Nevolution

Record and Analysis

This exhibition, which recently finished at the fantastic City Gallery looked at a sprawling collection of engineering photographs taken out of their original context and positioned (quite skilfully) into the gallery space. Titled Record and Analysis it's subheading should have been An exercise in an attempt at objectivity, having been reduced to hilarity by the curator. 

The last time I reviewed an exhibition there was for Bluestone Loungeroom. I opened with the line This isn't for the cool kids. This one's for the geeks, the nerds, the unsung heroes... It seems to be a running theme at City Gallery to maintain this focus, and it's done here with gusto. It's a real marvel looking at these images, stripped of almost any original meaning. At times you are left with marvel at the great improvements in infrastructure that Melbourne, or any other modern city for that matter, went through after the second world war. Other times you can't help but giggle at the ludicrous measurements, notes and points of importance. 

As to be expected from this exhibition, it was laid out with meticulous precision. This arrangement gave the work the order it needed to shine, to speak to the inner engineer in all of us. But in doing so, it referenced the original context of these works. Not as things of beauty or conceptual interest but as useful objects to those who needed them. In this sense, we're reminded that they originally served as records and documents, instead of the objects of mirth that we can't help feel by looking at them now. This isn't a critique of the exhibition design however, I think it was spot on. It's a shame I can't link to the curator's statement because it's worth reading, and articulates my points in much finer detail. What I can do, however, is link to the curator's (Louis Porter) website. The rest of his work, both found and produced by him are in the same objective strain and gives a clearer view of the ideas in this exhibition.

The personal highlight was pulling out the draws (seen above) and perusing through bizarre collections and documents. The street signs and shire council crests were a nice touch, but nothing beats photographic documentation of bricks. I'd put a call to action at the bottom of this post urging you to go see it, but it finished weeks ago.

Wrapping

In the middle of doing some last minute present wrapping and thought I'd show off these cute little cards with their even cuter lettering. 

The New Illustrated

Nearly a year ago I mentioned that I was given the full set of The New Illustrated Library of Science and Invention mostly designed by Erik Nitsche. I'm slowly chugging away trying to bring the good stuff online, but in the mean time these should be in order. Each book is beautifully bound with a crisp iconic gold embossing representation of the contents inside. I've attempted to display them in corresponding levels of awesomeness so if you get a bit bored near the end, don't fret. If for some reason these aren't big enough for you, I've put them up on flickr as well. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glen Huntly, New and Used

I've been spending a bit of time in Glen Huntly lately. Which is a shame, it's a horrible place. On the plus side, I noticed these charming examples which have been fading in the sun for as long as I can remember.

 
 

 

Intelligence, Redesigned

The latest issue of Wired has a fantastic feature, Intelligence Redesigned, updating 50s science textbook illustrations using current scientific knowledge and design techniques. Taking this as an example of Wired's dedication to hybrid formats of journalism, storytelling and design is the way this story has been parsed. 

I came across this story in the print version and instantly knew I had to reflect on the article here but waited on buying the issue until the price dropped from international overnight rates to the more sensible local price. Meanwhile, I looked online to see if the article had been posted. The online version has been translated from print to web in quite a nice way, allowing you to zoom in on the imagery. All while keeping the original look and feel of the article. Meanwhile, there's an interview with the author of these books Roy Gallant; although sadly not the illustrators - the real heroes of the story. To make matters even more interesting the Storyboard podcast has a discussion with the author of this piece, looking at the idea behind the article and some of the problems they came up against in translating the illustrations. For some reason they also provided print ready pdfs of the spreads causing me to spend way too much time playing around with them for this post. I won't discuss the changes they made in too much detail as the writers of the article, Carl DeTorres and Timothy Lesle have said it better than I could.

 

I've been a sucker for vintage science illustrations for a year or so, quietly collecting my own collection and documenting them to put up here. I suppose this will be the impetus I need to put some of them up here. In the process of collecting I've been thinking how they could be updated for today and these succeed on so many levels. As a technical exercise, they're fantastic, and achieve updating not only the complexity of what we now know, but in how we know and perceive it. Something painterly explanations could never hope to match, despite their warmth. 

 

What I find wonderful and charming about all of the original illustrations is their attempts to map and visualise the new and the unknown. Even the redesigned images illustrate not just the original information but explain new understandings of these systems, especially so with the earthquake visualisation. On a side note - is it just me or does anyone else find it unsettling that we live on a planet that is filled with boiling hot magma surrounded by a thin shell? Anyway. In the podcast they discuss the difficulties they had in exploring and visualising the idea that the earth is a three dimensional sphere existing in time, something omitted from the original. This is also shown in the representation of the atmosphere with the simple addition of the third dimension. At first I felt it an unnecessary addition. But considering no one had seen a photograph of the whole earth at that point, it is a very important addition.

 

Meanwhile, today's scientific illustrators have the far trickier task of visualising not just hidden information but also ever increasing information and complexity. The twentieth century was fascinated with the atom and the stars which by today's standards are quite easy to understand - in most part thanks to illustrators like these - but also because of the reductionist method of 20th century (and earlier) thinking. But in moving beyond this reductionism, and by extension Modernism (I'm just going to go right ahead and skip past Post Modernism for everyone's sake), we're also moving away from the search for the unchanging and the absolute. Instead of looking at singular elements we're looking at them in the context of whole systems, processes and networks. I've been thinking about an inverted equivalent to these spreads pretty much since I started collecting, sketching them whenever the glimmer of an idea comes to me. Trying to articulate the needs of today's science using old techniques and visual styles. It's turning out to be much harder than I thought. But it's looking at science from this perspective is where the new and unknown is to be found. And the most exciting, for both science and design.

 

Colophon: It would be quite irresponsible for me to not mention the illustrators of all the works considering my affection for the unsung illustrators of yesteryear 

Exploring the Weather: Lowell Hess
Updated illustration: Bryan Christie

Exploring under the Earth: John Polgreen
Updated illustration: Jason Lee

Exploring Mars: Lowell Hess
Updated map: NASA