Document Type

Theses, Ph.D

Disciplines

6.4 ART

Abstract

This thesis draws on five publications produced between 2010–22: My 2020 film installation Landfall; a series of four museum and gallery-published books made with artist Gerard Byrne (2010–18); Gall, my practice enquiry with Tom dePaor which encompasses film, writing, books, sculpture, curation, and gallery works; releases and live performances by my band Thread Pulls during the period 2010–12; and my exhibition, conference talk, and book Make Ready (2015), the structure of which is taken as ‘armature’ for the writing of the thesis. Through these wide-ranging pursuits, this thesis articulates a non-normative role for the graphic designer. It identifies my operative position, leveraging the assumed transparency in graphic design’s role in communication, and ways in which I instrumentalise the inherent limitations of technologies, the contingencies of practice, and the ‘foldback’ from other disciplines and discourses. Central to this is the active role of the ‘viewer-reader’ who sets it going (Barthes, 1978: 163).

The writing is effectively divided into three parts, with an introduction and conclusion, and at the centre of this, following a brief ‘prologue’, is a single ‘chapter’ organised according to the multi-part essays (54 in total) which comprise the Make Ready (2015) book. Through revisiting and repurposing the reflective structure of Make Ready I invite the reader into my practice, developing the theoretical and methodological underpinnings which expand as a longitudinal enquiry into the relaying of phenomena (experience, and meaning derived from that experience) through communicative media, addressing social, cultural, and artistic knowledge through dialogic publication. I propose a mode of operating from an immersed, critical, and reflective position across multiple, interrelated sites, beyond that which is commonly understood to constitute graphic design practice.

Preceded by in-depth notes on the structure of the writing, and a Publication Overview, the Introduction sets out central theoretical and methodological concerns, followed by a Prologue which sets the scene, positioning my practice in dialogue with industry. In the proceeding ‘chapter’, organised by and integrated within the Make Ready ‘armature’, my ‘energy transfer’ construct, which emerged in writing Make Ready is expanded to critically articulate, through the tripartite mechanisms of ‘capture, storage, and release’, a process of gathering and arranging material in preparation for it to be met by the viewer reader. There follows a subjective overview of graphic design practice which provides critical context for my practice. Further, I outline my immersed operative practice position characterised by what I term ‘mutual constituency’. Through the essay sequence of Make Ready I instantiate my bricolage methodology, enabled through the borrowing of theoretical framings from literary theory, particularly Genette’s ‘transtextual’ modalities, in addition to the coining or claiming of a number of theoretical constructs. My thesis examines how subtle disruptions can be highly productive in recasting both the role of the practitioner, and the scope of the outputs within graphic design practice, having implications for those in a number of related areas of enquiry including art, architecture practice, editing, and publishing.

The delivery of the thesis itself is both physical and digital, enacting some of the principle claims of the thesis. The dual format draws on the affordances of media and the role of the viewer-reader in both navigating and activating material through encounter, with implications for future publication of PhD theses in this and related areas of enquiry

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/td77-c052

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