aemilio-joao-pereira-23732

[aemilio-joao-pereira-23732]

COMP Q2: Restate your artistic vision statement if necessary.

Select one work of design on the theme of social engagement or tradition/ lineages (Week 4 & 5). Discuss this choice in connection with your own aspirations and the themes of CTS B.

My initial design statement was

" My design strength incorporates vision, patterned-thought and complexity. I like making complex things simple."

However now I would revise it to

" Treat design as yourself, authentic. "

I chose to reform it in the end, having thought about how design work relates to me, as it does to the people around me too. Having sat and listened to so many lecturers and speakers alike, I begun to see in the last few weeks how design brings out the best and worst of people. This came about frankly from listening to people, one of many skills that CTS has always required. What's the good in a good speaker if there aren't good listeners. Design is a conversation, one that begins with yourself, expands outwards, and comes full circle. This steady cycle is what many speakers and lecturers drive home about, it drives all of us, in our works, work ethics, it's the great design philosophy.

Ultimately this is just a personal statement, ethos, I could honestly spend way more time crafting an elegant sophisticated well crafted set of words, but alas less is more. At the end of the day, once we put the pens down and turn the screens of we're left with ourselves right where we started, that is a beautiful and terrifying place to be but right where we need to be.

Select at least one work of design that really resonates with you. List down the reasons for your choice, bearing in mind your vision statement and the range of CTS B topics.

I chose this design project from Portugal. Started in 2012, the project centers around fish tins! Portugal has immense maritime history, and up until the birth of this project they were nothing more than compact hard-to-open metal fish boxes.

However these metal tins with old visuals held much beauty in the eyes of Victor Vincente, a collaborator of the online museum 'Conservas de Portugal' featuring over 40,000 entries of designs, labels, photographs and more. The growing collection is under curation by 'CAN THE CAN', a restaurant operating under the National Association of Manufacturers of Canned Fish (ANICP), residing in the capital Lisbon.

Vicente began with slow steps of scanning, digitizing, packaging, in the effort to not let the industry's history be forgot. Along with the hundreds of donations and materials added so far, the website also receives online credit and viewings.

The project has plans to translate itself to English, in the hopes of venturing internationally.

As someone that appreciates not only design but people, it amazes me to see how powerful design can become in people's lives. In this case how designers and even non designers work towards bringing life to a tradition that although passed from hand to hand through labour, never really grew beyond the boundaries of the metal box.

The maritime fishing industry is for Portugal what football is for Brazil. Apart from the castles and cities, Portugal's real golden child is its fishing tradition dating back centuries.

Similar to how our group manifesto seeks to also reflect ourselves through our design writings, these kind of projects ultimately show me how when executed, opens you up to the world in a way that I have never understood previously.

[aemilio-joao-pereira-23732]

My group manifesto!

So my group and I decided to use visuals to illustrate our perceptions of the lessons subjectively. We juxtaposed drawings with quotes from lecturers and any other design languages. With how flexible and complex design is, we felt simple drawings and chosen quotes communicates clearer. I drew the design of the angry face with 'Design don't decorate'.

CTS B, it's needed at least for me. It's one of those modules that regulates me, the one place I love being even if I don't say it.

I chose this quote as it's most relevant. As long as I have been a designer It's difficult for me to detach from my process without keeping my discipline and humility, as much as becoming narrow-visioned and obsessed objectively and just being stubborn. The quote itself for David is just something I hear and begin to see the more reflect. And in a way design in itself presents itself to me, as an obstacle or a proving ground. My biggest obstacle in design frankly are my emotions. With how free and limitless it is as some lecturers put it, it's no wonder.

It is difficult in class at times, most of us being introverted or just shy, it's hard to brainstorm, discuss, debate, and wrestle in the process even though that's what I want the most because design deserves our best and the worst.

I can't think of a better outcome to showcase each one of us. Personally it's excels in its perfect imperfection. Neither of us are the same, let alone take ourselves seriously but for the 3 hours we were all about the manifesto.

I enjoyed the conversations with them more so than the drawings. In between the banter about topics were discussions of backgrounds, previous schools, siblings, interests, turn-off's, it was a conversation.

I value them.

I would enjoy doing a reworked version of a manifesto, I’d lean into podcasting.

I think long-form discussions about designing and the designers themselves speaks more than any other medium. Something similar to an Objectifs exhibition where we don’t have mere pre-recorded dialogue nor written information but the designers themselves in the flesh, so to speak. A roundtable discussion/open mic, with everyone having a pre-existing script. The audience learns to listen and the speaker learns to speak, ideally everyone learns something. It will elevate the activity or CTS B entirely, converting critical thinking into cirticial action. Calling out the comfortable, and making space for the subjugated. Design may not be for everyone but it certainly welcomes anyone.

