Cheryl Gallaway

This is a short text I was invited to write for a publication by Engage by Design as part of a Sustainable Design Research.

In 2007 I co-founded a design practice with Micha Bakker in Amsterdam called Hexaplex. We founded the studio to see how far we could take design for the HTML web page, limiting ourselves to working with the minimum set of markup and design tools: HTML and CSS.

Looking back, we were feeling fairly anti towards the designers alternative web page tool ‘Flash’. Preferring the immediacy, honesty and transparency of HTML, we were able to see and share design codes as well as make content visible to search engines, putting content in context.  Flash in comparison, seemed only concerned with the surface experience, hiding code and using tools of the television and film trade that push us into the ‘viewer’ role. Time ‘in-between interactions’ was filled with a slide, a sound, a fade, and more often than not, a wobble. There was a tension between wait and act (the consumer and the producer). which just wasn’t there in our preferred HTML pages. We were determined not to yield to the limitless possibilities that the Internet promised alongside its lack of sensibility and maturity. We did not want to be one of the people flocking from all over the world, towards a rush for the latest technology. We did not want to design web pages that were all about showing off first, requiring a ‘skip intro’ link, and using a language of spectacle seeming perversely out of place in this new democratic space.

Hexaplex was never for or against one technology or another, we were fighting for the right to be selective and make a wholesome choice in a saturated world. We were defending our freedom to choose. By reducing our tool set we were able to experiment and be resourceful. We had clients that were rushing for gold, under a spell, so we would tell them “yes, almost everything is possible, but is it necessary? What do you want to achieve?”. Would you print a book without a story? Believe it or not we were asked many times to design a web site without content. A distinct lack of tangible restraints made our method all the madder.
You could argue that our methods were influenced by the Dutch Calvinistic culture. It is also possible we have been influenced by minimalism that runs through the veins of some of the larger influential Dutch design houses. You may be right in both cases. As, on the whole the Dutch do seem to love things that are a solution first, efficient second and then beautiful, if you design something which ticks all three boxes, even better.

The Internet has matured, and our assertion that technology should not lead what makes good design has matured too. I like to think of our practice today as resourceful and mindful, and hope that this is reflected in our work. We are still using our design skills and tools for small and cultural organizations, using the immediacy of web publishing to help them to mobilize and distribute their activities and agendas.

Today we are amidst a rush to digitize our cultural heritage. Bill Thompson recently talked at Lighthouse, and shared his ideas and drive on the importance and urgency that we should be creating digital archives of our entire cultural heritage. A rush to upload all is very real. Not only do I already have 227 unread emails in my in-box whilst google advertises I have ‘Over 7613.473031 megabytes (and counting) of free storage’, but I am also aware of cultural organisations feeling the need to ‘upload all’. In contrast to this we are enjoying our new found status as green citizens. We are embracing initiatives to recycle, up-cycle and cycle. We are creating a future without waste. As we are acknowledging the fall out of a very real and tangible waste, and questioning our rate of consumption and production. We are on the other foot, exploiting the consumption and production of digital data which is manifesting at an alarming rate. With shops on the high street advertising “all you can eat” data. This is a wake up call; consumerism is alive and well when it comes to electronic devices and we are producing content mindlessly to fill them. A project by artist Graham Harwood called ‘Coal Fired Computers’ reflects on the complexities of our global fossil fuel reliance. Stating that “Coal fired energy not only powers our computers here in the UK, but is integral to the production of the 300,000,000 computers made each year. 81% of the energy used in a computer’s life cycle is expended in the manufacturing process, now taking place in countries with high levels of coal consumption.” Although our digital explorations are not tangible, they are only made possible by our very tangible and limited natural resources.

The dream of a paperless office has also not really eventuated. So one question to ask as a designer working with online content, is to what extent can we influence the production and distribution of content? Designers are in a position in-between content producers and consumers, here is where we can either act as a passive USB jack and facilitate the upload, or alternatively we can act. Lets do things with content. Lets ignite dialogues with content producers, lets use our design skill to layer, filter, edit, delete and organize…  and let’s help make sense of, and make tangible digital content.

Coal Fired Computers www.yoha.co.uk/cfc

Flitser (meaning camera flash) is a project that I came across last week at Nimk in Amsterdam. Originally an online project, it was adapted to work in a gallery space context, as part of the exhibition Cloud Sounds. I really liked how the the project became more performative by putting a mirror and a photographic device in a space. Better still the device used to take a flash photograph, was also the device for adding your photograph to the installation. The loop was complete. Below is a photo that I made with my own device, in a effort to record that loop in a loop.

