| Scales of Babel|
Schalen van Babel| 2005
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Author: Rubén de la Nuez
Graphic design: Danné Ojeda
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English and Dutch Texts
Bimaris, Amsterdam, 2005
92 pp, 12 x 21 cm,
b/w illustrations
ISBN 90-809840-1-9
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The book is about contemporary art’s
use of architectural models to visualize ideological structures. It takes
as case studies artworks by the Dutch artist Constant and the Cuban artist
Carlos Garaicoa. In this respect, ‘performing architecture’ becomes
the axial concept in this analysis. |
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The design of the book
echoes this idea. It addresses the ‘white aura’ of the art
gallery as the ambiance where concepts and images get ‘purified’ from
their practical commitment. Using half pages for footnotes and visual historical
references, the book plays itself with perspectives and space emulating
an architectural mise in scène. |
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In such emulation, the half pages
in the interior correlate the embossed line of the cover. This riddle acts
as a slice of ambiguity in the purity of the surface. The plain whiteness
is faintly distorted and quasi-imperceptible light tones suggest different
viewpoints when the illusion of corners, roofs and other architectural
elements appear as the book is browsed. |
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| On
Reproduction, 2005 |
Photography:
Elke Roelant
María Esther Morales
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Graphic Design and
editorial work:
Danné Ojeda
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59 x 83 cm
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| The ‘Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd’ was
established as an emigrant hotel in 1921. Until 1935 this ‘passing
by’ scenario hosted numerous families or individuals that were
determined to go overseas looking forward to a better way of life.
Our teamwork was moved by the fact that the actual Lloyd Hotel inhabits
different sociocultural pasts. Therefore, we settled a project, which focused
on a relationship between the actual environment
and the past of the hotel. The room number 28 was our scenario to portrait
group of people that will somehow establish a suggestive presence on the
historical chosen environment like if they would belong to another époque
and yet to the present one, preserving a ubiquitous feeling.
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| The pictures taken at the Lloyd Hotel,
where later appeared in a folder that I edited and designed.
In the folder the pictures are combined with stories told by immigrants
that arrived to North America coming from Europe in the early twenty
century. The liaison contemporary image-historical text stresses the
ancient conflict of emigration/ immigration and position it as essential
matter inherent to humankind despite age, gender, class or homeland.
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| To
Compose is to Organize Things, 2005 |
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Interview with Keyla Orozco, contemporary music composer.
Graphic Design and interview: Danné Ojeda
07 pp, 21 x 29,7 cm,
b/w illustrations
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Keyla Orozco uses to work with musical structures or phrases
that she deconstructs until the listener cannot recognize the
original source. The final pieces she creates are somehow minimal
and almost abstract.
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I approach to the composer’s method by creating a typeface
that decomposes in time. The three-dimensional structure of
this new typeface is meant to emphasize a time–space
based experience like the music does, and to underline transparency
and lightness.
The decomposition of the typeface goes from the three-dimensional
structure to the bidimensional diagonal line. Finally, these
lines remain as an abstract composition.
The way of composing music meets here, a homologous ways of ‘composing’ design
structures.
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| *, 2004-05 |
* (Asterisk) is a cultural
supplement initially conceived for the newspaper ‘El País’,
in order to provide cultural news in different languages. The design
is based on the possibility of ‘unfolding the grid’ of a newspaper. Hence, each column reveals a page.
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Edition and Graphic design: Danné Ojeda
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| * N. 2: Fashion and body
language: On the influence of old and damage clothes on fashion as
cultural countermovement.
Here an image is settled as index. The fragments of the image highlight
the subject matter of the page.
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21,5 x 27,5 cm
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In * the columns are converted into pages.
* (Asterisk) stresses that the reader has always access to a parcel
of information, since it is showing from its very basis that the
knowledge relies on ‘cognitive mapping’ in which language
plays a crucial roll.
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21,5 x 33 cm
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* N. 4: Cultural events at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games.
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| Ojo
font was created for this edition.
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| A-history| Part I: Loose sheets, 2004-05 |
| Indestructible Object, 1923 |
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One Voice, 2004 |
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Visual microtonal music notation |
Visual microtonal music notation, fragment |
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| Ongoing
research, which started on 2004. It searches within events
that are commonly known because they have been recognized
as part of an official history. It becomes a kind of archaeological
research, which intends to ‘publish’ side views
of past events.
