Giorgia Scavo, graphic designer and visual artist, and Angelo Stitz, painter, illustrator and typographic designer, will give the free workshop 'Texture Beyond Type' on 10 June, from 11am to 2pm and from 3pm to 5pm, at EINA Bosc (Carrer del Bosc, 2) as part of the 27th edition of the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) 2022. Registration for this event is now open and can be done through this link.
What does it mean to be a creative practitioner in the age of algorithms and surface-less media?
New media plays a crucial role in relation to the fragmentation of information so that they provide us with only some versions of the world. For instance, the way information is formatted and styled has an effect on how information is received and interpreted.
We believe in this age it is necessary to re-evaluate the capabilities of human imagination, and that this can by done by exploring the relationship between executing control and being controlled by a machine.
However, creative practitioners are sense makers imagining the possible rather than being satisfied with the probable. Often, they distil intentions which are not perceivable to others.
In this workshop participants are invited to use a text-editor as a tool to create visual textures from typographic symbols. We will start with an initial input to then produce possible outcomes, to then collaboratively will explore its aesthetical, historical, and social values to re-work them from alternative perspectives, and produce a final outcome.
As a theoretical framework, our focus will be on creative methodologies that attempt to sabotage the functioning of tools and media or, on the contrary, collaborate with it. Here artists and designers capture, or rather provoke, improbable and unexpected results, exploring how to expand the field of the possible in contrast to that of the probable, putting in value the remains and the margin of error of the devices, as opposed to the regular and anticipated operation of those.
We will look at the thinking of the Czech philosopher Vilém Flusser, and other philosophers who have focused their research on questioning the role that tools and media play in the configuration of our perception and experience of the world.
This activity is part of ISEA2022 Barcelona, the 27th edition of the International Symposium on Electronic Art. Promoted by the UOC in collaboration with the CCCB, Santa Mònica, NewArtFoundation, the new Barcelona Hac Te Art, Science and Technology Hub, MACBA, Barcelona City Council and the Catalan government's Department of Culture, it is one of the most important events on an international scale dedicated to the crossover between art, design, science, technology and society.
Beyond Type, Giorgia Scavo