2009: “the internet—the electric speedstick:”
As seen on your local instagram feed:
02.19.2009: I was going through some old files this morning and stumbled across my thesis project from graduate school. Long story short, I wrote daily responses every day using twitter and google search trends as source material. At the end of a week I would choose my favorite piece of daily writing and make an illustration about it. The writing and all of the illustrations became the physical exhibition. I also built (and continuously re-built) a website to document everything in real time, logging daily writing and posting illustrations as I made them. I printed the posters two-sided—one side image, one side source writing. The whole thing was really raw, and ultimately ended up becoming very personal. At the time, I thought I had spun off the rails at the end of the project, but looking back at this final dual-sided image post…my sleep deprived, gin soaked brain was onto something. facebook and twitter had only been around for a little bit, and instagram hadn’t been released yet. People were just getting their first-second gen iphones. But from the rigor of posting, writing, and looking at news trends I was experiencing fatigue I’d venture to say is pretty normal for anyone on the internet or social media today. But it’s not only about “post it” volume, it’s also about the convergence of digital and physical worlds, which we’ve seen over the past few years has deep “real-world” consequences—in particular when viewed through the lens of geopolitics and misinformation. The internet IS a war zone—a self referential “Wild West” kinda place complete with cowboy-clowns wearing hot pink hats and guns. Yeah, that feels right. I felt kind of embarrassed about this at the time, but looking at it now over ten years later the absurdity of this image makes perfect sense. I’d say where I was off was graphic design was/is certainly part of the problem of how we communicate online today, but I severely underestimated the scope of the issue. Anyways, just thought I’d share this little tidbit if jarrederraj history #graphicdesign #old #stilltryingtofigureitout—ciao.
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