October 2015 – lesley's headspace

Slides

Here’s an overview of my presentation so far:

Castor and Pollux – introducing the myth, which grounds the entire project
Duality – introducing the theme underlying the project
Reading – archetypes, twinless twins, human chimeras
Influences – books and artists that have influenced my approach
Mapping – the theme map I did earlier in the semester
Past projects related to Castor and Pollux – to show outcomes I’ve explored and ideas/work I’ve already looked at; Y3S2 projects, B’s birthday book, unfinished tarot deck
Timeline – showing planning
Bibliography – I failed to include this the last time round with the seniors!
Suggested questions – learned from Mindy’s presentation

I am including a lot of my past drawings in the slides and adopting the same type/grid approach I used for the calendar project. I use this a lot in my work and personal projects and it’s the most intuitive way for me to present my information in an organized manner that embodies the feel of my project. I’ll share more of my slides on Friday, and I’d welcome any feedback that helps me plug any gaps.

The Girl Who Was Plugged In/ Łódź Book

The Girl Who Was Plugged In is a work of sensory fiction designed by students at MIT. The book is accompanied by a vest that creates physical sensations (i.e. inflating to create a feeling of tightness in the chest to mirror unhappiness in the narrative’s protagonist) that mirror the emotions evoked in reading a work of fiction.

I was looking at different kinds of creative book design and stumbled across this one. I don’t think I want to do anything of a techie nature because I’m an analog girl, but I think this is an example of really effective book design in terms of achieving an emotional or thematic purpose.

I found this project on Behance. This is the final project of Joasia Fidler-Wieruszewska for her Masters degree, a book about her home city of Łódź. Łódź was historically inhabited by four different peoples, thus the form and language of the book follows its content. I love the insertion of different ephemera to express the history of the city. This is something I want to do as well in my own book, which will reflect the thematic concern of duality.

Grief + Twinship

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2305404/Theres-grief-shattering-losing-twin-Here-raw-emotion-woman-reveals-identical-sisters-death-drove-suicide.html

In addition to this memoir, there are also support groups around the world for twinless twins. The Twinless Twins Support Group International, founded by Dr. Raymond Brant, came into play only in the late 1980s. Since then, the TTSGI has grown exponentially and provides an online community of support for those who have lost their twin.

I wonder what the ethics are, about a single child like myself dealing with themes of this nature. I feel like I should try to talk with people about this theme so I can fully understand it, even though it’s essentially inescapable because of the nature of the Castor/Pollux myth. October will be a thinking month. I’m forcibly restraining myself from doing anything for now and I’m going to keep thinking along the lines of all of the research I have encountered this semester to see what comes of it.

Chimerism + Twinship

Extremely interesting article I found in my Saved Links section on Facebook. Saved Links is easily my favourite Facebook feature because all the quality stuff is there. Here are some of the more inspiring/quirky bits:

“Indeed, if you are a twin, you are particularly likely to be carrying bits of your sibling within your body and brain. Stranger still, they may be influencing how you act.”

“During early development, cells can be passed between twins or triplets. Once considered a rare occurrence, we now know it is surprisingly common. Around 8% of non-identical twins and 21% of triplets, for example, have not one, but two blood groups: one produced by their own cells, and one produced by “alien” cells absorbed from their twin. They are, in other words, a chimera – a fusion of two bodies – and it may occur in many organs, including the brain.”

“Perhaps chimerism has upset the balance.”

“Even if you do not think you ever had a twin, there are many other ways you might be invaded by another human’s cells. It’s possible, for instance, that you started off as two foetuses in the womb, but the twins merged during early development. Since it occurs at such an early age of development, the cells can become incorporated into the tissue and seem to develop normally, yet they are carrying another person’s genetic blueprint. “You look like one person, but you have the cells of another person in you – effectively, you have always been two people,” says Kramer.”

This article is accompanied by Ariko Inaoka’s beautiful, dreamy photographs of a pair of Icelandic twins, Erna and Hrefna. I’ve picked out my favourites from her portfolio.

On her website, Ariko Inaoka has commentaries from the twins as well as her own personal thoughts on the project.

Le retour

Today I went through my work from Y3S2 (which is conceptually better than my current work – at the moment, my drawings and compositions are better than my old work, which is the way it should be progressing). I did this because I know those two projects (the Dioscuri Mystery Kit and [working title]) somehow have a voice and a flair to them, and I wanted to revisit them to try and find the spark that I seem to have lost.

This is what I gathered – I had an interesting type style that I did as a homage to House of Leaves, I had some rather good writing (capturing my voice as the artist and the voice of Pollux as a grieving brother) and my book format reflected the voice of the project with one side devoted to fact and the other side devoted to fiction. I don’t know how I even conceptualized the two projects, only that I did it in a way that brought it all together quite delightfully. I have a lot of source material there to work with and maybe that’s how I can ‘find my voice’, as the seniors mentioned.

I know this is probably going to be my third drastic change but the third time is the charm, as they say. I want to reframe my project around duality again, because having a theme and building a message into it is easier for me than starting from existing content and building the theme and message around the content. Again, this doesn’t mean that all my past work is wasted.

From the grotesque, I learnt that it’s really important to push it as far as you can if you want to do it. I can if I’m going to be exploring death/grief/loneliness. From mythology and tarot I learnt that I can compose meaningfully, and all the esoteric stuff will come in handy for the Pollux as apothecary/weird medical dispensary owner. From my old projects I realize that my final outcome should be a union of text and image, hopefully in a book (even my mother, who has always taken an interest in my work, just tells me I should save myself the agony and just do a book), because quite clearly I have a personal affinity for that.

