with the other and , therefore, building community. We are Nosotros.

The workshop and the lab, both are places to do community by creating knowledge. It is an umbrella that provides a free and neutral space to experiment with knowledge.

My second thought, it was about looking for difference between labs and workshops, or atelier.  This predominant scientific validation of Reality provokes a fashionable idea of calling everything a lab, while not everything is Science and science is not Everything. Nevertheless, when we look at the history of the Atelliers  We find a substancial element of the society from the medieval times until the beginning  of the industrial revolution, previous to the mass production of students at the schools.  The workshop was not only a place where knowledge and work was happening and distributed, it was the community ensemble for society.  Surely, this deserves deeper thoughts and discussion. 

Looking forward for the next years, in this transitional historical context, I wonder How different could be a workshop and labs ? 

Keynotes:

• As my sister said: What it is not practices and experienced, does not exist.
• A workshop is a free and neutral space to experiment with knowledge

–

Tres

Love is  New
Love is Old

or nothing is old , nothing is new 

“Because”

The Beatles

There are diverse samples coming from book history and written language that can provide with phenomenological context  to understand the mutation of the book and  written language into the Networking and programable media.[3]

Johana Drucker in her book “Grammatology”  provides diverse samples coming from graphic design, book history and cinema theory . Also in “Uncreative Writing”  Kenneth Goldsmith brought an extensive framework of samples mostly coming the visual arts. 

Those samples rather than exemplify e-lit practices or digital culture into the futuristic new land of never ending tech. It contextualizes digital culture into the critical eyes of history. And place the computation practices into the ground of culture, where technology is a result of the human being.

Those examples are simple but in deep they condensed complex linguistic and media theories as the concept of the eventualize text by Katherine Hayles or Marshal Mcluhan ideas about  ” The medium is  the message.” Among some others structuralist theorist. 

By instance,  The New Art of Making books by Ulises Carrión and the Concrete Poetry manifesto by Augusto de Campos. Both examples coming from the Art field – as manifestos. 

Here, I want to clarify  that both of them don’t use scientific method, in fact they don’t look to demonstrate nothing at all. They manifest; that is the beauty. – Also  Both “theories” are far of being just theoretical frameworks for reading. They are visible, tangible, usable and playful in diverse art pieces. So they ensemble theory and practice  Thereby, they can easily be  tracked, analyzed, compared, used  and played as pedagogue material.

Élika Ortega, in her essay “Not a case of words: Textual Environments and Multimateriality” (Ortega, 2017) , provides diverse examples about the impact of Carrion’s work for the textualities in the programable and networked media.

The new art of making books framed a fantastic cultural phenomena during the 60s, the Avant-gard practices for artist books or book-works, term named by Carrión to call those practices.The innovation of Carrion essay is by conceptualizing the ontology of the book , language and artist book practices.  The new art of making books in an essential theoretical framework for all those who wants to question the book as an objet and as cultural institution.

What makes a book book? What is a book ?  What is language? Does a rose means a rose or it is just the typical rose ? 

Just by opening the door to these questions, it is a tremendous advance for understanding the book and language beyond print media.

As Ortega also pointed in her essay,  the contribution of Ulises Carrion for understanding  the textualities in the network and programable media is by conceptualizing “the book as  an autonomous space-time sequences ” This definition brings an alternative for diverse cultural expressions: some of them literally genders but some others expressions thats appeals to its own symbolic language, as an ordenadour of symbols.

By instance, on 23 May 1983, Ulises perform an organized sight seeing tour around the dutch city of Arnhem and its surroundings countryside. The tour was based on the “real” love story from artist and his wife:  Ton and Ina.  The people who signed for  the tour were visiting the most important places of Ton and Ina’s love story : ” the first time where they met “  “when Ina’s father banned their love “  ” the first kiss” etc .  During the tour you were going from point A to point B and so on .

   

Acording to Harry Ruhè  in “Love Story” ( Ruhè, 1992) Ulises Carrion said: ” the city as organized chaos imbues the story with a clear  and perceptible structure . A tour around the city , along the story’s most important point s, as an aesthetic experience. ” 

Based on Carrion’s definition of a book “an autonomous space-time sequence,”(Carrión , 1975) then, Love story is an organized  sequence of moments contained in the city of Arnhem, fixed in time. The book as an autonomous reality close in time: May the 23, 1983

As a parallelism, this can easy be translated as sketch for user experience journey into the city.  A geo locative narrative app using augmented reality technology for tourism would do a similar approach to Carrion art piece: go from point a  to point b  and Tell a story . 

–

Next, in the concrete poetry manifesto the Brazilian Augusto de Campos described concrete poetry as “Tension of things-words in space-time”(Concrete poetry Manifesto, 1956)

One of my favorite example to illustrate this statement comes by experimenting the collection of Poémobiles (1968-1974) . In particular, a poem calls In/comunicable

Base on paper pop-up technology,  In-comuni-cable (1968) is a folded paper card within it holds 3 paper-cuts layers .  Each layer, has it own text-content that shows itself in a consecutive order during the performance of opening the paper card. Inside the card, in the background layer is printed with red typography the word “in”.  The next layer saids “Comuni” And in the last layer is written the word “cable”. This last layer, cut by the horizontal axis, allows the layer to show the content of second layer ” Comuni” . This will only happen when the paper card is entirely open. By that moment, it is already too late,  the content of “cable “will not be readable any more.

