This was a very mixed-media project.
Quote from our class website by our teacher Johannah Schaffer:
STUDENTISCHE PUBLIKATION: PATTERN CODE 2020
Hier steht zum Download bereit die großartige studentische Publikation zum Lehrprojekt Pattern/Code: Critical Weaving der Theorie und Praxis der Visuellen Kommunikation & der Studienwerkstatt Textil im Sommersemester 2020:
Layout und Design: Joshua Gundlach, Leonore Schubert
Lektorat: Carolin Angulo Hammes
The Project
In a collaboration between two departments of my university, the Theory and Practice of Visual Communication teachers, Johanna Schaffer and Anke Dyes, worked with the Workshop of Textiles teacher Nadja Porsch, creating a hybrid workshop. We would study the history of weaving from a feminist art theory perspective and apply ourselves to the physical challenges of textile work.
We were students from half a dozen different departments, ready to weave. There was just one little caveat…
It’s the COVID-19 summer semester of 2020.
How do you teach a skill such as weaving over the internet? Our teachers showed incredible power of will and resourcefulness and were met with equal investment of time and energy on our end. We as the students wove and read and presented, some finding peace in the repetitive motions, some finding challenges in the patterns and mishaps, all of us reflecting on our artistic practice and motives.
At the end of the workshop, a final question loomed over us. How, if at all, does one present a physical medium in a digital form? Our university does yearly school wide presentations called Rundgang, but this year it was cancelled and replaced by a digital student initiative. People were resistent to putting their work on some random image hosting website, concerned about copyright and privacy. But we also had concerns about printing and distributing, associated with costs and social distancing rules in place at that time.
I stood up to volunteer my time to turn our work into a magazine of some kind. Something that can be hosted on the website of Rundgang. Leonore Schubert followed immediately and Carolin Angulo Hammes graciously volunteered to do the proofreading and editing. We knew we wanted something that can be printed and touched but also can be downloaded at home, to avoid human contact during distribution. The entire school was in a state of “you don’t want to be that class that infects the town, right?” so we knew our limitations.
Progress
It took a while to come to an agreement, but then we set to work. We collected images and texts from people, did multiple feedback rounds to find “our” design. It started very rough:
We slowly filtered out what people wanted and what we needed.
Two big decisions were made that gave the publication its unique look and feel: Turn all images into transparent PNG’s and add checkered paper, the kind used when planning a weaving pattern, in the background.
We intensely worked on the publication and handed it in for the exhibition. It was thrilling and exciting, our own magazine with our names on it.
Conclusion
This was my first magazine that I produced without a CI/CD to follow for guidance. Leonore Schubert and I worked together very fluidly. I had a fun time with it and am incredibly proud of our class for coming together to make this possible, even through the hardships of COVID-19 and personal injuries and tragedies. But many of us commented in decompression rounds about how we signed up for this class to “do something with our hands”. I wove my way through the lectures of the semester and found solace in my loom after long coding sessions for my other classes or game jams.
This essay is not a lot about weaving, but it is all about weaving too.
The physical challenges presented to me with weaving were fun to solve and I am looking to buy myself a little loom. The magazine demanded a lot of work but was incredibly rewarding. I am grateful, deeply, for this opportunity.
