Different Data Workshop at AIGA DEC "Frontier"

In beautiful Bozeman Different Data hosted the workshop "Illegitimate Worlds" at the Design Educators Conference "Frontier"

We started with the premise that “… ‘illegitimate', imprecise, but approximate translation is one of the most important features of any creative thinking. For these 'illegitimate' associations provoke new semantic connections and give rise to texts that are in principle new ones." (Y. Lotman, Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture, 2000)

“Creating Landscape Fictions as Narrative in Digital Space: The ‘Interchangeable City Surface Modules of Detroit and Stockholm’” at 10th Annual Indiana University Landscape, Space, and Place Conference

A presentation of the video "Interchangeable City Surface Modules 04-2" at the small yet mighty Indiana University Landscape, Space, and Place Conference.

The video was created in its first version as part of an exhibition installation at Nordes 2015. This project hacks representations of geographic space constructing new (and impossible) landscapes that question perceptions of time and space and ask that we consider how a map is a landscape and how a landscape is many places and times. The video integrates and layers historical maps and 3D models to create a virtual and conceptual landscape that shapes an urban space as semiotic, diachronic, and diageographic. It is a landscape of two cities, connected through structural (in the formal not physical sense) mechanisms and are ultimately interchangeable via certain nodes and attractors. The video continues to evolve into new forms creating systems by which the two cities are inextricably interconnected.

It is a continuous work in progress.



Scene from Interchangeable City Surface Modules 04-2 from Joshua Singer on Vimeo.

Different Data Detroit (+Stockholm) at Nordes

The latest iteration of Different Data - Different Data Detroit (+Stockholm) at NORDES 2015: Design Ecologies, Stockholm, Sweden (June 7–10, 2015.) With Rachele Riley and Dan McCafferty.

"For Nordes 2015, we will bring the outcomes of our work in Detroit (with DesignInquiry at MOCAD) to Stockholm and merge these two ecologies on the walls of the exhibition space over the course of the conference. We propose that the discursive relationship between these two cities is nascent and  probable, on various levels. There are connections that we can presuppose (structure, form, system, mythology) and those that can only be realized through discovery. These connections must surely run deep, even if they are forced by our subjective measurements and if only as action (which is enough). They are hypotheses that remain to be realized. In keeping with the methods of Different Data, the Detroit (+Stockholm) project will  be both methodical and poetic, creating a link and a layering of the two cities in both factual and speculative comparisons."

View the project description

Networking and checking in with the mothership.

Checking the data.

Different Data Detroit: Presentation at Cumulus 2015, Milan

Rachele Riley and I presented our paper “Different Data: Experimental Design Research for Mapping Cities” at Cumulus Milan 2015: The Virtuous Circle as part of a panel on Experimenting/Prototyping to discuss our approach to and consideration of ‘different data’ and critical design. The paper reviews the project Different Data in its first installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) during a three month residency with DesignInquiry. The project was done in collaboration with Patricio Davila, and Dan McCafferty. Our paper will be included in the proceedings and published by McGraw-Hill Education.

Detail of Different Data Detroit installation at MOCAD, October 2014. 

View of installation in progress of Different Data Detroit at MOCAD, December 2014. 

Video still from Different Data Detroit, in collaboration with Rachele Riley.

Paper Presentation at the Mediated City conference at Woodbury University

Related fairly directly to the atlas work, "The Graphic Semiome: A Theoretical Examination of the Picturing of the City" was a paper I presented at the Mediated City conference at Woodbury University October 2014. Co-organized by the journal Architecture_MPS.

Abstract:

We are immersed in a landscape of visual messages. An ecology of signs, these images and image-texts speak to us as pictures informed by cultural consciousness and memory. The German word for picture is “bild” which shares its origins with “build.” We understand our environment by assembling it or by “picturing” it; building dialectical images and dimensions of reality. We are continually navigating our world by re-picturing it from the continual flow of both established and new image-texts. Images within the city and of the city are catalysts forming and reforming the city through this process of picturing. Using the model of the Semiosphere, a self-regulating ecological system structured by language, we can model urban space as a metabolism comprised of the narratives and mythologies of culture. This paper will outline a model for an urban semiosphere and graphic semiomes within this semiotic ecology.

Google image search “Los Angeles punk rock”, June 2014

Ad Hoc Atlas: Volume Two, Version One: Montréal and Berlin, at Nordes 2013

My book the "Ad Hoc Atlas: Volume Two, Version One: Montréal and Berlin", was displayed at the exhibition at the 5th Nordic Design Research Conference: Nordes '13: Experiments in Design Research: Expressions, Knowledge, Critique, Copenhagen, Denmark. The book is an Iris printed, 163 page, hand sewn, coverless (theoretically, it is unfinished) book of experimental design research projects conducted in Montréal and Berlin with DesignInquiry (in Montréal and Berlin of course). It is part of a larger ongoing project, The Ad Hoc Atlas.

View most of the book (photo documentation.)
View the whole book (readable.)

Coverless cover. The Ad Hoc Atlas is an unending series of prototypes. 

View of layered Montréal. 1920s industry atlas, GIS tracks of dérives through the city, traffic congestion, 3D monuments in situ.

Chapter opener: historic map layers, GIS tracks of dérives through the city, geolocated images of design artifacts.

Documentation: snapshots of Berlin's semiosphere at various times.

Illustration of semiographic metabolic readings.

Paper presentation at CAA 2013

“Towards an Open Source Model for Design Research” co-presented with Christopher Moore of Concordia University at the CAA (College Art Association) Annual Conference, New York, NY. February 2013.

Presentation of case study of my research project “Ad-Hoc Atlas” and it’s outcomes as part of ““Design Cities Berlin” with DesignInquiry.

View the paper here.

From the Ad Hoc Atlas Berlin, "Model of Berlin Prototype Semiospheric Metabolic Reader displaying continuous feed sample data", 2013

“Ad Hoc Atlas Montréal” at KSBDA International Design Conference

“Ad Hoc Atlas Montréal (Detail)”, Exhibition of Korean Society of Basic Design & Art during Summer 2012 International Design Conference, hosted by San Jose State University at the Natalie & James Thompson Gallery of 35 invited artists and designers from Asia and the San Francisco Bay Area.

"Dérive Vieux Montréal, St. Laurent", 2012.