hacefaltapapel

[hacefaltapapel]

About the reading experience

While designing the website and the texts I had a couple of thoughts:

– Why everything online has to be responsive? It makes sense that websites that offer information or services have to be really simple and straightforward, but when it comes to reading a text (like in a book) maybe there is no need. Not all texts have to fit all the screens. The way we experience things in our phones is different from the one we experience in our laptops. The format of the phone is different than the one from the computer, like the computer is different from the printed book. So no, I don’t think all the web design has to be responsive, most of it yes, but there can be exceptions (and I guess my project is one of them).

– Second thought: navigation. Internet is user friendly. We can’t let the user think what he needs to do because otherwise he will leave the page (we are fighting for attention here!) But what if the intention of the author is precisely make the user lost? What if I want the user to think about the reading experience itself.

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Authorship and connection of texts

After trying doing some research on the topic loneliness and try to write a piece, I realised that the content was becoming too personal. I think I will come back to the topic in the future to do something with it, because I am very interested, but it doesn’t seem the moment to approach the topic and I think it is going to be better to use the topic itself of writing and design as the content. 

The new plan is to be a curator of texts that prove the point I want to make: that design can not only guide the reading experience of a text but also influence in the interpretation the reader makes of it. I kind of see the design of the text as a a performance of itself, like a role that is given to a text to be interpreted in different ways, giving a different approach to it, a more personal one. With this curation of different texts from other authors I will be creating a new piece, proving that all texts are connected, making me the author of the connection. 

As Michael Rock said: “The treatment is, in fact, a kind of text itself, as complex and referential as any traditional understanding of content”.

It is possible to treat any text, we normally as writers tend not to think much about it. The plan is to choose texts that I find interesting and play with them, creating a short archive of verbal-visual reading. I would like to do a web version and a print version of it, to show that it is possible to do it in whatever medium, but also that the design ad the nature of writing change depending of the medium itself, making them two different similar pieces. 

Ever since Roland Barthes wrote The Death of the Author, the role of the writer in the creation of meaning has been questioned. He also adds that the writer does not produce ideas. Ideas are, and have always been here. Pieces of writing are just a continued dialogue between writers and readers. By using design over the pieces of other authors, I kind of gain certain control over the writing itself. 

[hacefaltapapel]

Noise

Last experiment of the term. A small website created with Adobe Muse that aims to express the way I feel when I try to read and write online. 

LINK TO DOWNLOAD THE WEBSITE!

To see the content, open the Noise folder and the file that says index.html.

Even though I enjoy playing around with images and videos in this last experiment, I think the the final project needs to avoid them. The past months I have been exploring the visual aspects of the text, so I feel I need try to let the message rely exclusively in the text as both verbal and visual. In a way, to demonstrate the power of text as an image itself. 

I think it makes sense to leave them aside and play with movement, sound and interaction. Even though it can be a restriction, I think it is going to force me think deeply about the message of the text and the different forms it can adopt. I almost feel like limiting also the number of typefaces I use, to show that text can be expressive in many ways besides choosing a specific type that matches the content. The aim behind all these limitations is to explore and experiment with the visuality of meaning. Hopefully through interaction movement and sound I can create layouts that represent the text’s content.

[hacefaltapapel]

Verbal-visual digital writing

The experiments I have done the past weeks remind me in a way to concrete/visual poetry, where text and design merge and create new ways of reading text. But Internet gives to concrete poetry one extra step and can also include sound, movement and interaction to the text itself.

I have been working with Adobe Muse, so I haven’t written a single line of code. How writing the code for the design of the website and writing my message can be combined? Can I play with movement but also with the code itself to create new hidden messages inside the text? My goal is to go deeply in these visual-verbal experiments. In the next experiment I might include videos, sound and images to see where the text takes me. 

What if Apolinaire’s Il Pleut had movement and sound? It is a text that doesn’t need anything extra, but what happens when you add to the words movement? What woulld the reader experience when I write the word dance and there is some music in the background and the letters move thanks to the scrolling?

