FINAL PROJECT

On the basis of my essay question being:

Explain & critique the idea of 'the birth of the reader' put forward by Roland Barthes using a range of design works of your choice as examples, making use of other writers work to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the concept.

For my final project idea, I started to look at the Rorschach test. Although it is a psychological test that tests the users perceptions of inkblots, it is impressive both visually and in the amount of different interpretations that can be taken from it.

From this my idea is to have users/participants draw over an inkblot where the opacity has been changed.

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ANGEL WING

LIGHTNING BOLT

INKBLOT

Then using the variety of different outcomes from a single inkblot creating a piece of work that combines all of these outcomes either as a single image or piece.
I feel that this would appropriately combine the use of Data Gathering, by asking people to draw their own interpretation over the top, as well as collaborative design.

PERSON 1

PERSON 2

INSPIRATION BEHIND PROJECT

Martín Feijoó

I first saw this designer/artist from a newspaper article (link above). Feijoós' work I feel is an embodiment of the Birth of the Reader theory of which my essay has been written about.

I found it fascinating as there is a link between the Reader (in this case Feijoó) and the 'Author' being an existential question as there is no author but instead trying to see something in a randomly created formation generated by the weather.

EXAMPLES OF MARTIN FEIJOOS' WORK

Aaron Koblin

Shaping Clouds

The Sheep Market

I discovered Aaron Koblins' 'The Sheep Market' during the Written Essay part of my Authorship and Interaction module.

In this work, Aaron Koblin used Amazon Mechanical Turk, an american crowd-working website that allows requesters and workers to collaborate at a small price.

The website itself is mostly filling in forms/questionnaires as well as the occasional audio to text scribe work, however Aaron Koblin did something different with this by asking 10,000 people to draw a picture of a sheep facing left.

I believed this to be an inspiration as a form of Data Gathering combined with art and design.

Examples from the site

Amazon Mechanical Turk

Sheep Market Site

Final Project Process

In order to really explore the random generation of the Rorschach test, I decided to experiment with different inks of different colours.

The results surround.

Instantly, when looking at these images, my mind began to think of all the possibilities of what these images looked like or could be.

As an extra experiment, I personally drew over inkblots created with lighter inks as a idea of how to express what can be seen in these images.

Below are six I created using light blue inks and a fineliner pen.

I decided for the final project relating to this experimentation and research was to get people to draw over a single reproduced inkblot image in order to see the various interpretations of a single image by a large group of people.

I felt this would be a good way of linking together my process on the Authorship and Interaction module as well as tying together with newly formed ideas found when writing my essay.