Workshop Statement

June 10th, Convent de Sant Agustí

Keywords: Sabotage, Media-Literacy, Influence, Possibility, Versions

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.  http://www.metatype.de/texture_beyond_type

• Giorgia Scavo is focused on developing ongoing research about accidents and irregularities seen as openings to the unexpected. After she graduated at the Royal College of Art (London) in 2018, she graduated in Digital Art Direction at ESDi/URL (Barcelona) in 2020. Meanwhile she has been working as a graphic designer, art director and professor. Giorgia Scavo & Angelo Stitz met as Visual Communication students at the Royal College of Art in London in 2016 and share an interest in the transitions between human and machines. They are former co-founders of the student-led program forum ‘F[r]iction’ started in 2017.
• Angelo Stitz explores the visual, technical and social aspects of language and its obstacles in translating originality. His scope of work includes graphic design, visual identities and editorial design focussing on typography and type design. Recently, he taught as a sessional lecturer for the MA Design, Communication and Technology course at Ravensbourne University, London. Giorgia Scavo & Angelo Stitz met as Visual Communication students at the Royal College of Art in London in 2016 and share an interest in the transitions between human and machines. They are former co-founders of the student-led program forum ‘F[r]iction’ started in 2017.