A rare typography manual found in an old bookshop in Prague in 1999 sparked the interest of designer Emlyn Firth. With its beautiful diagrams and notations, Firth ponders the historical context in which it was produced.

From a post-war Czechoslovakia, solid and geometric typefaces are born which “owe a lot to Constructivist principles” and are “satisfyingly slabby, brutal and black.” These typefaces have a structure and presence in written language. Their aesthetic clearly references the regime within which they were created.

To find out more and see the full Collection, visit here.

(originally published on Central Station V1)

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For more Collections we’ve gathered, take a look here.

The souvenirs, designed and manufactured entirely in Scotland, aim to offer a lasting material legacy of both major events.

The following artists, designers and companies have made prototypes: Atelier and Marc Camille Chaimowicz with Begg Scotland and McRostie of Glasgow, Claire Duffy with Tunnock’s, Emlyn Firth and Angharad McLaren with Johnstons of Elgin, FOUND with Chemikal Underground, Katy West with Highland Stoneware and Rogano Oyster Bar, Neil McGuire and Marianne Anderson with Carlton Die Casting and Jewellery Prototyping Services.

The souvenirs will be developed for sale as a part of the cultural programme for the Commonwealth Games. They will be available to buy in Glasgow and across Scotland in 2014.

Scotland Can Make It! is commissioned as part of Scotland’s Cultural Programme for London 2012 and Glasgow 2014.

Left to Right: Neil McGuire, Emlyn Firth, Marianne Anderson, Fiona Hyslop, Kirsty Cunningham (Johnstons of Elgin), Lucy McEachen, Stewart Henderson (Chemikal Underground), Catriona Duffy. Photo: Neil Thomas Douglas.

Find out more:
Website | Facebook | Twitter

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Browse through our event bulletin to find more events.

To add something special, each day in February 2010 there was a blog from selected members that explored a different aspect of where sound, music and creativity meet. The end result was a series of discourse by various different artists who use and/or appreciate sound & audio in different ways.

The organiser of the series, Emlyn Firth, compiled a daily list linking to each blog so that you could catch up on what they may have missed. To say thank you again to everyone to participated, and to give anyone who missed it a chance to comment and discuss, we thought we’d give it another spin.

And so we give you, Mix-Blog [Intro]. Enjoy.

You can also see each Mix-Blog listed here.

Got a blog about sound/audio/music that you want to tell us about? Feel Free to add a note & link in the comments below.

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Like a classic film or piece of art, one viewing just isn’t enough. Encore is about revisiting much loved creative blogs that are definitely worth a second look.

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Want to see more special events we’ve had in the past? Browse through our Partner Projects.

4D Building Projection? 3D Building Projections you’ve seen before of course. Structures mapped and then projected onto to look like they’re made of rotating cubes, spilling generative neon globules from the windows, and almost always, the pièce de défaillance structurale – the classic apocalyptic disintegration of said building.

In search of a ‘first’ to add to this most zeitgeisty of mediums – for the world launch of the new Peugot 208 –  the added dimension we were invited to see is really an interactive element. Real-time rendered sequences being pulled about by a contemporary dance performer (via a Microsoft Kinect motion sensor) in a square in downtown Rio de Janeiro.

Yeah… Brazil. Contemporary Dance. Kinect Motion Sensors. Extra Dimensions. These, to keep you in the loop, are the constituent parts of the marketing messages ‘Let Your Body Drive’ and ‘Motion & Emotion’. Y’know. Brazilians  all have great bodies… and um, well I think you can gauge the subtleties  of everything else for yourself, although there’s strictly none of that ‘shakin’ that ass’ booty recall stuff – this is Peugot remember, not Renault. So anyway here’s a teaser video of the building projection, which might make more sense of things than I can.

And some Brazilian chap who’s got excited about it and filmed the entire thing:

And here’s a very short video of us and a predominantly French group of bloggers being briefed by the agencies and Peugot.

The production itself is led by BD (who originated in Glasgow but are now based in London) and Projection Advertising. As chance would have it I’d worked with both these companies before (the project details had been kept secret to us until we arrived) and it was genuinely good to see this international scale of work come from two homegrown stables. Although 3D projection is now prevalent, it’s still a huge undertaking to convince big brands that it can deliver. In turn, whilst most projection mapping seems to have its roots in an aesthetically driven VJ culture – and what you always have to term loosely as ‘guerilla’ tactics – to be pushed as a medium will always require a commercial level of financial input.