[hacefaltapapel]

Experimenting with digital words and possibilities of writing. Trying to explore the reading experience as a way of exploring the writing. Making the reader think he has the power over his experience, when the designer is guiding every single one of his steps in this specific website. He can’t choose the path, the only action he can decide is to leave the website and not finish its whole content. What happens when you play with the medium to create more meaning? When you use the tools for deeper experiences? What if the reading experience is not easy and that is its purpose? The reader doesn’t get everything immediately, he needs to be patience, needs to explore, needs to try to understand the logic behind. Should we just give all the content chewed and ready? Can we explore the medium and the content in a more poetic and slow way? The way we approach pieces of concrete poetry for example, are not the normal way we approach a linear text. What place does content like that have in the web?

[hacefaltapapel]

The (digital) gesture of writing

(Short experiment for class): https://hacefaltapapel.wixsite.com/experiment

Is clicking, or typing, a gesture? 

With digital writing it seems like we are able to really play with the reading experience. Many readers like to interact, to do something, to be main characters in the experience of reading the text.

Why do we have the need to play? Why is so hard for us to just contemplate (read) the text that is in front of us? We have to click and act in order to feel useful, when by just reading we are playing our most important role: we are being readers and giving sense to the act of writing. Without the reader, the text is not finished; the text doesn’t have any meaning. Both writer and reader create the text with their actions. 

What happens when the text disappears? When the only thing that remains are writer and reader, like in a real dialogue.

Text is written to remain. What happens when it doesn’t remain?

Text is written to send a message. What happens when you get lost in it?

Text is written to be read. What happens when reading becomes interaction?

Does a text still have its meaning?

[hacefaltapapel]

The gesture of writing.

As a writer I choose specific words to express myself and to communicate ideas to others. I can write “he is very handsome” or “he is as handsome as my friend Guillermo” or “very handsome he is” or “very handsome” or “his has a great beauty” or “es muy guapo” (Spanish). There are many ways to express an idea. And the election of words is a personal one, the writer choses the way he prefers to order his ideas/words. Even though all those sentences express the same idea, the way is not the same.

If it is not the same to chose one word or another, why as a writer I don’t care about how the words look into the page. How I guide the reader in his reading experience? Wouldn’t I have more control over my own text?

I tried to write the same words with different techniques and each of them expresses different ideas (and the same one at the same time). The surface, the tools, the material, the ink, and the typeface are different elections I have to make that contribute to express my ideas in so many different ways. The message I send to my reader is different if I display each piece separately than if I do all of them at the same time. When you see all, you might see the self-exploration is taking place. If the reader only sees the first one, might only think about handwriting. There are many things that are not said in the verbal aspect of the text, which are expressed in the visual part of it and in the tools and space involved with it.

As a designer I choose how I want to guide the reader. I add an intention to his experience. Why I don’t think about it while writing? Wouldn’t my writing make more sense? Maybe as a writer I am not interested in the reading experience, maybe I am. I should at least consider the possibilities. Why don’t they teach us to do so when we learn how to write? Why do they teach us grammar and not lettering? We could be expressing ourselves in so many different ways. Is it really important? Is it just aesthetics?

Even this post is a gesture of writing itself.

Digital gesture of writing.

The gesture of writing.

[hacefaltapapel]

Few experiments that I have done since April but I forgot to post them in the process log at the time.

1. The first one is the most recent. A work I did with Dan, Savvy, Moon and Sein in one of the Monday tutorials in October. We got the “stamp” format restriction and we talked about what did we understand the stamp stands for in our personal projects. The stamp is the one that makes able the process of communication, it is essential for the letter, which is a personal way of communicating with the other person. When we write letters we do put effort in them, is not like a text message, it is more personal, more valuable. The whole process of writing is different. With the piece we created we tried to reach that closeness, that personal process that makes you closer to the other.

2. The second is a publication I made with Moon in other of the working days last term (in May). We wanted to explore the relation between writer and reader. When we approach a text, we don’t know what we are going to find, so as readers we kind of untie the text that somebody wrote to create our own meaning. The words are the ones that are, but the way we approach the text is personal and unique, so in our book the reader can read the strips in line or by page. There are two different options, but the reader can create new ones, because in the end there is as many meanings as readers, and the writer looses in a way the power over the text. That is why we tried to express with our publication.

3. The last one is a short experiment I did last May when thinking about the words being represented in a way that relates with their meaning. The word “repeat” repeats itself many times; “reflection” is reflected; “cut” is cut... Using the page as a space and the materials I am exploring the power of words and its visual aspect.