Moreover these activities, when set alongside the other technical and sometimes dry curriculums can really give both us as students and lecturers a breath of fresh air. I have observed so many who struggle not just with work but struggle within themselves, it makes designing a point to prove rather than a playground. And many cease to exist as ‘ designers whom do design things’ as opposed to ‘designers whom things come from’. 

It is not so much about a feeling of empowerment, but more of understanding critical ACCOUNTABILITY, RESPONISBILITY, HUMILITY, even GRATITUDE. Allying myself with Jaygo’s stance towards the social requirements of a designer alongside his more utilitarian philosophy of our creations, CTS B can nurture and sharpen that humanity that design contains underneath the technicality, meticulouness and sheer grit.

[aemilio-joao-pereira-23732]

Week 3 This is How You Connect Practice with Society

Being the first time working in an all-girls group, it was pretty interesting. I was very conscious of listening to them bounce their ideas off each other without dismissing anything until they were done. I never intended to become the leader outright but I recognised that there was some structure lacking amidst all the ideas.

I enjoy this kind of collaborative projects ones that are foreign to us all and push us to really rely on one another, by being honest about our strengths and weaknesses.

Although it was a video project, we all understood each other much better. We shared the confusion, the fear, the doubts and the faith.

However I think our idea could have been more fleshed out and less critical. A more comedy centered skit would have worked, because our personalities lend to that area.

Each of us did our best to act, but I reckon that we all struggle to act as ourselves most often. We are easily accustomed to our social boxes, not wanting to slip out or step out in fear of the spotlight being hovered over us. We tend to hide the dark, we do our best to glow with light and shine.

When it comes down to taking responsibility for our roles as designers and artists, do we appreciate the light and the dark.

Do we understand ourselves in between, as much as our choices in the world are segregated in black and white. How much of our lives influence our work, and how much can our works reach lives.

We as designers solve problems in the most humane way possible. We persist in trial and error, we develop with wear and tear, and we destroy and create as we see fit. Where artists have a moral obligation to express themselves, designers have a moral obligation to others.

[aemilio-joao-pereira-23732]

Week 2 Connecting Theory + Practice

I challenged myself to try to make something complicated into something simple. Whether it's describing myself in a few words, or choosing between options in a personal questionnaire, it's very hard for me to not sit on the fence with things.

I understand myself, literally and non-literally. I am very insistent on being transparent with my attributes and weaknesses, as well as things I don't know in spite of everything I do know. I rarely identify with much of my position and background, at best I hold these as mere objective attributes, and not reflections or measures of anything amounting to an identity. I draw this harsh line in the sand for myself as well as my social relationships.

I would have loved to modify the activity and have it be much more of a conversation rather than a personal show and tell. These attributes are all significant on their own, but when relayed through speech, body language, tone, sounds and silences, we begin to open ourselves to other people.

I also became more patient with myself and others. By learning to be comfortable with silences, pauses, unanswered questions and undesirable assumptions, communication becomes clear and identity even clearer. As much as identity can be condensed into a book, movie, people cannot. If there is social identity and personal identity, then the position I take is that you are what fluctuates between those things, across time.

In the words of the great Carl Jung " If you don't know who you are, the world will tell you. "

[aemilio-joao-pereira-23732]

Week 4 + 5 Field trip and analysing artistic traditions and lineages.

For the field trip, I was caught by the space surrounded by the main work itself. I wasn't so much mesmerized by the painting itself as much the rest of the works around. The painting itself was about language, but room spoke for everyone, by everyone.

The portraits of the foreign workers, especially in the way they are composed, ask of you to empathise with their world. They ask you to see them as anything other than their roles. A worker is a father, brother, friend, adversary, enemy, idol, etc. They were done in oil canvas, with a very sombre tones nothing highly saturated conveying that maturity and age which lends itself to portraits of this kind.

The giant statue of the boy in the center of the place of "National Language Class" by Chua Mia Tee, tells me he was significant in the painting, for he was the child who bore the academic insignia on his shoulder. The fact that this child whom recently lost his family member is not mourning at his funeral but instead present, pursuing and taking pride in learning the national language speaks of the value education has to him, and his own. Moreover having a realist style of painting creates intimacy, imperfect brush strokes that also lends itself to the humanity of the works.

We may all speak different languages, but inevitably we're all trying to say the same thing. We are all more similar than we are different.