my name is ella mackinnon and this is how i blog

I have written my questions and my cover emails. I just need to finish the making of the cultural probe kit, which contains:

• a disposable camera
• a moleskin note pad
• a set of instuctions
• 3 sets of questions
• a pencil
• and some spot stickers

What I need to do nnow is decide on the decign of the instructions and the questions and i also need need to redesign the covers for my cameras using the existing nets.

“Where chaos begins, classical science stops. For as long as the world has had physicisists inquiring into laws of nature, it has suffered a special ignorance…The irregular side of nature, the discontinuous and erratic side - these have been puzzles to science, or worse, monstrocities.”

“physiologists found a suprising order in the chaos that develops in the human heart, the prime cause pf the sudden unexplained death.”

“now that science is looking, chaos seems to be everywhere.”

“wobble lines, imperfect spacing and welcome slip ups are what gives these works all their charm. It also brings a certain consciousness back to the design world.”

“…odd lines becoe the core of a unique and fsh design approach.”

“the actual work and care put into a creation by a designer such as shifting elements on a computer screen for hours , does not only get overlooked, one doesnt even know that a human hand was involved in the pricess in the first place.”

“mistakes are welcome, irregular lines inspire…”

“mistakes, quirks and imperfections, coincidence and an unstoppable desire for experimentation exploration.”

“the joy of coincidence, the freedom of play and overall originality are what count and come foremost.”

“ideas emerge in all kinds of different ways, often by chance… whilst day dreaming ir when a happy accident suggests a solution.” pg 15

“…by luck” pg 16

“here he dampemed the paper and liberally tipped watercolours over it, closed his eyes and quickly tilted the paper back and fourth.” pg 30/31

“to achieve the effect he dropped the ink from a balcony and although he made a terrible mess on the floor, persisted until he had what he wanted”

Alan fletchers work relies quite heavily on chance. he often imposes strict limitations to his design work hich really pushes the idea of chance to the mimits. whether it be limited to a material, technique or place etc… reading about his work makes it very clear to me how he relys alot on happy accidents, such as finding an object ultimately leads directlt to a design for a logo…alot of his work also is done by hand which also leaves his work open to human error.

“These pictures are commonly seen as having no value, or is even seen as being of negative worth.”

“I haven’t thrown away more than a handful of pictures in all the years”

“fella is carefully looking at the bits that we would normally subconsciously erase - the irregular spacing and unplanned juxtaposition of surface.”

“The glitches in the signs are remade, remixed and bedded down into new forms, unique and yet highy referential”

” The visual glitch is an artiface resulting from an error. It is neither the cause, nor the error itself, it is simply the product of an error and more specifically its visual manifestation. It is a signified slip that marks a departure from our expected result.” pg.8 para.1

“Due to our never-ending pursuit of signal perfection, higher definition, increased clarity and fidelity in consumer electronics, audio and visual, glitches are eliminated in a matter of milliseconds. At times, they completely steal the limelight and become centrepieces of attention - however unwanted - such as an ATM view display glitching” pg.8 para.5

“Visual Glitches are rare in standard occurrence and yet paradoxically, they are easy to provoked.” pg.8 para.6

“For the glitch artists, the process of creating visuals is an involved process, which stems from an understanding of their tools.” pg.8 para.10

“in forcing a visual glitch there is an element of unpredictability that makes experimentation worthwhile and rewarding.” pg.9 para.3

“a glitch comes to be outside a users intentions.” pg 15 johnny rogers

“an error condition” pg 20 ant scott

“no-one can deliberately make a mistake although mistakes are the greatest spurces of information”

“outside of art and design, however, glitches don’t get off the hook so easily - they are branded as bad reception, undesirable fuzz, static or interference.”

“in a universe of broken symmetries, a small rebellion of this type earns my respect.” johnny rogers

Glitch is a type of design whereby you use force computer errors so that make magnificent visual displays/images… the art of it is in the creating of the mistake/error

I feel this book didnt really help me that much with my project but had a lot of general similarities with other things ive read on the topic of mistakes and experimentation.

PLUS: glitches are seen as beautiful and the aim of the “glitch artist” is to make errors happen…forcing them to happen. It shows superiority of humans over technology… making them glitch is like torturing them … in a way!

