"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.

“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.

Presentation and workshop at "Mapping Ephemeralities / Ephemeral Cartographies", Rio de Janeiro

I will be presenting my projects "Ad Hoc Atlas" and "Typographic Typologies" and conducting a small workshop at "Mapping Ephemeralities / Ephemeral Cartographies", The International Cartographic Association commissions on Art & Cartography and on Maps and Society, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. August 2015. 

My proposed project is to share my theoretical research into the construction of urban space through graphic semiotic functions as well as two ongoing investigations which serve both as vehicles for the theoretical work and examples of how the method of mapping can be used as a critical narrative.

"Typographic Typologies Detroit: Node 1, Midtown", 2014.

"Typographic Typologies Detroit: Node 2, Corktown", 2014.

"Typographic Typologies Detroit: Node 3, Dabl's Gallery", 2014.

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

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