Faculty of Arts & Society

The Leeds School of Contemporary Art & Graphic Design

LSx - Leeds Unknown

LSx focuses on the areas where urban planning, information and media technologies and graphic design overlap. It will map cultural and social development in Leeds to generate new systems of analysis, new data and information streams, and create organisational software for further research, recognising that there is no better source than the modern city with all its macro and micro layers of informational complexity Each of the project’s four phases will include a symposium for students, academics and professionals, comprised of lecture series, workshops and exhibitions, led by designers, artists, urban planners and cultural critics.

The first LSx symposium will take place in the week October 24 - 28, 2005 and will have as its main focus an exhibition of contemporary work related to the themes of the symposium under the title Look Right (Look Left). This will showcase contemporary works from 12 prominent designers, typographers, urban planners and artists to show the breadth of work in the merging fields of architectural and information processes and graphic design. It is not meant as a defining overview but rather as a tip-of-the-iceberg glimpse at some of what is possible.

For Biographical information about all the internationally renowed participants please refer to the column on the right: 

Visiting Lecturer Programme/Events

All lectures BRUNSWICK LECTURE THEATRE

Wednesday 26 October 2005
1.00 – 5.00
A lecture and portfolio presentation by RAL2005  as part of their workshops with the Graphic Arts and Design programmes at Leeds Met which are running throughout the week of 24 – 28 October for design and architectural students and professionals in the field. Afterwards, Femke Snelting (De Geuzen) will present a critical look at current developments in the fields of information technology and narrative archiving in relation to her own practice and on themes related to the LSx project.

Friday 28 October
3.00 – 5.30
Thomas Castro (LUST) will present a survey of current trends in the fields of urban planning, information and media technologies and graphic design as related to the LSx project. Professor Zygmunt Bauman and Irena Bauman will speak on the state of liquidity, counterbalanced with an exposure of the 'solidity' of the planning system and regulations. The theme of speed and access to knowledge and their impact on practice will be central.

LSx  Leeds Unknown: A City as DataSpace

In a time when everyone is a possible node for the broadcast and consumption of information, ‘editorship’ lies not in the old hierarchical structures of information, but in the hands of the consumer. Editorship is no longer something that comes from above (top down) but is open to the end user, for example, through rss feeds, collaborative software, peer-to-peer, etc. This development signals a paradigm shift from semiotic design to process design. ‘The medium is the message’ makes way for ‘the content is the medium’. Rather than reinterpreting information into higher levels for consumption, the dominant model has become the reorganisation of data and the empowerment of the end-user with tools for self-interpretation.

LSx is an attempt to exploit these trends and propose a comprehensive research system for urban and cultural conditions. The city of Leeds, given its contemporary development and economic growth, is an ideal test case for such a complex research project. Rather than a study of cultural and social development in the modern city, LSx intends to ‘map’ such developments into processes that potentially generate new systems of analysis, streams of data and information, and create organisational software for further research. Above all, LSx is interested in the areas where urban planning, information and media technologies and graphic design overlap.

The LSx project will be divided into four themed phases, Research > Analysis > Hypothesis > Design, across a two-year time span. Each phase will comprise a symposium, including a lecture series, workshops and exhibitions, led by designers and urban planners specialising in each of the four themes.

LSx is part of the research activity of The Leeds School of Contemporary Art and Graphic Design at Leeds Metropolitan University which aims to create a climate of critical and intellectual inquiry into contemporary visual culture that supports nationally and internationally significant practice undertaken by staff and research students in the School. Other projects include the work of Research fellow Peter Lewis, centred on Redux (http://www.reduxprojects.org.uk/), and the online journal /seconds (http://www.slashseconds.org/) published by Derek Horton and Peter Lewis. The dynamic dialogue, debate and production emanating from this expanding research culture significantly inform teaching and learning and enhance student experience across the School and beyond.

Contacts:

General enquiries about research in the School can be directed to Dr Derek Horton, Director of Research, The Leeds School of Contemporary Art and Graphic Design d.horton@leedsmet.ac.uk

Specific enquiries about the LSx Leeds Unknown project should be directed to Alice Morgan, Head of Graphic Arts and Design a.h.morgan@leedsmet.ac.uk

Biographical information on the participants in Look Right (Look Left):

Kasper Andreasen: a designer and print maker, Andreasen is fascinated by cartography. He has researched how a drawn line can represent a space on a map in relation to the use of language. Theoretical and practical research has shown that each spatial representation is a subjective document, a personal interpretation of a specific location at a given time. Cartography does not merely map physical space, it is also a way to visualise mental space and the experience of places. This conclusion is one of the points of departure of Andreasen’s work on paper.

Irena Bauman is a co-founder of Bauman Lyons Architects Ltd, established since 1992 has secured a variety of commissions from a wide range of clients. Their projects include restoration and refurbishment work, urban design projects, residential developments, arts buildings, mixed-use schemes, offices, restaurants and bars as well as exhibition design. The practice is committed to experimenting with new design processes and has, to date, completed six schemes in collaboration with artists, writers, photographers and graphic designers. The work of Bauman Lyons has been published extensively. Bauman sits on the Leeds Architecture and Design Initiative (LADI), advises the Arts Council’s Architecture and Built Environment Unit, and is an external examiner for Sheffield School of Architecture. http://www.baumanlyons.co.uk/

Zygmunt Bauman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, having served as Professor of Sociology and head of department at Leeds University from 1972 until his retirement in 1990.  Bauman is widely regarded as one of the most profound and original voices in contemporary social thought. His work deftly interweaves issues of ethics, culture and politics, with the express intention of interpreting society in a way that challenges and provokes us to aspire towards something better.  Bauman has been influential in demystifying and providing a sociological understanding of post-modernity, and he has explicitly turned to politics in his most recently published books and essays. These include Work, Consumerism and the New Poor (1998), Globalisation, The Human Consequences (1998), In Search of Politics (1999), Liquid Modernity (2000), Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World (2000), Society Under Siege (2002), Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts (2003), Liquid Love : On the Frailty of Human Bonds (2003) and, most recently, Liquid Life (2005).

