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risd thesis blog: james j gradyArchive for RISD
everyday time-lapse
Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, a time-lapse film, initially inspires this project. Since November, I have been using an inexpensive time-lapse camera to document experiences from my everyday life. This camera has no viewfinder, so I never know exactly what is being captured. Pulling the files from the USB drive in the camera, is a great experiment in chance operation. It is also reminiscent of the magical experience of developing and printing from film. The algorithmic method of this piece comes from editing the duration, speed, and framing of the clips, but keeps the footage in a chronological order. My interest includes a set of seemingly disparate footage and how it combines to create a narrative. This voyeuristic point of view allows for a genuine capture of people and surroundings. Although the process is as important as the finished piece, the act of editing the footage helps me craft a unique narrative of everyday life.
I’m continuing to capture time-lapse footage everyday. Check here to the latest footage. Enjoy!
incarceration vacation
book view 1
book view 2
The video and book above are inspired by Michel de Certeau’s, The Practice of Everyday Life and my daily commute from Boston to Providence. Cheers!
Strategies and Tactics
Michel de Certeau’s, The Practice of Everyday Life explores the everyday operating in society. He describes two concepts, “strategies” and “tactics” that identify behaviors in the everyday: strategies become a way for corporations, governments and big businesses to control people as well as the environment around them; tactics are ways that individuals, negotiate these worlds. Certeau claims that individuals employ strategies by “constantly manipulating events in order to turn them into ‘opportunities’” [xix].
The chasm between strategies and tactics
In Chapter VIII, Railway Navigation and Incarceration, Certeau describes the experience of riding the train. The train is a great example of the chasm between the strategy and the tactic: the train is a strategy—it is part of a larger system that incarcerates the passengers. The passengers however, use tactics to overcome this system, making each trip a mini vacation of sight and sound. According to Certeau “The unchanged traveler is pigeonholed, numbered, and regulated in the grid of the railway car, which is a perfect actualization of the rational utopia” [111].
Order in chaos
The train gives passengers order in their everyday world of chaos. The train is a place of transition between geographical locations as well as home and work. Travelers often overlook the transitions in the everyday; instead, they focus on their destinations. The train offers them a time to look out the window, reflecting, wondering, listening and dreaming. Without this incarceration these possibilities would not necessarily be available.
Glass and Iron
Certeau eloquently describes the literal and figurative separation of the train and the travelers as “…the iron rail whose straight line cuts through space and transforms the serene identities of the soil into the speed with which they slip away into the distance. The windowpane is what allows us to see, and the rail, what allows us to move through”[112]. Travelers are incarcerated within a controlled system and at the same time they are set free by a sensorial experience.
Ambient sounds
Certeau describes the train sounds as “Only the partition makes noise. As it moves forward and creates two inverted silences, it taps out a rhythm, it whistles or moans. There is a beating of the rails, a vibrato of the windowpanes—a sort of rubbing together of spaces at the vanishing points of their frontier” [113].
Submission to the machine
As travelers are observing the everyday within this lens, they identify their independence within a system. Within everyday life there is so much to try and control individually; sometimes travelers could submit to the “machine” and take an “incarceration-vacation”.
Michel de Certeau’s, The Practice of Everyday Life, xix, 111, 112, 113.
Thesis Reflection
I can’t believe this is my 1st post since the summer. It’s been a crazy semester and my thesis is in transition so I’m glad I’ve waited. It’s been a difficult but rewarding process, and looking back, I’m really happy and excited to share some work. In order to bring things up to speed, I want to share my 11.30.2011 thesis presentation. A lot has changed since this presentation but it’s a good place to start.
If you’re not interested in watching the whole 10 minute presentation, please check out my thesis reflection pdf and some new videos I posted to vimeo. I will be posting all of my other projects soon. Cheers!
everyday observations: light
With the ability to have a camera phone in my pocket at all times, I can document the everyday, anytime. This book evaluates a typology of images I capture on my camera phone and identifies a dominant visual theme of light: natural, artificial and reflective. This book takes excerpts from Allen Ruppersberg’s 50 Helpful Hints on Art of The Everyday; and I capture 50 images of everyday observations of light. Ruppersberg uses what I call ‘didactic-lite ’ language in the title 50 Helpful Hints on Art of The Everyday; he does not actually list 50 hints but uses the common categorizing style headline as a way to showcase some of his philosophies on art. With my images, I am using this concept in a similar fashion in order to let the viewer look at the ordinary in an extraordinary way and to interpret a narrative in their own way. Enjoy!
This book is available at the blurb bookstore.