MINUS: are mistakes really mistakes if you try to make them?!

INTERESTING: Authorship? the end outcome cannot really be predicted, but that’s the point. Finding something beautiful in what is usually annoying. shows the true inner working of the techology…that it isnt perfect…much like humans.

“It is an answr that keeps the artist from taking himself or herself too seriously and infuses some fun into an industry that sometimes takes itself too seriously. It reveals the hand of the maker, and its viewer finds comfort in that: the artist illustrates by lines made crooked from too many cups of coffee.” pg.10 para.2

“The solutions enclosed in this book are full of magi; each page is its own, wholly shaped but the artists unique process, each a study of carefully executed composition of accident, line obsession, colour and craft” pg.10 para.4

“Let the baseline drift and wobble, and let the viewer know thats a person made this. Try your best. Don’t fuck around. It cant be perfect, which is so much the beauty of it.” Pg.13 Para.2

“Every time i put a mark down with my hands, I intuitively learn something: a wrong angle, bad spacing, an ugly r, or “That one’s hot, lets not fuck it up” (and then you do anyway: restraint is for suckers)” pg.13 para.3

“Now i use my hands because i want mistakes, quirks and imperfections-those qualities that give my work warmth” pg.14 para.2

“I don’t know if mistake-induced spacing is all that interesting; its more the full package of aesthetics, quirks and ideas that I’m after” pg.14 para.4

PLUS: Overall, the impression i get from mike perry is that mistakes are inevitable…he accepts it and it has become a part of his style and process. He is open to them but not only accepts that they are there and part of the whole final image…but also learns from them.

MINUS: he recognises that not all mistakes are good…sometimes theyre “ugly”…. but he ultimately learns from the ugly mistakes.

INTERESTING: What i also got from this is that each individual mistake is not particularly interesting but together as a whole they make an interesting whole piece of work or type. I get the impression he very much likes using his hands to make work because he is certain they will lead to mistakes

whatever comes up

(image: a collaboration between myself, my son, and the rain)

today my head is full of dreams of ocean views, sitting lazily on a beach, eating summer produce (corn and strawberries), being near family again, sleeping with an ocean breeze and being near the deep woods (and the incredible green smells that come with that).

i have had some challenging weeks (months) lately and I am ready to be in a place that speaks to my heart more. what is it about change that makes it so nerve wracking? I suppose it is a lack of trust in our own ability to survive and thrive in a new place. I don’t know what it will feel like, what if I lose my center for a time? what if I find myself floundering?

what I learned about traveling from my husband is that even if you went on an adventure and forgot all of your stuff (or had some crazy, unexpected experiences), you would be okay. you would deal with it all in the moment and come up with new and creative ways to exist. human beings are beautiful in this way. we can adapt to whatever arises, and we like to think we can control everything ahead of time. it is only an illusion, but one we become very addicted to. we become very attached to things as our way of making us feel like ourselves.

I think this is why I have become so interested in using indeterminacy and chance in my work of late. by throwing myself into the unknown on purpose on a daily basis (using mediums that give you little or no control over the outcome) you develop an understanding that you will be able to work with whatever comes up. that every experience is an opportunity for a greater acceptance and you must let go of the idea that your actions can be deemed “right” or “wrong”. how interesting to be able to see so called “mistakes” in a new light. in fact they too are just an illusion.

John Cage writes, “What I really believe, is made perfectly clear by my actions. Since a mistake is beside the point, an error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a conception to actuality.”

in other words, what we predict in our heads is usually much different than what actually occurs. but that prediction was only based on our own assumptions and ideas about how we think things should be. not based in what the universe has in store for us. the trick then, is in learning to sit with whatever comes up and trust in our abilities to respond to our needs. whatever the challenges may be, there is always another way of seeing them.

“Disorder is merely the order you were not looking for.” ~Henri Bergson

does annnnnybody have anything totally, 100%, purely bad to say about mistakes….something that didn’t lead to some kind of good? I’ve read ALOT of books this summer and shit everyone’s only got something good to say at the end… ive got a pretty one sided argument on my hands……which i’m not sure is good or bad !? *huff*