In fact, the piece,  it’s only “communicated” when the paper card is close .  By that moment,  the reader can’t know the cards content. Once again the card cannot communicate.

In contrast , the art piece will not have any meaning without the active interaction of the reader. Only when the reader plays the poem, it finds its own meaning . Yet it is the “tension” linked between the consecutive 3 layers and the interaction that shows in- communicable as meaning, a metaphor. 

In 2006, in Time of digital poetry Katherine Hayles (Hayles, 2006) named the cyber text being “eventualized” being less discrete and self contained.  This eventualized text is procedural: it is the result of processes and it can trigger processes, as well by  human or non humans actors.  It is self contained text in space time.

From this perspective  De campos Poémobiles seems to be a UX paper prototype of  Katherine Hayle’s eventualized text.  In-comuni-cable is a self contained system and poem that signifies while it triggers its own process . 

3. Los discretos (The discretes) 

This is an old digital collection named  Los discretos.  It was produced in Faro de Oriente  end 2012.  Back in those days, I was trying to replicated Anacrón structure to explain participants, and my self, the constitution of a digital buttom with 3 diverses states: normal, over and trigger. The main idea was to regard the semiotics relations  between those states used for narratives

At  the end , We, Nosotros, were so happy to regard the trans-button result of the experimentation. The same year it was exhibited in Faro de Orinete two times in Exponencial12 and Hoy mañana no se ha ido.

A year later in the Netherlands, reading for the first time Dr Katherine Hayles in Time for digital poetry,(Hayles, 2006) she was constantly mention the discretes refering  to those characters in print text media. Some how the idea facinated to me and I find an accurate name to contrast with that other “eventualized” text wich indedd means proceess. 

The same year – a bit later –  I was reading Roberto Simanowsky idea’s about the contradiction of Electronic literature in his essay “What is and to What End Do We Read Digital Literature?” (2009). He provided a great example using  a buttom , Bomb, in the hiperficcion Zeit für die Bombe by Susanne Berkenheger wich I found a funny gestesture because it is the name of the famous and constant poem of Augusto de Campos. Bomba

This performative idea of using digital buttoms states as a semiotical space regards the principles of concrete poetry manifesto : Tension of things-words in space-time.  Those states  works  in a systematic underastanding of the whole poem with the interaction – or action – as part of the poetic language 

Between both, I understood the relation that I was facing in the electronic secret collection of Faro de oriente . Since then I prefer to call this collection Los discretos ( the  discretes)  . Those self contained objet wich in performance aims to find or understand “the text”.  –or what ever does that means. –

 

 

“there will not be literature any more. There will be , perhaps , new ways to communicate  that will include language or will use language as basis. As a medium of communication , literature will always be old literature” Ulises Carrión 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography  

• Ortega Elika (2017) “Not a case of words: Textual Environments and Multimateriality in Between Page and Screen” in Electronic Book Review Journal  [Online] Available in : http://electronicbookreview.com/essay/not-a-case-of-words-textual-environments-and-multimateriality-in-between-page-and-screen/   [Acceded:19th August 2018]
• Hayleys NK  (2006) The time of digital poetry : from objet to event  In Morris A & Swiss T (eds) New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories  Cambridge,  MIT Press .
• Comenio, JA (1638) The Great Didactic Translated into English by by M. W. Keatinge, M.A. New York: Russell & Russell. (1967) [Online]Available from: http://urweb.roehampton.ac.uk/digital-collection/froebel-archive/great-didactic/index.html  [Acceded:19th August 2018]
• Simanowski, R (2009) What is and to What End Do We Read Digital Literature? [Online] Available from:  http://dichtung-digital.de/cv/SimanowskiWhat%20is%20and%20to%20what%20End.pdf  [Acceded: 25th February 2014]
• Campos, A ( ca.1968)  Incomuni/cable [Online] in Poemamobiles Concreate poetry poem   Brazil  Available from: http://www2.uol.com.br/augustodecampos/05_05.htm [Acceded 19th August 2018]
• Carrion, U (1975) The New Art of Making Books in Kontext  6-7. New York: Center for books  arts  [Online] Available from http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/reese/classes/artistsbooks/Ulises%20Carrion,%20The%20New%20Art%20of%20Making%20Books.pdf [Acceded: 19th August 2018]
• Carrión, U (1983) “Love Story.”  Video – Performance [Online] Available from http://www.li-ma.nl/site/catalogue/art/ulises-carrin/love-story/533  [Acceded: 19th August 2018]
• Concrete Poetry Manifesto (1956) [Online] Translated  from the portuguese by Jhon Tolman . Brazil, São Paolo Available from http://www2.uol.com.br/augustodecampos/concretepoet.htm [Acceded:19th August 2018]
• Ruhé Harry, (1992) “Love Story” in We have won ! Haven’t we ?    Ed.  Guy Schraenen.  Museum Fordor,  The Netherlands,  Amsterdam.
• Emerson, Lori (2018) “Against ‘Lab’ as Free-Floating Signifier: From Appropriation to Counter-Cooptation and Codeswitching” presented in Digital Humanities 18 “Puentes/Bridges” ADHO,  Mexico city .