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- everyday inspiration: light
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- everyday inspiration: light
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- everyday inspiration: light
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- everyday inspiration: light
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- everyday inspiration: light
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- everyday inspiration: light
13/13
The 1st year at RISD is over. It was an incredible but exhausting experience. I’ve been updating my portfolio site and wanted to take some time to post about the final visiting designer workshop with Vaughan Oliver. It was a liberating experience. I teamed up with two fellow students, Camila Afanador and Milan Nedved. This project is an experimental approach to the idea of representing the 13th month. The 13th month is an abstract notion of time where anything can happen. Only having about 48 hours from start to finish on this project we needed to work fast. The 1st day started at the hardware store, we picked up as many 1′s and 3′s as we could find. With a macro lens we started experimenting. It was a lot of fun shooting the 13′s in a variety of environments. A lot of beautiful images emerged from this experiment, but it wasn’t until we went back to Milan’s house for dinner and drinks that we started projecting the images onto all different surfaces. We then started capturing images of the projections. We fell in love with this style of experimentation. We shot over 1300 images over the 2 days and created 13 (28″ x 40″) single image posters along with a 400 page book. The book contained many of the out takes. We printed 2 copies with blurb (highly recommend), one for us and one that we sent over the pond to VO. Thanks to Vaughan and thanks to Camila and Milan. Enjoy!
This book is available at the blurb bookstore.
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- 13/13 poster
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- 13/13 poster
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- 13/13 poster
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- 13/13 poster
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- 13/13 book
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- 13/13 team
Einstein’s Dreams
An essay in Alan Lightman’s book, Einstein’s Dreams, inspires this video. In this essay, he describes one of Einstein’s dreams as a place where time stands still: the place where we idealize life like a photograph capturing a perfect moment. The irony is that in that perfect moment, where time stands still, there is no life. Time travels outward in rotating concentric circles and rests at the center. The things that are the closest to the center of time move at a glacial pace, picking up speed in greater diameters towards the outer rings. Present life only exists in the outer rings where things are moving fast and uncontrollable.
I examine this concept of time standing still in an autobiographical way. Through three-dimensional typography, I visualize time in concentric rings, starting the year I was born (1977) and moving outward to today (2011). In contrast to the typography, I juxtapose my (self-made) childhood home videos to represent memories of a place where time stands still. The footage shows clips of a family vacation in Hawaii (1992). Even as a child, I find fascination with the ability to capture my life through video. Most of the footage is documenting every day life: myself at play, other people on vacation, the TV in the hotel room, almost anything but the typical picturesque Hawaii landscape and culture. The image that I represent as a place where time stands still is a surfer. The surfer riding a wave is a metaphor for trying to capture and hold onto something that is ephemeral. Just as the video almost stops and fades to black, the viewer is quickly pulled back to the high speed pace of life that exists on the outer rings.
Uncovering this archive of home videos sparks new inspiration and curiosity in my work and is helping me reflect on my everyday journey and process.
full circle
This video loop juxtaposes my (self-made) childhood home videos and current ultrasound images of my child-to-be. Through manipulation of speed and rotation, the two forms are a representation of life’s cycle through the past, present and future, merging together in a dream-like experience.
This video will be screening April 7 – 11 on the 2nd floor of the risd design center. Please swing by if you have a chance.
Enjoy!
social justice
I can’t believe the spring semester is already half over. Things are moving at light speed. I have not had time to breath never mind blog but I thought I’d give a quick update on a few things I’ve worked on. Two out of the four visiting designers (Jonathan Barnbrook and Jan Van Toorn) have come and gone. It’s been a great experience. I’m not sure if it was planed or just coincidence but both workshops had a social justice/human rights theme with an awareness poster as the final project. The Barnbrook workshop posters are anti ads in reaction to the Chevron, We Agree Ad campaign and the Jan Van Toorn workshop posters were dealing with the human right for fresh drinking water and sanitation around the world. I worked with fellow classmate Adam Lucas on the water rights poster. It was a a great collaboration. Enjoy!
water rights poster
water rights poster
james and adam
Chevron Anti Ad
Chevron Anti Ad 2
barnbrook class
RISD Visiting Designers
RISD spring semester starts in 2 days and I’m really looking forward to it. I say that now while I’m fully rested and amped to get going… We’ll see how I feel in a couple weeks. I’m especially excited for the visiting designers course. Four weeks throughout the the spring semester visiting designers come from all over the world to teach an intense four day workshop. This spring the esteemed visiting designers are: Jonathan Barnbrook, Jan Van Toorn, Lars Müller, and Vaughan Oliver. I was honored to be asked to design the poster for the visiting designers lecture series that takes place prior to the workshops. Click here to view the dates and times. The RISD graphic design visiting designers lectures are free and open to the public. Here is the selected poster I designed. Enjoy.
RISD Visiting Designers 2011
all aboard!
Select an object that inspires you. This object along with your choice of one of the following categories from Aristotle’s The Organon will be your starting point for this assignment.
1. substance
2. quantity
3. place
4. quality
5. place
6. time
7. position
8. state
9. action
10. affection
PART 1: Design a pair of posters, one that is primarily conceptual in it’s design and one that is primarily sensate in it’s design.
PART 2: Design one poster that is equally conceptual and sensate. This poster is required to be a completely new idea and not simply a merging of the first two.
My object was the train my category was time. I’ll leave it up to you to determine if I succeeded. Cheers!
train time poster
train time poster
train time poster
