PERFOSTER? An introduction.
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QUESTIONS?
1. What happens when the event (the now?) gets broken into fragments, or translated into objects? What, then, also happens as this translation is acted upon, read aloud, or performed? How does space define the object, and vice versa?
2. Can poster perform? More importantly, can design perform?; or can designer perform? With the tools now available, how can design become action-based? Not with intent to merely create spectacle (is this mere?), but to create immediate, honest works that respond to the needs of very specific contexts (on-the-spot, just-in-time, ad-hoc, etc...). In essence, an attempt to take that which is considered by some to be static, or dead, and breath new life.
ASIDE 1
"Can throat further poster?" - This quote discovered while feeding "Poster" and "Performance" through a random paragraph generator.
DEFINITIONS?
Perfoster is an invented word, by University of Tennessee Artist/Designer in Residence Can Birand, to describe Christian Cox's senior project work, which proposed the idea of Poster as Performance. The work produced from this proposition were multiple posters that held dialog with each other and the inhabitants of the space in which they resided, tandem posters that flapped in the wind; fun, colorful signs that took private culture language into public spaces; an installation commemorating the removal of said fun, colorful signs; and posters used as a script to be performed in front of an audience, or more specifically, a scene involving a street preacher. These experiences were then translated into book form, recounting things happened, creating new page-specific performances (Perfages) and predicting things to come.
These things to come are called Printer Performances, (Perfrinters) and involve portable equipment, such as a laptop, digital camera, and printer/scanner/copier hybrid. The work produced through these Perfrinters is to be given away freely to passersby, to be read aloud, thrown, bound into booklets, or stacked into neat piles until they topple over. The content being produced within and of the space, on-the-spot. All of this work, from Perfosters to Perfrinters, combine to create a loose-narrative involving self-reference, context-specific events, immediacy, and collaboration or dialog with others. This is a personal exploration, which attempts to involve many.
ASIDE 2
This is an attempt to create a personal (but free-to-use-by-all) design methodology that examines the gap between myself as a designer and performer, as well as the translation between events and objects. It began as a one-semester research project, but will continue to mutate, expand, and re-process itself through many forms.
(this is a work in progress, to be expanded upon...)
(this, meaning everything...)