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)

"Maps, Tape, Video, Paper: Design as Performance & Performance as Discourse" Different Data presentation at VCUarts!

The Different Data Group had the opportunity to visit VCUarts hosted by the Department of Graphic Design (shout out David Shields) in remarkably fabulous Richmond VA. On Thursday April 7 gave the lecture "Maps, Tape, Video, Paper: Design as Performance & Performance as Discourse", at the beautiful VCUarts Depot where we discussed examples of our projects in Detroit and Stockholm and elaborated on our interests, including, but not limited to: counter-design methodologies; data as narrative; narrative as method; method as design; design as performance; performance as discourse; collaboration’s  joys, pitfalls and pratfalls; the pratfalls associated with the word critical; criticality as a counter-design methodology.

The next day we visited the senior Gdes class co-taught by Nicole Killian and Lauren Thorson and gave some questionable advice to the students frantically working to finish their senior projects.

Great program and great people. We are very glad to have had the opportunity.

Hey, that's a lot of people.

Different Data on the radio!

Rachele Riley and I were interviewed on EuDesignRadio at the conference Cumulus Milan 2015: The Virtuous Circle in Milan on June 6. We talk about the project and some related things and then play the Fuzzy Box game!

Listen to the interview

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.

Intrepid, the video

intrepid from Joshua Singer on Vimeo.

A tour through a Detroit landscape. This is the result of research of the graphic cultural landscape of the D and basis for various components of Different Data with Patricio Davila, Dan McCafferty, and Rachele Riley as part of the DesignInquiry residency at MOCAD.

A test for the revised movie for MOCAD. "Intrepid"

From Ad Hoc Atlas

Sketchup and Google Earth tests

Revising the video I made of the Dérive that Chris Fox and I took during the DesignInquiry/DesignCity/Detroit inquiry this past February. Taking the geolacated images from that overlay the GPS track of the journey and adding them as skins to large screens that will hover over the Detroit landscape of present and 1872. The movie will still be a Google Earth tour flyover, as in the original, but with these large images taken through the windshield of Chirs' car. Working title for the video is appropriately "Intrepid."

Field research in Detroit

Documentation of typographic artifacts in the urban landscape as part of DesignInquiry's Fall 2104 residency at MOCAD.

All cities (and all places that humans inhabit) are marked with language and specifically the word. The way these words are styled, the messages the letterforms speak by way of their form, signify forces in the urban landscape. These styles are types. Typologies of letterforms. What they say, and where they say it might tell us something about the city and the forces and agents at play. This has been an experiment that might reveal something about the shifting cultural and economic landscape of Detroit (in some cases specifically gentrification.)

Cutting and sorting. 

Organizing typologies.

Organized typologies with reference map.

Detail: typologies organized by aesthetic values and color coded by region.

The images can be viewed in location here.