The first ‘discoveries’ are now published as loose sheets
like if they where actually ripped of from a book.
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| Image 1) ‘Indestructible Object’,
1923: One of the many attempts of Man Ray of inhabits the words
of Tristan Tzara.
A cut out letter dated from 1932 and belonging to the archive
of Tristan Tzara, appeared in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern
art in New York in 1936, with the title Object of Reconstruction
and the following inscription in the back: ‘Cut out a letter
from a material you like. Attach the letter to the pendulum of a
metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep
going to the limit of endurance. The fading of the letter starts,
like the vanishing of the letter into a word, that becomes a sentence,
a single unit, a meaning…’.
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Image 2) ‘One Voice’: Anonymous poster spread
in 2002 on the name of ‘Public Enemy’.
Image 3) Visual microtonal music notation: A man called Byås Jåh
while hearing Kronos Quartet, wanted to show to his deaf child what the
song was heard like. He was then carefully translating the sound he was
hearing into linguistic and visual punctuation signs for his son to visualize
the Krono’s minimalist music. No extra data was found.
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| Body
Prints, 2004-05 |
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Samples of an ongoing photographic serie developed since 2004.
Photographic paper fine-grained matt
17,8 x 24 cm
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| Casa tomada (House Taken Over), 2004 |
Poster folded
57,5 x 28 cm
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| View against the light
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Poster that takes as references the story ‘Casa Tomada’ (House
Taken Over) written by Julio Cortázar, and the series of pictures ‘De
construcciones y utopias’ (De-constructions and Utopias) made by
Manuel Piña. It has been printed on both sides, two different
situations and approaches to contextual realities to illustrate a personal
view of what they both have in common.
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| Common Ground, 2004 |
Installation made
in collaboration with L. Borcic, S. Farooq, K. Lassinaro, M.
Linschooten and B. van der Molen.
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Photography: Vincent Zedelius
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Published on soDA Magazine for Visual Culture # 23, Zürich, 2004,
p. 43.
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| The installation intended to reflect
what a community of graphic designers had in common. The use
of recyclable objects to build up a decoration set, was a first
solution to this problem, to somehow illustrate that creativity
equally values any inspiration source. The billboard is one of
the main objects were the decorative ‘landscape’ emerges
going from drawing to sculptural items and vice versa. The installation
was thought to be finally a ‘picture’, a ‘photo’ that
will relate the final ‘landscape’ to a postcard in
order to remember a method, a community, a place, that we all
had in common.
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| Design by Subtraction, 2004 |
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| The black version.
Pieces to be delivered. Sizes: A4/ A5/ A6 formats
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General posters size 42 x 59,4 cm (A2)
Two versions: The white and The black.
The size (A2) of the posters is divided on standard formats
from A2 to A6. When exhibiting the posters, the different
formats might appear cut out, or the poster can stand as
a unique A2 piece.
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| The black version (Black text)
Sizes: 2 A4/ 2 A5/ 4 A6 formats
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The poster is based on the homonym text ‘Design by Subtraction’ written
by the Swiss designer Ruedi Baur. Fragments extracted from this text
refer to the need to subtract oneself from the social sphere and its
conventional legacy, in order to carry out socially committed design.
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| The white version.
Size: A2
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By printing white ink on white paper the message is only readable when
approaching to the posters. It becomes a very intimate message acting
as a whisper.
This procedure leads to a kind of trompe l’oeil, since from far
away the white poster resembles just an A2 blank paper. Just
by getting closer the viewer discovers a visual interpretation of the ‘subtracting’ method
proposed.
The poster is also a reminder of the painting ‘White on white’ by
Kazimir Malevich.
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| Manocedario, 2004 |
Experimental typeface
built up upon combination of gestures. It was developed because
the aim of mixing mute and sound communicational representations;
involuntary expression and rational knowledge. It carries the
human imperfection in its expression.
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| No News, 2004 |
Video installation
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This is a comment on TV programming (a pause TV).
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| Ojo Font, 2004 |
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The font Ojo (Eye)
was built for * N. 4: Cultural events at the Athens 2004
Olympic Games to replace the character ‘O’.
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In the evolution of the alphabet, there are studies that verify
how the Egyptian hieroglyphic representing an eye transformed,
through different cultures and their interpretations, into
the current Roman character and phoneme. This last state materialized
during classic Greek times.
