△1 – WEEK 3

Continuing from last week, I was experimenting with suggestive forms of communication and a glimpse of how they can be used to communicate.

During the week, as I ran out of people to talk to about this topic, I decided to try to talk to an AI, which is ChatGPT to gain some new input, and I did encounter some unexpected situations, which is the censorship.

These responses made me think of 2 things

• How can I bypass the censorship like talking about the topic but not using some certain word? 
• And the other thing was that I’ve never experimented with text before. In my previous projects I always used visuals or images as a medium but not text

So this week, I decided to experiment mainly through text, inspired by Sarah Lucas’ practice of how she played with the idea of mixing random found objects and giving them a suggestive arrangement. I project that idea onto texts by randomly choosing a page of a book from my bookshelf and manipulating it into giving some kind of suggestive messages

As I explored in my previous enquiry, it led me to the realisation that the use of suggestive communication, the method of cropping, highlighting and filtering some details, can create an imaginary space in people’s minds, almost like a seductive tease that gradually reveals more. I’m intrigued by the idea of using mesmerising visuals or widely acknowledged stories to craft new narratives, leading people to think differently by influencing their minds and drawing them into alternative stories.

Feedback

What’s working?

• A variety of form experiments (language-based, stylistic, form-like, cutting, revealing
• Interesting format of the book, scribbling changes in the text, and some skeleton treatments to allow different information to be pieced together with each other
• The publication gives an interactive way of reading; flipping through the book is like doing text decryption
• A critical question is being reflected in the making process
• Interesting interactions; playing with the form of text
• The experiments on the first pages work really well with the interest and idea of triggering people to tell a different non-recognised topic, such as sexual preferences

What’s not working?

• Quite rough, formally
• Unclear of the reasons or interest in a certain style – blocky, pixellated etc.
• The censorship form might be too cliché?
• the experiments in the brochure from the back is hard to understand – they seem to miss the connection to your context for the viewer -> in comparison to the experiment with the red arrows/yellow dots

How could this be explored in the next project?

• Working with text creatively, writing / editing / cutting / cropping etc.
• The relationship between the methods and style and your position can be explored in much more depth
• Think about the effect the forms have, the reading experience, the before/after effect with specific text
• Look at “Huw Lemmey” work
• You already found the methods to approach the topic that you’re working on, it’d be nice to see how are you mixing the body of work that you’ve developed, changing narratives, combining text-image