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What if instead of choosing a type for our text we right the text according to the typeface? How would a typeface be if it was a character? What kind of personality would it have? Quick exercise trying many different of types. Seeing this I would like to maybe take a closer look into some of this characters, explore them, see what I can do with them if I use them.

[hacefaltapapel]

Different possible layouts of the chapter 34 of the book Rayuela (Hopscotch), from Julio Cortázar. The original text was designed in a way where is the reader the one that has to find the order of it, because Cortazar combines a text of Benito Pérez Galdós with the thoughts of Horacio, the main character of the novel, while reading the fragment. The reader has to hop from line to line in order to understand the two different texts.

It is a representation of the reading experience, of how we read and sometimes reflect in what we are reading. How ideas flow in our mind, interact, mix... 

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How can I write my thoughts in the way I have them? 

When I think there is no order, the ideas appear in my head, they stop suddenly and go in different directions, then come back to the first point. All my thoughts are crossed in my mind, but in a way they make sense to me and they make me. I add new ideas to the ones I had before, my mind keeps growing every day. I connect my experiences, the new knowledge, my beliefs, the different points of view... 

This is a short experiment where I try to write down my thoughts in the way I imagine them. (The piece is in Spanish because the thoughts in my head are in Spanish).

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Jasper Johns

Ideas flowing in my mind after going to Jasper John’s exhibition at RA:

1. Letters as the essence of the text. 2. Repetition works to communicate an idea. 3. Complex relationship between:       – seeing and thinking      – naming and perceiving 4. Language + visual perception 5. Does communication occurs in a single straightforward manner? > Leads to misinterpretation, how can we play with misinterpretation? 6. Reference: Philosophical investigations, by Ludwig Wittgenstein > a philosophy does not need to be a long text with flowing ideas, he writes it in short points, which can make more sense than having a long text. Why is wrong with that? Why do we tend to write in a very similar way and follow the rules?  7. “The meaning of language resides in the way it is used”. What is the nature of representation? What is true and what is false? 

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What/how do I want to tell?

After struggling with experimentation and to decide what to write and how to write it, I have the feeling that is this difficult to think about design when you haven’t chosen a specific format or way of designing. I am finding complicated to think about design just with words. Can I start writing choosing space? Can that be my starting point and try to think in a way that adapts to that space? Can space/medium/format determine my writing? Instead of writing and then try to find the best way to publish it, can I chose the publishing and then start writing according to that format? Would that benefit and expand my own writing or the opposite?

What if I write in Indesign? I have never done that. I always write (thinking in a way in how it would look in the end) but what if I do the opposite? Would my own writing change? Would it be chaotic? 

How can I approach my writing in new ways? 

[hacefaltapapel]

After a month being stuck and agreeing with Roland Barthes ideas about authorship ande the creation of meaning, I have realized I am not against authors but the opposite. They are important, they are essential, the action of writing is about not only the message but also about the author itself. Why would we read anything if we are not interested in others? Why it has to be all about the reader? Maybe in today’s internet era is becoming more and more about the user, about what feels, thinks and wants. So if it is all about that, why do we even care about knowing what others think, feel or want? 

As a writer I design my own text, and then is my own writing what make me author of it. I write either to express myself or to tell/communicate something to others, the world then might not understand my message and do with it whatever they want, but the act of writing is about both the person that writes and the public. Both are important in the creation of meaning. How as a writer can I take further this creation of meaning? By exploring the essence of writing which is not only verbal but also textual. This is my real interest behind my research, what can we do as a writers when we consider all the possibilities of writing. 

The image is a quick sketch. A representation of this idea that is the writing what makes somebody and author. The text I allowing people to see the writer in some kind of way, a portrait of the writer. In this case, the words of Clarice Lispector create the portrait of Clarice.

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Writers don’t play with type that often. Why should they?

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Once I interact with the text as a designer, is the text still the same? A text can mean whatever I want it to mean when I get in contact with it. I am able to create new meanings as a designer, manipulate its message and create a completely new text.

Who is the author of the text in the photos now? Does it matter? I have a responsibility as a designer? Where are the boundaries? Are there any limits in my new creation? Am I aloud to do whatever I want?

How do we create meaning? Am I a kind of reader in the first place?