ARPA Journal, 4: Instruments of Service (2016)

ARPA Journal is a biannual digital publication that serves as a public forum for debate on applied research practices in architecture.

This issue questions the status of the instrument and of service. The articles explore spaces of encounter between “tangible and intangible creative work” in design practice, business models, new forms of representation and activism.

With contributions by Denise Scott Brown, Orit Halpern, Curt Gambetta, Alan Smart, Annabel Wharton, Francesca Hughes, Magdalena Miłosz, Filip, Wendy W Fok, J. Meejin Yoon and Eric Howeler, Michelle Fornabai, Ryan John King and Ekaterina Zavyalova, Lori Brown, Mustafa Faruki, Behnaz Farahi, Anab Jain, Jonathan Sun and Carlo Ratti, McLain Clutter, and Rafi Segal.

Guest Editor: Jennifer W. Leung
Based at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, New York
Published May 2016
Open access

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Aleksei Gan: Constructivism (1922–) [RU, EN]

Through his co-founding with Varvara Stepanova and Alexander Rodchenko of the First Working Group of Constructivists (1921–4), and his publication of Constructivist principles in his book Konstruktivizm (1922), the Russian designer and art theorist Aleksei Gan played a leading role in the development of the Constructivist aesthetic. In his interpretation of Constructivism, which he saw as the creative counterpart to the socio-political tasks of the Revolution, Gan called for creative activity to be politicized to the maximum and for its artistic component to be minimized. His slogans included “we declare uncompromising war on art” and “death to art”, which he attempted to encapsulate in his designs for portable book kiosks, folding street stalls, exhibition posters and clothing, where the objects were reduced to the most simple and functional forms.

Konstruktivizm [Конструктивизм]
Publisher Tverskoe izdatel’stvo, Tver, Summer 1922
70 pages, 23.5 х 19.9 cm
Edition of 2000
via Andrey Kurilkin

Konstruktivizm (Russian, 1922, 23 MB)
Constructivism (English, trans. of extracts by John Bowlt, 1974)

More about Constructivism and Aleksei Gan.

Johanna Drucker: Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production (2014)

“In our current screen-saturated culture, we take in more information through visual means than at any point in history. The computers and smart phones that constantly flood us with images do more than simply convey information. They structure our relationship to information through graphical formats. Learning to interpret how visual forms not only present but produce knowledge, says Johanna Drucker, has become an essential contemporary skill.

Graphesis provides a descriptive critical language for the analysis of graphical knowledge. In an interdisciplinary study fusing digital humanities with media studies and graphic design history, Drucker outlines the principles by which visual formats organize meaningful content. Among the most significant of these formats is the graphical user interface (GUI)—the dominant feature of the screens of nearly all consumer electronic devices. Because so much of our personal and professional lives is mediated through visual interfaces, it is important to start thinking critically about how they shape knowledge, our behavior, and even our identity.

Information graphics bear tell-tale signs of the disciplines in which they originated: statistics, business, and the empirical sciences. Drucker makes the case for studying visuality from a humanistic perspective, exploring how graphic languages can serve fields where qualitative judgments take priority over quantitative statements of fact. Graphesis offers a new epistemology of the ways we process information, embracing the full potential of visual forms and formats of knowledge production.”

Publisher Harvard University Press, 2014
metaLABprojects series
ISBN 0674724933, 9780674724938
215 pages

Reviews: Scott McLemee (Inside Higher Ed 2014), Maggie Sattler (Zeteo 2014), Cory Taylor (2014), Johannah Rodgers (Brooklyn Rail 2015).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (17 MB, updated on 2016-8-15)

See also Drucker’s 2010 Graphesis article.