Experimental Type, presentation slides

this is the part when I take the presentation to a preview of my site.

Experimental Type, third week

After conducting multiple experiments with Devon I have come across a couple of new discoveries. For this week I showed her a animation that has the alphabet scrolling across the screen but changing the weight as it goes. I also showed her an animation where the letters fade in and out. She said that the composition where the letters where scrolling was much easier to play to than the one where the letters where fading out. She said this due to not being able to think something to play on the spot. With the scrolling letters she had time to take in the letter and play something before it was gone. Another discovery was that she correlated a, b, c, d, e, f, and g with musical notes and when she saw those letters those were easiest to play because she played them on the piano. Then after the letter G she didn't know what to play. 

Experimental Type, second week

Above, is the animation that put together just to test and see what Devon would play. Devon reacted in a way which I expected. She followed the movement of they type instead of type itself. She wanted to play with the motion of the type coming in and off of the screen. I also used different languages so that she would not react to the meaning of the words. So slowly I am removing certain aspects each week. I am hopefully training her eye to react to the type and its form.

This coming week I want to find a neutral. I am going to continue to make animations for her to play to. I am going to go back to the single letters, because it makes her focus on the form rather than the meaning. I am going to string them together in a very simplistic way. I will have the text just coming in and out or the letters just streaming off the page. The challenge is having her play to the type not to the type's movement and motion.

Experimental Type, video results week one

So this being the first week of my experiment I needed to start broad in terms of the typography that I showed Devon. Devon is a music therapy major as well as musician, so I figured she would be a great person to test my experiment on. She does a lot of improv based things with her patients. Hopefully she will learn something just as I am learning during this process.  Each week I hope to come up with a new set of rules or compositions for her to play to. Each time narrowing down the variables. For now I want to keep using the piano as the instrument and once I feel that she is picking up on the type (which hopefully she will) I want to try other instruments.
The video above is a moment from the first time we experimented. I created a set of slides with varying words and typography. I let her control the timing of the slides. She played as long as she saw fit and then was able to change the slide. (sorry for the video shakiness)

Type Experimentation, first week results

For my first experiment I wanted to start simple in just start with a base for what is to come. I started  by showing Devon words/letters/phrases in a bunch of different typefaces just to see how she would react musically.

These are slides that I showed her.

Type Experimentation Words

Type Experimentation Words_02

Type Experiment idea

When we began talking about experimentation in typography the idea of how far you can push type kept resurfacing. The question of- does type need to be visual? What makes typography typography? Can it be a smell, sound, or touch? I want to experiment with the sound and how type can affect a musician and the way he/she plays. I keep coming back to this idea of mood and emotion. Music and the visual arts go hand and hand and I want to combine them. For example, first starting off with words or phrases and creating a sound or melody from these words. What does the word "waste" or "passion" sound like? Would the sound change if the typeface was different? But then how can the sound affect the typography? Creating a improv like situation. 
I think that they both can have so much impact off of one another. Turning a collection of text into sounds and seeing if the visual affect of something can be the same as an audio experience. Last semester I did a bit of experimentation in a animation for Tender Buttons. I wanted to add sound and did so by showing my animation to a pianist and having her play as she watched the animation play- like her sheet music. It resulted in serendipitous moments that ended up working with my concept. This was however, already a built composition but I want to start at the core in just taking single words and making sounds or making notes out of single words. I think bringing together two such common elements of our life that surround us everyday would be a great experiment. I want to experiment with all of the "what if?" scenarios. What if a word is painted or made from clay? What if it is another language is thrown into the mix?  Will that affect the noise that someone makes from it? How will personal associations affect the musician? 
Of course there are many things out there where the type or visuals react to the music or what is being played, but I want to turn that around in that the music reacts to the typography. I have no idea what the end product will consist of or where my findings will lead me, but I think the outcome will be interesting. As far as the details go, I have some ideas but it is all pretty unknown as of now. I suppose that's what an experiment is all about. The unknown.
 Where and how can typography lead music/sound?  
I always want to involve others in design and appreciate it even more when learning and teaching take place between two people. I think that music and typography are ways of expression, but it totally different fashions. So being able to bring two different crafts together is always intriguing. 
-An idea I am imagining would be to start with letters in different typefaces and showing them to a pianist or whatever instrument and having the musician create whatever sound or note they feel from it. Then moving onto words even or phrases. Then from there taking all of these "notes" from each letter and making a piece using typography and the sounds created from each letter in the lyrics of a song..?
-Another is to create different type compositions but uses different mediums.  Meaning I would essentially have the same phrase except the way that I present it would be different each time.  So if I show them a phrase in water color or just a typed paragraph on white paper how would this affect the music? 

Experimental Type, images

Things to be thinking about...

• what things are you seeing over and over again?
• where are you seeing that is new, unusual, important, innovative, or don’t normally think of?
• what’s an area of typographic practice that interests you personally?
• who’s using type innovatively, both inside and outside of the design profession?
• how is type being used by both groups? how is it different or similar?
• what kinds of type are being utilized today? are there cultural preferences or market-based preferences?

Experimental Type, Reading Responses

Peter Bil'ak // Experimental typography. Whatever that means. 
Triggs // Typographic Experiment: From Futurism to Fuse

These readings brought up a lot of new ideas for me. Bil'ak's writing made me think about the word experiment and what it really means to make/do/create/complete an experiment. He took me back to my high school biology class and performing experiments with the test tubes, Bunsen burners and what not.  I agree that we often get wrapped up in the word and use it much more loosely than necessary. I feel that usually when I don't know what to call something, have a new discovery or outcome I say, "I was experimenting..." I think that Michael Worthington put experiment in good context by stating that experimenting= risk. What is at risk? An experiment is not knowing the outcome. I would agree with that. We often might dabble around in something and call it experimenting, but really when know what the outcome is or probably will be, then how can it be an experiment? "The experiment lies in the result." In the Triggs reading found the Weingart experimenting the most interesting. He embarked on a five year period of typographic experimentation. Like we talked in class, 'the only to break typographic rules was to know them.' We have to know the basics and know the history in order to be new and inventive.