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Exposition

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Consider the Structure

What structure should I implement into this piece.

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Wk 11 - Note

Work on the structure of my exposition

Clear stairs of where to go, forwards

Booklet: Over to us, doesn’t really matter what we do with it. “Simple but elegant,” A5 artefact, some kind of foldable booklet.

Making a tactile paper artefact, 

Simple, notions of form & content for document

Textual narratives need to be clear through, colour or font. Make it obvious. 

Think in a hierarchy-framing my voice and to make the writing clear for the reader. Essay voice, thick description voice. 

Add a little section about how the piece relates to my 454 project. Make it clear to the reader. How it expands on 454, as well as Hara’s anecdote, as well as stands alone from

Research/Cited works. Bringing in things to discuss, in the overall thing. 

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The Veil

Serge Lutens

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⍣

Embrace multiplicity and individualism of self deep

Consider the illusory nature of distinction

Armour the vessel with talismans and accessory, Pushing codes of form and function.

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Note

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Afterword: In Praise of Shadows - Thomas J. Harper

“The literary man’s essay on a nonliterary subject.” p.44

“But when he writes of traditional aesthetics, he speaks with authority of matters he cared about intensely.” p.44

“In Praise of Shadows is anything but the empty dreams of a novelist.” p.44

“Tanizaki does wander–from architecture to toilets to jade to women to food–often with only the most tenuous of transitions, and quite as often turning back to repeat himself. To the Western reader trained to expect symmetry and logical progression in an essay, the urge to edit Tanizaki is at times almost irresistible. He has a perverse habit of shifting without warning from a  tone of high seriousness to something near facetiousness; as when he recommends the toilet as a major source of poetic inspiration. His descriptions of lacquerware under candlelight and women in the darkness of the house of pleasure are perfect jewels; but would they not stand out to better advantage removed from the company of that murmuring bowl of soup and Einstein’s trip to Kyoto? Yet to do so would drain the life of In Praise of Shadows, for Tanizaki’s ‘essay’ works in ways different from the western essay, and demands the freedom of his seeming haphazard style.” p.45

“Too obvious a structure is contrivance, that too orderly an exposition falsifies the ruminations of the heart, that the truest representation of the searching mind is just to follow the brush.” “...stream of consciousness...” p.45

“Questions of the sort he raises have no final answers, and the mind of the writer who takes them up must always be groping, his statements always tentative. Susan Sontag has put the matter well in explaining her choice of style in “Notes on Camp”: “To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful, one must be tentative and nimble. The form of jottings, rather than an essay (with its claim to a linear, consecutive argument), seemed more appropriate for getting down something of this particular fugitive sensibility.” Tanizaki would surely claim the same for the aesthetic he attempts to delineate.” p.46

(I feel like a tentative and nimble approach would probably be the best way to go about my own exposition)

“Tanizaki’s aesthetic speaks for itself and needs no explication, but it should be pointed out that his is not in every way an orthodox view of Japanese taste. For one thing, he conspicuously refrains from claims of some mysterious aesthetic sensibility in the Japanese genes. (We could forgive him if he did; the notion is centuries old and has the endorsement of the most eminent artists and scholars.) That the Japanese sensibility is in some ways unique is to be sure one of his main points, but he traces the uniqueness to more basic–more believable–sources than national character.” p.46

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Take away from 1:1 with Julieanna

BURN THESE WORDS/BUZZWORDS: BINARY, DUALITY, DICHOTOMY, POLARITY.

I actually really do hate them lol 

Note: Don’t treat this exposition as my 453 proposal, set it apart. However I can take bits from this exposition to use in my 454 work.

Start with Kenya Hara’s anecdote: to make it explicitly clear that this distinction isn’t my own. The Glass/Dish, explain it, unravel it. Wonder It. Ponder it. Look to poetry, read poetry.

Look to fiction writers that wonder/ponder. 

Unravel things, don’t have to make any clear outcome/conclusion. Push it as far as it can go.