This is me in a loop in a loop. Flitser project at Nimk Amsterdam

John L. Walters: Is coding design?

Karsten Schmidt: It’s funny how the moment you start talking about code, you start being channelled into a technical role. Because so many people are alienated. They know they don’t understand … but they want to protect their status as a ‘creative’.

When you work with code, actually typing code is absolutely the last thing you think about … writing code becomes a background task, because you’re actually building a mental model of what you want to do. This is what makes code work. This is where you work as a designer. Mapping is what we all do automatically, but for code it has to become a conscious act.

Full Interview at: http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=170&fid=781

It seems as if we are enjoying our new found status as citizens that recycle Christmas trees, and embracing initiatives from local councils to buy only what we will eat, we are starting to realise a future where we are all cutting down on waste. So why is ok to upload all our holiday photos to the web, and since when did sending and receiving digital junk mail become so acceptable? Why am I happy to ignore the 227 unread emails in my in-box. As we are slowly turning our backs on one waste, whilst finally questioning whether our rate of consumption and methods of mass production are the way to go. We are on the other foot, embracing the consumption and production of digital data which is manifesting at an alarming rate. Walking to my studio this morning, I read a sandwich board outside a shop on the high street which can only be described as a digital fast food outlet, where they were advertising “all you can eat” data for your mob, pad or pod. Had I possession of one of these devices, I would have used it to capture this picture, and it is likely that I would have uploaded it to this post.  A greenish, digital representation of a sandwich board. It did not occur to me question if this image would have been a necessary or supporting illustration. However it did occur to me that I wanted a device that was able to reproduce my sensory experience and store that in it’s memory (not mine), before distributing it.

Wolfgang Tillmans talks at the Sallis Benney Theatre Brighton/
Presented by Photoworks.
13/10/2010

I had a few preconceptions prior to the talk, thinking rather naively that it might be a nostalgic journey back to the late nineties. I was ready to feel smug and snigger at the decade’s fashion as well as confirm how influential this artist was in informing my work at Central St Martins in the late 90′s. Quite unexpectedly I was launched into real life scenes from Blade Runner and the hyper-world today.

Tillmans is introduced to the audience as a photographer who’s earliest work captured the 90′s zeitgeist, as well the creator of edgy photographs that pushed the boundaries and stood in contrast to the high glamour fashion photography of the preceding decade.

Tillmans starts the talk by telling us how a picture can be embodied, one example of this is how a photocopy of an image embodies a picture with its own qualities and becomes a picture in its own right. Showing us more examples of his ‘pictures’ in the 90′s it becomes clear that they are as much about the materials or the medium the image is printed on, as the image itself. He shares with us his passion for paper as well as process. A passion that continues to inform his work, resulting in his purchasing a colour photocopier with the money he was awarded for the Turner Prize. There is  a sensitivity and respect that Tillmans has for materials, which is also why he is known for inventing various solutions for hanging each ‘picture’ in a museum environment, so that the picture/paper does not get hurt*.

Paper is not the only material Tillmas has a respect and fascination for… he is a master of capturing what the camera sees. Using technology to show us what the human eye cannot. By exhibiting 3 pictures of Saturn, shot in 3 resolutions, the viewer becomes aware of a lens being a door to a world not open to the eyes we have been given.

Tillmans also talks about his ongoing collection of ‘pictures’ titled ‘Paper Drop’ and the “the underlying physics that create these poetic forms”. These explorations are created in a way not unlike the process used for another series, where the chemicals are left to interact with their carrier. Tillmans describes these as “pictures made by the machine”.

What I find striking in these pictures is how they exist in their own right, how in Tillmans words “the artist is removed”. The picture itself, whether created by a machine or by chemistry, has its own identity and freedom to evolve “free of the duty to depict”. These pictures capture the spiritual and are canvasses for meditation. Void of ego and making the invisible visible, pictures of time and space.

Tillmans ends the talk with a series of recent images that he feels are a risk to show, as he is still coming to terms with and understanding how these photographs fit and interact within the timeline and dialogue of his work. The last question of the evening resulted in Tillmans confessing his motivation for making ‘new pictures’. He tells us that he wants to “capture the transformation that occurs when something psychological enters a mechanical medium”. This sounds like a experiment in Chemistry where entering a mechanical medium with poetical effort can transform something to the point where it is almost tangible.

Being someone who doesn’t manage to sit still for long, Tillmans had me fully engaged for two hours. He is an artist deeply involved (in love) with his chosen medium, and a spirit who is embracing life, technology and the now.

*Tillmans will weep for pictures that have had pins pushed through them for hanging, preferring himself to use the bulldog clip hanging technique.

Images from www.tillmans.co.uk