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| The replacement
act tries to re-contextualize the semantic function of the
Egyptian ‘eye’ within the Olympic
games of modern age, as it was seen in its heydays: the sight
of the Horus falcon as a symbol strength, healing and protective
power, beauty, among other meanings. Thus, the intention
is to return those qualities — which are also part
of the Olympic spirit — to the place where they disappeared
to become just a phonetic character.
Further on, it is an experiment to evaluate how much an image
converted into font can affect or enrich legibility.
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| Font application.
More examples can be viewed here.
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| PerpetuumM
Foundation virtual logotypes and website, 2004 |
| Click on the
image below to address to the page |
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Website and two virtual
combined logotypes commissioned by the Dutch Foundation PerpetuumM,
on the occasion of the ‘Q-ba Música 2004’ event.
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| The foundation’s name comes
from the fusion of the words perpetuum and mobile,
therefore PerpetuumM.
The presentation logo is based on the process of searching and trying out
of types that would represent the interior virtual logotype trying to avoid
a single identity but instead promoting a plural one. The perpetual movement
of the typeface goes from serif to san-serif typefaces and vice versa to
emphasize that ‘PerpetuumM’ becomes part of every singular
unit of meaning or in the other way around, that every singular unit of
meaning inhabits ‘PerpetuumM’.
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| This movement continues in the
inside logotype of the webpage, this time in the last letter ‘M’ to
emphasize its meaning.
The musical piece that accompanies the logotype presentation is also
called ‘Perpetuumm’ and is here edited and transformed under
the permission of its author, to resemble the rehearsal or the tuning
of instruments of an orchestra, a sort of prelude that announce that
the melody is still to come or that there is no other melody that the
tuning itself.
The combination of logotypes intends to support the idea of the multiplicity
within the singular, which is the essence of the foundation’s name
and objectives.
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| The
Possible Place, 2004 |
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| Click on the images to see a different view |
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Art book inspired
on the demolition and the reconstruction of Marnixbad building.
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Photography and graphic design: Danné Ojeda
48 pp, 20.5 x 13 cm,
b/w illustrations.
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| ‘The possible place’ is
a project that deals with ‘reality’ or better to
say ‘realities,’ as the philosopher Eva Meyer likes
to highlight; because ‘reality does not exist as a single
word.’ In order to create a multilayered space, the project
is grounded on architecture, photographic and graphic design
resources.
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| Photography shares with the architectural
complex the will to possess and control space. By over imposing
architectural drawings to a photographic documentation is my
intention to create a sort of turning point that leads to the ‘ideal’ or
to the ‘utopian’ space, which remains framed by
the page, which preserve it.
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| It is also my aim to
represent a sort of flâneur poetics, which far from the
French notion of pleasant urban wandering, refers a different
way of viewing the city, a diverse way of telling its tale.
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| What
is Real, True, Important?, 2004 |
Site-specific poster
42 x 59,4 cm
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| Frederik Hendrikstraat, Amsterdam.
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It is a comment on representations using an equation of the type of the
egg and the chicken.
When making a poster, which implies its own reproduction and its placement
on the same spot where the reproduced image was taken from; the viewer
can easily, connect all those different moments like layers, to the question
involved: ‘What is real, true, important?’.
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| Detail of the poster on the window
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A poster is by definition, a mean to be reproduced, but this site–specific
poster does not intend to be reproduced at all. Instead, it concentrates
on the reproduction that it shows by zooming into or out of the poster.
When zooming out of it, for example, the reproduction of the event as
an image takes the question posed on the poster farther on as an endless
equation.
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| Diagonal.
Essays on Contemporary Cuban Art, 2003 |
Author: Danné Ojeda
Graphic design: Danné Ojeda, André Heers (with thanks
to Annette Stahmer)
108 pp/ 157 x 234 mm/ Full color illustrations/ ISBN 90-72076-18-4
DANIEL
GIL PRIZE: The book was nominated for the Daniel Gil Prize
for Editorial Design in the category ‘Book Designs’.
This prize is awarded by ‘Revista
Visual’ Blur Ediciones, (Barcelona, ES), magazine specialized
on graphic design and visual communication.