What accompanies a glass that makes it one, what accompanies a dish that makes it a dish. 

Textually Glass/Dish: they both share an S, why is the glass first, why is there that hierarchy there. Purely because it’s from Hara’s anecdote. But also why did I include the ‘/’ 

How can I respond to, push forward, make my own, embody, push the glass/dish further. 

Look to ‘In Praise of Shadows.’ What made it successful, personally enjoyable, what worked, what was convincing.

Write

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Glass/Dish as form

The form could be made from any material: Ceramic, Stone, wood, woven... Should I solely focus on the material of glass?

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Glass as Material

Looking through the 'Glass'. Using the glass as something more than the form that i’ve been looking at. The glass as a looking glass: A Window, Glasses, Mirror (looking back at ones self - Reflection).

Water, Liquid, Light, Solid, Sharp, Piercing, Fragility.

Warped image through the glass, the warped view, the altered view, angle, pulse, lens, refraction, light through the glass, image through the glass.

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Camp

“Indeed the essence of Camp is of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric–something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques.” p.275 Sontag

Could allow a cryptic exploration of the forms I’ve chosen to explore. Something like a private code, something to refer to something else? Something deeper? perhaps.

Camp is relevant as an aesthetic sensibility, and it’s affinities shared with all the elements of visual decor. p.278

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Notes on Glasses & Dishes

What makes a glass a glass

What accompanies a glass

What accompanies a dish

How are they prepared, presented, used

How are they made

Distinction’s between the objects and form

Deviant Object

Non committal object

Frivolous? Camp? Paradoxical?

Also, I could look into opposing colours, coloured glass as the material. Forceful colours to reinvigorate the forceful nature of the proposed distinction (Glass/Dish), but this forceful distinction could be applied to most dualities/dichotomies/mere distinctions.

e.g blue glass/orange glass, green glass/red glass, green/pink... 

Colour:

"The palette was forceful, almost accelerated; turquoise, pulsing green, yellow and PVC-blue, red (pyretic and earthy)."

‘Techno Sorbet.’

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Thick Description on Print

An image melted onto a soft matte paper. The fibres coated with RGB stains, dry and soft to the touch. Automation creating something subtle. The ink bled and seeped into a blurred making of an image.

Comment: Although i’m still interested in the digital/print, I think the glass/dish might be a bit more interesting/convincing.

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Words that sound right... atm

Glass/Dish

Shadows

Darkness

Ambiguity

Androgynous

In-Between

Transposition

Interstitial

Camp

High/Low

Artifice

Techno Sorbet

Against Interpretation

Excess/Restraint

In-Between Text, Passages, Lines, Signatures, Thread

Frivolous

Paradoxical

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Notes Going Forward

Finished draft by week 10

Get into a daily practice of writing

Try one primary form to start out with

Write as an attempt to decide, why decide

Have a discussion with yourself

Take a time to think, writing in the moment - stance away from the manifesto.

How can an object be non committal?

How can a book/exposition also do what I’m wondering about?

Embracing not knowing is helpful

Don’t define things, no plan still - practice it

Don’t procrastinate

Rough/Messy drafts

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Exposition Proposal and Outline

Your Name: Sinbad Timoteo

Title (working): Embracing the Interstitial

Short description of topic or What does this piece of writing set out to achieve?(100 words):

We live in a predetermined world of reductive binary opposition. Dualistic thinking is rooted in predetermination. This piece of writing will explore, unpack and document my own understanding of the space between distinctions. To embrace ambiguity, the interstitial (in-between) as the means for deeper understanding. I think the big overall reason is to exemplify and inspire. I don't wish to abolish dualistic thinking, as I recognise the hidden complexities that do exist.

For this piece of writing I’m still not quite sure if I want to focus on a single distinction, I’m currently looking into the glass/dish and print/digital. I want whatever I write about to hold a sense of restraint, something poetic rather than something quite big.