From a design and production point of view it was also striking to see how many people were involved to bring this activity to fruition. With so much on the line regarding new car models, a whole supporting cast of Peugot representatives were working very closely alongside agencies, specialist partners, not to mention the production side of things in Brazil. And don’t forget Mr E. Motion in the white jumpsuit.

The official video is due to be released on YouTube tomorrow (13th December), I’ll post that up via the usual Facebook and Twitter channels.

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Going to a preview or have a review you want to share on Central Station? Get in touch and let us know.

Rather than a blog, I’ve created aprofile (Preview.GSA_BA_FineArt) and uploaded aPortfolio of images of personal favourites from Painting & Printmaking, Sculpture and Environmental Art, and Fine Art Photography. There’s also some additional shots of the show in the main profile.

For a comprehensive run down of the entire show and graduates, please visit:
http://www.gsa.ac.uk/degreeshow2010/

Preview:
Glue Factory, Friday 11 June, 5–7pm
CCA, 7–10pm

Exhibition Runs from Saturday 12 – Saturday 26 June
This year’s MFA is sited in The Glue Factory*. Used earlier this year for Glasgow International, the space provides a much less uniform space than the awesome, hangar like Tramway, with odd quirky rooms and warren-like staircases. Today, after weeks of sunshine, Glasgow is buckling under an intense rainstorm, and The Glue Factory resembles a bit of a leaky ship. This is a familiar Weegie set-up then - unsuspecting, post-industrial, grimecore warehouse plays shelter to conceptual work, which in turn pays site-specific homage.

It’s possible to identify two broad (and very generalised) strands present at the show. One is the site specific, post-industrial kind mentioned above, the other a more detached practice which relates to contemporary phenomena – chiefly data and the internet.

In the post-industrial, site-specific camp are artists like Sarah Forest, and Olga Schulz, who has installed an interestingly minimal sculptural shelter based on a peeling poster.

Tom Harrup has taken all the heavy-duty rawness almost full circle. His light installations take apart and celebrate machinery – everything is recycled, junk-yard-sourced and unfinished – yet in the darkened space these are two of the most hypnotic and graceful interventions you’ll encounter. Rings of light ebb and float mid-air, a theatre iris breathes a pattern against a dull brick wall.

Perhaps Tom is the conceptual bridge to the other camp of artists who deconstruct the technical and the digital. Ellie Harrison needs no prior introduction to Central Station members, and her works often have an online presence. She shows her witty General Election Drinking Game in it’s entirity here. Emily Donnini has made a slick piece which re-presents top google-searches of various countries as stop-frame animations back-projected onto floated glossy perspex screens.

Maybe the most intriguing graduate is Oliver Braid. Braid has presented a framed drawing – six pencil portraits in a detailed but slightly schoolboy style. Five of the portraits are of male graduating BA artists whom Braid considers to be the ‘hottest’ in the year. The images are culled from their Facebook profiles. The 6th image is a distorted reimagining of the artist as a sort of Facebook Zombie. A tangled off-white sculpture made from glue sits atop the frame – “the content of his gluepot”, Graham Ramsay, one of the MFA tutors explains.

How do I begin to unravel Post-Relational Aesthetic Onanism via Social Networking? Do I even want to? Seeing as we’re exploring the medium here, I have, in the interests of thorough research, befriended Oliver Braid on Facebook*, and will attempt to get him onto this very platform, and perhaps he can have the last word. Who knows, he may already be lurking as I write. In the meantime, here’s a Quentin Crisp quote from his artist’s statement:

“People who have learned to sing will always have richer, rounder voices. People who’ve learned to dance will always have bigger, bolder movements, but as for pottery and basket-weaving, what good are they? The moment the doors of the evening institute clang shut behind you you are back where you started. On the way home you might get into an argument with a stranger at a bus stop. It’s no good saying I can’t express myself you’ll have to come and see my baskets.” Quentin Crisp, 1980

*UPDATE. Friend request accepted.

Thanks to Graham Ramsay, MFA Tutor, for the tour, and to Kirsty Barr for organising.

The elephant in the corner? The tricky group dynamics. How do you achieve a coherent show with twelve voices? How do you ensure that your audience isn’t overwhelmed by the noise of a group curated group show? It’s difficult not to consider this, and imagine conversation and conflicting visions as you walk around some brilliant but at first seemingly disconnected pieces.

The ‘Mastercats’ say that the project “has evolved and developed from our shared interest in the archival process, influenced initially by the historical significance of the gallery itself. Exploring the practice of collecting and exhibiting has become the foundation for this exhibition.”

