For the last bit of manifesto after creating what I though were traditionally Fine Arts approaches to this idea of exploring touch, it was time to come together to create our zine as one product.
On the Tuesday of the week of the presentation, we had a tutorial with Clare and Ian about the format of our Zine. Neveah had created a really interesting format which allowed us to create a bit of a jellyfish of a zine. It would contain one top layer with eight ‘arms’ for each of the dichotomies that we were exploring in our Manifesto: digital vs. physical, social vs. antisocial, agency vs. passivity, and isolation vs. connection.
The group seemed quite happy with this format because it allowed us to have individual responses to the point of connection, our manifesto. Additionally exploring each tentacle created a bit of a sense of scrolling, and it referenced our habituation to reading content vertically. The limitation with this folded zine model would be the total size achievable on the paper upstairs. Additionally, we would only be able to print on one side. However, it seemed like it would produce pages that were about the size and scale of an iPad. Critically, we could also put it into the iPad box that I had acquired from a previous Apple disaster.
Ian and Clare challenged us to go further, though. They asked us to think about disorientation and layering that was possible with this form. Could it turn into a box? What about the way that we navigate the screen could inform the way that we traverse our zine. After that tutorial, we all went back home to try experiment with different forms.
Niko’s zine prototypes are pictured above. He played with folding in different ways and navigating the space like a maze or a line. Additionally with his forms, the reader could turn them into a box. His variation of Neveah’s idea was that each ‘arm’ folds a different way to its neighbor (to the front or the back of the manifesto). One of the critiques of the earlier form was that it was eight equal tentacles of one subject, rather than four dichotomies. So, having one argument fold to the front, followed by the counter argument folding to the back, allowed for us to display that duality.
Aoran and Francesca were interested in playing with the idea of the scroll and geometries of disorientation. Way back in discussion, we had talked about printing on toilet paper as a way to make a comment on the quality of the content through which we scroll on a regular basis. It would also disorient the reader to the physical nature of reading by appropriating this mechanism of absorption through the phone. Francesca was looking at this idea by repurposing the structure of the rolodex and echo chambers of domes that could be deconstructed into individual pages.
I was interested in the idea of compartmentalizing the zine into four sets of dichotomies that existed together but could create dialogues depending on how you folded the individual elements.
With this format, the reader would constantly have to reorient herself in order to read a page. Too, it had geometrical potential to create many new forms by extending different arms off of one another. Each side would have two flip down pages though, one for each dichotomy/conversation. The central structure of the cross also allows for multiple different interpretations as it references religion, hospitals, and intersections, which all touch on this dialogue of habit and fixture of content addiction.
Ultimately, we decided to go with Niko’s modification of Neveah’s original zine structure. Paper size and waste were huge obstacles in the printing of the cross design, and logistically the other forms of scroll-inspired zines would be too difficult to read. Also, we decided to make each individual page a square rather than a rectangle to extend the conversation of navigating through pixels rather than a specific dimension of screen. This meant we scrapped the box idea, but that was okay.
Ultimately the conversation gave us a lot more perspective of physical navigation and presentation of our content, and it was a worthwhile venture of organization that ultimately would form our presentation structure.
RCA Graduate Diploma 