What form(s) of exposition do you intend on using and why? (thick description, review/critique, manifesto/speech, instructional, scholarly/catalogue)

Currently I’m thinking of using both thick description and hybrid forms of writing. I want to use thick description to paint an image through words. It would be useful to describe certain explorations that I do through this type of writing. It is something that I want to get better at, visualising through words alone. I like the poetry of this form. With the hybrid form, I feel it is a good match to this topic just in its nature and I feel it is an all encompassing approach to tackle my topic. I want to have a balance between exploratory writing and critical writing.

Does this topic interface or relate to your 454 Major Project, and if so, how? (In what ways might it augment, expand, critique, interpret, contextualise, or accompany your design or art work?)

Yes, I want this piece of writing to accompany and broaden my 454 Major Project. I've struggled with properly articulating the whole project and I hope that through this I'll craft quite a strong backbone to my project. I’m creating a sort of ‘designer as author’ editorial offering, that will document my exploration of the interstitial, through the Japanese concept of Ma and transposition theory. I’m looking to explore print/digital and the glass/dish distinction, which I came across in this anecdote from designer Kenya Hara in his book ‘Designing Design’

“Suppose there’s a glass here. You might know about a glass. But what if you need to design one? The moment a glass is proposed as an object to be designed, you start thinking about what kind of glass you want to design, and you lose a little bit of your understanding of ‘glass.’ Arrayed in order before you are dozens of glass vessels of gradually varying depths, from ‘glass’ to ‘dish.’ What if you are asked to clarify the exact boundary point between one and the other? Faced with the objects you’re at a loss. However, this doesn’t mean that your knowledge has been overturned. Indeed, it’s just the opposite. You’ve become more keenly conscious of glasses than before, when you understood them simply unconsciously calling them all by the term ‘glass.’ Now you actually understand glasses more realistically” (Hara, 19).

Hara, Kenya. Designing Design, Lars Müller Publishers, 2011.

What specific research is needed for you to conduct this piece of writing (eg. Archival or site research, precedent examples, historical research, subjective and phenomenological research, observation etc.)?

I’ve been told by my lecturers that we’ve been here before, and my project is a very postmodern thing. But then that becomes the point and the issue, what makes this time distinct? I think this would be a good starting point. To explore what has been, what didn’t work and why it is worthwhile exploring now.

Using APA or MLA citation style, list three key references on your topic and three examples of writing that operate in ways that you would like your exposition to.

References - Apart from that excerpt from Kenya Haras book, that included above

Bolton, Andrew. Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between, The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017. 

Braidotti, Rosi. “Transformations.” Transpositions: Aesthetico-Epistemic Operators in Artistic Research, Edited by Micheal Schwab, Leuven UP, 2018, pp. 23- 31.

Isozaki, Arata. “Ma (Interstice) and Rubble.” Japan-ness in Architecture, Edited by David B. Stewart, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006, pp. 81-101.

Examples

Tanizaki, Jun’ichiro. In Praise of Shadows. Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1977

Sontag, Susan. “Notes on Camp.” Against Interpretation and Other Essays, Penguin Group, 2009, pp. 275-293.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Penguin Group, 1972.

How will images, figures or illustrations play a part in this exposition, if any?

At this time I’m not too sure if I want to use any type of visual in my exposition, as I do want to focus on writing and articulating. However I am open to using graphic illustration when designing the booklet format it will be in.

Where would you imagine your exposition to be published? Who is it written for or to? 

For the most part it will be written for myself, but I also would want it to exist in a space that would spark contemplation for others and hopefully inspire others about the principles I look to in my writing. I’d like to imagine it in a bookstore or a decor store. For it to be able to exist on its own and also with my major 454 project.

Write up a rough outline of your exposition which reveals a working structure

Introduction

Context: Of the topic, area, precedents, what’s happening now

Theoretical Analysis, What I’m bringing to the discussion

Section on graphic explorations that I have done/will do

Conclusion