Paul Elliman is a London-based designer whose work and writing explores the mutual impact of technology and language. His work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern in London, and included in collections by the British Council, the Victoria and Albert Museum and at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, as well as appearing in a number of books and magazine articles. Elliman has contributed essays to Eye magazine, London, IDEA in Tokyo, and Wired in San Francisco, and he has been a faculty member at Yale School of Art since 1997. He is also currently thesis supervisor at Werkplaats Typografie in the Netherlands.

Lucy Gibson is a Leeds-based artist concerned with exploring the underlying experiences in everyday life through the medium of walking. Lucy is a founding member of E m e r g e D, which was founded in Glasgow, Scotland in April 2002 and operates as a non-profit organisation in three cities. It is a specialist organisation in the commissioning of site and context-responsive artworks. http://www.emerged.net/

Mateusz Herczka is an artist, dramatist, performer and programmer. His work stands at the intersection of art, artificial intelligence, bioscience, and dance. His computer videos and installations have been shown at art spaces and festivals including V2 (Rotterdam) and Tate Modern (London). http://www.westerplatte.net/

Will Holder: Holder's work reflects a symbiosis between language and design. He produces projects under the name "goodwill" for institutes such as NAi, Mediamatic, Public Space With A Roof, and "Will Stuart" (together with Stuart Bailey) for De Appel, CUBITT Gallery, and Marres. He also organises the TOURETTE’S II evenings in Amsterdam Art Gallery W139 and in De Appel. He has written for dot-dot-dot and publishes the magazine Catalogue.

LettError consists of Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland who both studied at the Royal Academy for Fine & Applied Arts in The Hague. Encouraged by their teacher Gerrit Noordzij they studied the design of typefaces at a time contemporaneous with the invention of desktop publishing and fonts. The first LettError project was to make a PostScript font whose letter shapes changed themselves during printing, Beowulf. Among their other famous faces are: Trixie, Advert, Kosmik and Federal. http://www.letterror.com/

LUST: Thomas Castro, the initiator of the LsX project and research fellow in Leeds Met’s  School of Contemporary Art and Graphic Design is one of a founding partner in the graphic design studio LUST based in The Hague, Netherlands. LUST is a pioneer in the field of process-design methodologies and since 1996 has been developing design processes based on ideas of mapping, cartography, generative and non-hierarchic systems. http://www.lust.nl/

Sulki & Min Choi are a design duo from South Korea. Recent graduates of the Research Program at the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, their work investigates the complex aspects of information design, the design of charts, graphs, diagrams, and maps. Their project Micropolis for the Jan van Eyck focused on developing a ‘cartographic’, data-driven approach to identity design. http://www.minch.org/

Bas Princen: living and working in Rotterdam as an independent designer/photographer for public space. Working Mainly in the field of the transformations of the urban landscape of Europe. His work is  published in various architectural magazines in Europe, recent exhitbions include : the Venice Bienale of Architecture 2004 , Archilab Orleans 2004, and Shrinking Cities Berlin. In May 2004 He published a book about his own work “ Arfificial Arcadia” with 010 Publishers.

RAL2005 is a Rotterdam based office focusing on the design of contemporary architecture and public space. RAL2005, established by Duzan Doepel and Jan Konings, uses the relationship between freedom and responsibility, durability and consumerism, and nature and urbanism to inform their design process. http://www.ral2005.nl/

David Reinfurt is a graphic designer in New York. Since 2000, he has run O R G inc., a graphic design practice that works for cultural and educational institutions in a range of media. Prior to forming O R G David was an interaction designer with IDEO San Francisco, where he designed the interface for the MTA MetroCard vending machines. He has been a visiting critic at design schools including University of Texas, Gerrit Rietveld Akademie, Yale University, and Royal College of Art. http://www.o-r-g.com/

Femke Snelting: Together with Renée Turner and Riek Sijbring, Snelting forms De Geuzen, a foundation for multi-visual research. Since 1996, De Geuzen have deployed a variety of strategies both on- and offline to explore their interests in female identity, critical resistance,  representation, and narrative archiving, tactics for claiming space   and place, and cartography as a means of relating disparate  interests, communities and disciplines. Their projects have been featured in Manifesta 3, Kuenstlerhaus Bremen, the Amsterdams Historisch Museum and Impakt Festival. Together with Matthew Fuller, Snelting was responsible for developing the Media Design Research programme and the MA Media Design curriculum for the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. Currently, she works with Constant (an association for art and media) in Brussels.  http:/www.geuzen.org

Daniel van der Velden:  Meta Haven consists of Tina Clausmeyer, Vinca Kruk, Adriaan Mellegers, and Daniel van der Velden (project initiator). The project\'s key source of support is the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands. http://www.metahaven.net/

Floor Wesseling was born in Amsterdam and received his bachelor of arts at its Gerrit Rietveld Academy. It was there that he found his interest in silk-screen printing and he now teaches there. Wesseling forms a part of Ix Opus Ada, a collaboration of designers, multimedia programmers, editors and photographers. http://www.ixopusada.com/