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| The publication deals with certain
Cuban avant-garde artistic practices, especially in the eighties
and nineties. The volume is concerned with the dilemma of Art
vs. Institution; the transcendental aim related to collective
emancipation and the social artistic communication conflict
linked to therapeutic and utopian gestures. The book includes
examples
of the practices of ‘Galería DUPP’, Henry
Eric Hernández and Carlos Garaicoa, who are relevant
characters within the so-called ‘New Cuban Art’.
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| The cover
refers to the act of documentation, classification and representation
as the final fate of those projects meant as ephemeral rituals
of social healing. Therefore, the use of the ending of a
photographic negative, which also looks like a plaster for
a wound. For the same reason, the kind of stickers used to
classify negatives are utilised to title the different parts
of the book.
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| Island
2003 |
Island, VJ still,
Paradiso, Amsterdam.
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In the video I work with one of my poems entitled “Island”.
It speaks about the transubstantiation of a human being in natural
elements like water, wind, etc.
The material tried to achieve a joyful, playful as well as communicative
text-image projection.
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| Island Screening, Paradiso Amsterdam.
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| The fragment show the mutation
of the words into natural forms.
Island, VJ still, Paradiso, Amsterdam.
| Island Screening,
Paradiso Amsterdam.
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| Pregnancy
Calendar, 2003 |
Diameter: 10 cm
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| Second edition
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| The
Year of the Worm, 2003 |
Graphic design of
the article ‘Computer virus—A form of artificial
life’ by Eugene Spafford.
Magazine ‘2003’, Gerrit Rietveld Akademie, Amsterdam, 2003.
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| By disrupting text and graphic
information,
I give a possible interpretation to the informatics
viruses’ behavior.
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| William
Tell Song, 2003 |
Spread at the monument
of William Tell as a performance in Lausanne, Switzerland.
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Leaflet Dimensions: 10,5 x 29,5 cm
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William Tell (Song Text): Carlos Varela (Cuba)
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| This leaflet is designed in a
way that the original text in Spanish appears illegible in
the back and its English translation, legible in the front.
The original becomes legible only as interlines within the
translation.
The tension between the two sides of the leaflet refers to
the conflict between two generations, father and son, in
which one depend of and define the other and vice versa.
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| A Weapon of Mass Distraction, 2002 |
| Video Stills
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Video that addresses the abuse of television consumption, through the paradoxical
and humoristic humanization of the TV object.
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The very same human organ that allows us to visualize the phenomena and grasp
nature in its wide sense is nowhere being watched.
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eye on TV screen resembles a kind of cyclopean figure: omnipotent.
But, at the
same time it becomes a sort of organ-ism with
an individual life, that moves and reacts like a paramecium
does, while it performs and refuses to be looked at.
When this organ-ism expands itself — when the eye is opened — it
contains part of the world that is watched at; in its one cell (in the iris
of the eye you can see reflected a little room with its window), and this
apprehension of limited areas and forms intends to be a metaphor of how human
beings are
always
confronted with partial information, and see the world through an specific
and individual prism.
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| I was always intrigued by those
one cell micro-organisms that can only be seen through specific
devices. The TV set acts here as a ‘microscopic’ instrument
that confronts
the
spectator with one cell of information, or better to say to oneself interpretation
of information: to a sort of one-cell-organ-ism.
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| Buy a Forest and get Lost, 2002 |
| Video stills
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Video concept and editing: Danné Ojeda
Duration: 04'41
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Some visual footage shown in this film, was taken from ‘Controversia
con el ghetto’, documentary made by Henry Eric Hernández
and Producciones Doboch.
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| ‘Controversy in the ghetto’ (1999),
was a socio-artistic project made by the Cuban artist Henry-Eric
Hernández, where he rehabilitates non-inhabited spaces
for coexistence and interchange in public environments, in
accordance with one of the art orientations developed by contemporary
Cuban art over the last two decades. This event took place
in ‘Ciudad Libertad’ (Liberty City), a former military
headquarters under the regime of the dictator Fulgencio Batista
that was transformed into a complex of schools at the beginning
of the Cuban revolution.
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| Buy a forest and get lost.
CD cover.
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‘Buy a forest and get lost’ attempts
to bring back the spirit in which this event was done. While
restoring the process in which this socio-artistic intervention
was designed and developed, it also creates a kind of ‘concerto’ of
deterioration, an event within another one, like a room of
mirrors that blurs our consciousness of ‘reality’.
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