For the rest of this month I’m going to work on finding a clear message/storyline and by November I should have a trajectory finalized. I think Vishaka was right when she said that you should just spend the entire semester conceptualizing. I lost myself and started too soon and too hastily. I’ve been under a lot of self-imposed stress lately and I don’t think I’ve been making my project as fun as it could be for me. So returning to these old projects (I guess the roundabout journey helped me to gather some new auxiliary ideas) will help a lot in reframing my project and building it into something better. I’ve never changed my idea so many times for any long-term project before. I’ve had a few. The problem is I like too many things and it’s so challenging to figure out what I want. To some serious conceptualizing in the next two weeks.

PTSD

…I’m kidding. I may be on edge all the time but I haven’t lost my sense of humour. I saw Min’s post about her points-to-note after her presentation, so here are mine.

Make it clear that all drawings (except references) are my own work, in case people aren’t aware.

Try to draw the typography if pushing for Vienna Secessionist/Will Bradley look; same look can be incorporated for the entire body of the slides as well as any accompanying handouts.

Bring readings into the presentation in a more obvious fashion – archetypes, culture and mythology, etc. and use them to differentiate my project from existing work.

Cite all images that are not mine.

Have a stronger personal voice underpinning the project.

Work in progress update

111015 cards_formats

This is how the deck’s going so far in terms of just imagery, and here are some experiments as to how I can lay out each card. I haven’t been all too adventurous yet because I still need my system of organization, but I think I’m leaning towards removing the white frames around each card and having them either fully black with no visible border or fully white.

Work in progress + new thoughts

Here’s the progress so far on my fortune-telling deck. I’ve been focusing on getting all the artwork out before attending to the structure of the deck and cards, because it’s the most intuitive way for me to work on my project. Having researched on various aspects of deck design over the past couple of days, I’ve come to certain conclusions about how to further stretch my project.

First of all, I’m starting to look into card systems and deck structures in more detail. Yesterday I came up with a simple map for the Rider Waite tarot deck that I have at home. My rationale for doing this is that I don’t yet have a straight-up system I am using to build my deck. At this point I only have about ten cards so it’s not so pressing for now, but it’s a good time to be looking into what the deck structure is going to be like. Deck structures aren’t only common to tarot sets, but to regular old four-suit playing card decks and to trading card games. (I used to collect Neopets cards and they came with Heroes, Villains, Locations, Items, Equipment, and Something Has Happened cards.) As a kind of side project to my illustrations I’m trying to find different ways to map the decks that I have to get an understanding of and inspire some structure.
This isn’t really part of my final outcome, but it’s useful to do for my own reference and I can include it in my process too.
Building on the idea of structure, there’s a surprising amount of details that goes into the design of a single card. I’ve been using a single border and the same font (Neutra) for all of my cards just as an interim thing, but if you look carefully at these cards from the Zombie Tarot, you’ll notice that there are signifiers on the corners that tell you the value of the card and add to the zombie-themed design. In playing cards, every card needs to tell you its value and suit while being instantly recognizable and that’s something I want to incorporate into my deck. So far, I’ve been thinking of dividing my cards into two categories, Characters and Places. The initial idea here is to first deal a Place (i.e. Labyrinth, which could symbolize confusion/journeying), and then a Character card (or cards?), whose meanings would be read in the context of the larger Labyrinth meaning. (I should probably map this.)
In addition to card structures, there are also almost infinite spread structures (provided in books or on Pinterest) that are meant to give direction to the way you deal cards. I’ve been using a four-card spread for all of my own casual personal readings (I don’t take tarot that seriously but sometimes it’s useful for me because the phrasing of meanings inspires me sometimes) but there are more, and the Da Vinci deck that I have (which was also my first deck) offers a 12-card spread using the mandala-like card backs as part of the reading. You’re meant to tile the card backs in a way that means something to you, and turn the cards mirrorwise to read them after you’re finished. I thought that was a really creative way to add substance to a reading within in the structure of a themed deck. Speaking of card backs, I’m leaving the design for that till later.

Zombie Tarot Deck?!?!?!?!

I’m crying all this collaged imagery is so beautiful I wish I did this first! It shows that great, beautiful and wondrous projects can be encased in a small package. Sometimes I have these immense pangs of insecurity about how physically small my project is, but searching for references like these put my heart at ease. I don’t see how anyone could fail to be impressed by this deck – it’s incredibly well-designed and it fits so well together as a concept. Card design in itself is immensely rewarding, so I may want to research more on this and see what comes up.

http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2012/11/7/zombie-tarot-cards.html

Will Bradley

(I just have to say, I know about all these illustrators I’ve been posting about recently because of Astrid’s GD History class. The assignment was really challenging but it was a really good class, thank you Astrid :> Just my public service announcement for the day~)

People are so rude sometimes. Will Bradley was often called the ‘American Beardsley’ but according to Wikipedia (please ignore this dubious-sounding source – I use Wikipedia to get the gist of things and move on to more reliable references when I do actual hardcore research) he was established as an illustrator before Beardsley’s prints became popular in England. Just a fun fact. I like both of them, though, and in my opinion their styles are quite obviously different even though they come from the same section of the visual language department (what am I writing, I’ll stop now).

*goes off into a corner to cry* Look at the amazing patterns and compositions. I haven’t even done a card back but I might use the Fates for that.