So perhaps all the pieces are there to be put back together again by the viewer – a sort of customisable collection. With all archives, there is a process of sifting and searching for value and meaning. Neil McGuire – After The News – has produced a catalogue which is considered part of the show, presented as a kit of parts that you assemble yourself in the gallery. (Worth getting your hands on one, it’s a conceptually sound and
beautiful bit of work in it’s own right.)

There is a rawness, and a vintage/other era slant to lots of the work. Sawn in half wardrobes housing nick-nacks and pottery all painted white, Dada-esque upturned pianos, screen-printed sheet metal, haphazard groupings of old televisions, fanzines. Omar Zingaro Bhatia’s family cassette selection provides some lighter interactive entertainment on a ’70’s stereo. I was personally pleased to see a reappearance of some recent Glasgow folklore – Raydale Dower’s ‘Drapeau Noir’ – or at least theblack-flag-with-hole that hung outside the Gi temporary venue until just last month.

An exception is The Otolith Group [now Turner nominated and as such considered a bit of a curatorial coup] who have a film projected here, and for practical reasons it sits outwith the main space in the refurbished Georgian gallery. It’s a documentary that portrays the intense details of working life for some of the lowest paid workers in India, and inevitably lends some perspective.

These creative decisions and ideas are a product of an open ended dialogue and process. There’s been an effort to push out research and development onto social networking platforms and blogs, and a series of panel discussions (one of which I was lucky enough to attend and speak at) with creative professionals in an aim to pool collective knowledge and resources. Go to the TDTDT site (also designed by Neil McGuire) to explore links and images, delivered via delicious tags and pdfs. Or attend the next discussion on Saturday, (2–4pm, with Nicolas Oddy, Anne-Marie Kramer, Daniel Watt). The MasterCats show is a collection of works well worth seeing, but perhaps what they all do really differently are all those collaborative project aspects – that’s really what sets them apart and sets future works and collaborations in motion.

Introducing a social media strategy is an easy win for arts marketeers. Do away with print – save time, hassle and the environment, with the added bonus of being the revolutionary who drags everyone into the 21st Century.

In theory, it sounds great. As black and white as a halftone dot. Except this whole trade-off between design and print, and social media, is a bit of a misnomer. But let’s compare them for a moment:

Print has been around for a long, long time. For the sake of argument lets pick out a landmark year – 1450 – when Gutenburg started getting his fingers inky doing some nice brochures for the Lord. That’s 560 years. Twitter? 4 years. [I’m aware social media was around a bit before that, but then I’m not counting back to The Dead Sea Scrolls, God’s innovative but ill-fated roll-folded direct marketing campaign].

Right now there’s a lot of ‘what’s next?’ questions and prophesizing, and Web 3.0 chin stroking, but no-one really knows for sure where this is all heading. We can see some platforms are already dying (Bebo is the latest casualty, MySpace a hollow Murdoch shell of it’s innovative heyday). Point being, just because this new stuff is great – and we should all embrace it – we shouldn’t chuck out all the brilliant old stuff. So, here’s my 4 part plea to the design/print naysayers…
First off, adopting Social Media shouldn’t be about giving design a bodyswerve. Effective social media marketing is designed – it’s a nuanced combination of images and text just like anything you put on paper, and needs to be considered in the same way.

Secondly, Social Media shouldn’t be thought of as a cheap alternative to design for print – if anything social media takes more time – once you’ve created something it’s only the beginning of a journey that requires constant feeding, monitoring and interaction.

Third, if we’re talking solely about arts marketing, then surely we’re still appealing at core to a visual culture that places intricates values on form, content and aesthetics? Rather than killing off printed material, social media essentially presents an opportunity to focus on making smaller runs of better print. As a designer I take little joy in squeezing on more and more information that could be communicated on a website, or sending out large runs of cheap, digitally printed flyers. I’m a fully paid-up stock sniffing, type fetishising, paper grammage nerd, so I’m biased… but when you are communicating something as potentially complex as artists’s work, combined with the values of a gallery, isn’t it worth the effort to attempt to represent that properly?

Most importantly, design and print is a hugely important part of visual culture, and works in tandem with visual art. A great example of this is Neil McGuire’s piece I wrote about a few weeks ago that was produced for the ECA Masters show and in itself became part of the exhibition.

There must be more examples, and better arguments. Am I preaching to the converted, or is print pulped?

Image: Invite for Baldvin Ringsted, +44 141 Gallery by The Press – Emlyn Firth/Edwin Pickstone