Proj. 2

Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel The Exhibition

A selfie theme park, @rabbittown.bdg, created ‘Love Light,” a knockoff of Chris Burden’s ‘Urban Light’ in Indonesia.

After @jsueda’s catalogue “All Possible Futures” went missing from the Pratt library, a copy from Connecticut was shipped to Brooklyn for use until November 1st. To ensure students continue to have access to the text, a facsimile was created using scans and after-hours printing. The book also exists as a digital PDF. Produced by Carter Gekiere & Maddy Bruster, 2019.

This is the page for Proj. 2 in Pratt 22/FA-COMD-460-04 - Emerging Practices: Uncreative Designing

Gatekeeping is the activity of controlling and usually limiting public access to something. Until recently, accessing information required physical proximity. To see a famous painting, you had to visit it at a museum. To listen to a rare record, you had to track it down. Mechanical reproduction emancipated images at the end of the 19th century, allowing them to circulate in prints and books. At the end of the 20th century, digital reproduction freed them from materiality altogether.

But can information be too free? Many creators attempt to control the digital circulation of their work so they can charge for it and make a living. But the same controls that aim to protect artists, students, and small businesses can be overbroad and prevent those same sympathetic characters from accessing information locked behind paywalls and in libraries.

Shadow Libraries & Archives
Archive.org
Are.na
Z-Library
Dexter Sinister
Readings.Design
Whole Pratt Catalog

Oct 7: Your assignment is to find some information (image, text, audio) that is somehow "locked up" and emancipate it by sharing it with everyone in the hallway outside our classroom. Inherent in this project is the concept of translation since you will likely be transposing your information from one medium to another. You may also want to editorialize and shape how your information is understood—but that is optional. If you want to do a physical installation or use the monitors, let me know so I can get departmental approval. On Oct 7, please bring a proposal/rough draft to discuss. You may work in groups or as a class. This is an open prompt that allows for your interpretation.