Microsoft Exhibition Wrap

Back from an amazing trip in Seattle and sharing a little update on all that went on in the exhibition and talk at Microsoft Research - Building 99. A huge thank you to Microsoft Research, the folks behind the Studio 99 space, and especially the beyond generous support, enthusiasm, and patronage from MSR's Donald Brinkman. If coolness is defined as going to all lengths to support the realization of things that  you find exciting and important and believe should exist in the world - Donald is the epitome of cool. It's a terrific space - consisting of a good expanse of wall space for the printed work, a series of columns composed of video screens to display more work, two large monitors, and a long bar/table with a plexiglass top under which we displayed reproductions of my process sketches showing the development of several of the individual pages. As someone who spent many years writing about exhibitions and has organized a good number of exhibitions over the years - it was an absolute treat to be on the other side of things, and I'm extremely grateful for the exceedingly rare opportunity of this sort of venue and all the ways of sharing the work the space offered. 

The work was printed and framed there, so I arrived only having to arrange it and hang it. In the midst of laying it out, I felt like we had a strong opening sequence, especially focusing on the darkness of the first chapter that tapered to a little less oomph with the remaining work. Donald was kind enough to on the spot make a giant, oversized print of the page featuring my dog and sense of smell as way of seeing, which really balanced it all out and made a powerful impact visually and thematically. Doubly pleased to see my lost friend up in my first solo exhibition. (I was rather occupied during the opening, so all my shots come from long after it was over - MSR had photos taken then, which I hope to share a bit of later.) An additional note, it was quite a surprising treat to see the work printed and framed. As a comics maker, I think of comics as something to be read, held in hand - and I was really struck by how they came out. The composition roughly followed the sequence of the dissertation (though obviously with lots of gaps), so one could walk through the exhibition and get a sense of how the narrative unfolds.

As I mentioned earlier, besides the printed work, the space offered two large columns composed of video screens, and I'd designed slices from the work to match the displays, which then cycled through a sequence - making for a different sort of way of seeing the work and allowing access to far more of it than we could otherwise have on view. It was pretty neat for me to assemble the process sketches under plexiglass and reconstruct my own thinking for others to follow and see the final result. We also set up two moveable walls on which I made sketches with dry erase markers - one, showing a rough outline of my thinking on comics from my talk and the other, a layout of the current page I'm working on in progress (which will be posted soon, soon). On the freestanding video monitors we showed credits for the show and on the other had on loop the animation/teaser trailer of the dissertation put together by my student Bryan Ribeiro. You can view that video, which focuses mostly on the first trailer, here. 

The lecture was fun and we had the good fortune of having in attendance MIT doc student J. Nathan Matias who live-blogged during the talk, and posted his summary here. It was recorded and live-streamed to MS employees. I'll share here if that stream becomes available. Near the end of the talk, I took the audience through a comics-making exercise I call "grids and gestures" which reconsiders what drawing is by thinking about the composition of a single comics page as orchestrating the shape of one's day. (I need to publish some instructions on this down the road, so it's more easily shareable). They created some great and quite diverse works - adding to the discussion and thinking on the comics form. A few of the samples were added to a wall alongside the exhibition - which I think made a lovely complement to the work and my larger argument for comics as a powerful tool for thought. Attendees to the talk all got signed copies of a booklet/excerpting work from the dissertation, and copies will be on hand for all attendees of the exhibition. A cool added bonus to the whole experience. 

Anyhow, thanks to Donald and all who made this possible. Thanks for all the support I received from afar while this was going on. It was a fantastic experience all around. And now - back to drawing! Chapter Three is about to be finished and Chapter Four awaits! - Thanks, Nick 

Vide column display

Video Column display

View from the atrium of columns, process table, and prints

View of the space and atrium of building 99 from third floor 

Donald Brinkman and me

left outline of comics capacity, rt layout of new pg...

the process table

compiled sketches from the comics-making exercise

Multimodality and Microsoft Exhibition

Ok, I haven't quite finished the chapter when I'd hoped. This page on multimodality kept asking for more thinking, and then more... I finished last week, and was hopeful to finish the remaining two before posting all together, but because of travel (see below) I won't quite finish them till next week, so posting this solo now. This page follows directly from the page on visual-verbal interaction and brings another dimension to it in addressing the other modes, signs, symbols that comics incorporate to make meaning.

While they're not mentioned directly on the page, the content draws heavily on the work of Gunther Kress, Carey Jewitt, the New London Group, and more (all of this will be in my annotated appendix). The imagery took a lot of turns along the way - at some point i was drawing all the ingredients for an omelette (that's another story) - but finally by accident struck upon the confluence between a keyboard and orchestra. The hands arrived as I'd drawn an arrow to move the eye back up from the left sidebar of panels - but wanted something more organic and had previously been thinking of hands on the "keys." The thermometer, Descartes reference all go back to the opening to this chapter. Anyhow - I'll leave it at that, except to mention a few other things that prompted ideas. Paul Gravett's interview with John Miers (UK doc student) on his very cool Score and Script project, and this Russian comic/staff ("Etude No.81, " by I. Berkovich) - which I didn't actually draw on, but I really liked it and it served as inspiration so thought I'd share here. 

While I was working on this, the Graphixia, Comics and the Multimodal World conference was happening in Vancouver and while following along remotely, I was finding a lot of points of resonance with what I was working on.  Brooke Sheridan did a lovely write up of the gathering here. Also, Roger Whitson shared a preview of his presentation here. As always, this is a low-resolution version of my actual page - so some detail loss happens.

This week, I'm off to Seattle to give a talk and have an exhibition at Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Washington! The exhibition will feature a selection of printed works from the dissertation, as well as digital displays, and I'll be presenting on the work Friday, June 28. This is a new forum to share the work and I'm excited and grateful for the opportunity. Looking to share pictures and updates when I get back! Thanks for following along, till soon. - Nick

Beat Review! and arts journalism

Two weekends ago, I was pleased to participate in the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art's annual festival. I had a great time meeting new people, talking about my work, and checking out other works when time permitted to sneak away from my table. It was a well run event all around and a healthy expression of the wide range of works coming out of the comics community.

This past weekend, I was fortunate to be included in The Beat's article on 10 notable debuts from the festival! Writer Hannah Means-Shannon navigated the crowds and the mass of work on display to provide an in depth and insightful look at all the works she featured. For me, this event is a step outside of the academic context I'm usually presenting in, and I doubly appreciate having the work acknowledged alongside other comics makers. Means-Shannon wrote of my work:

"will leave you with haunting imagery in a psychological space following the existence of “flatlanders”. Steeped in mythological reference, from winged sandals to a planet surface constructed of minotaurian mazes, his artistic style veers between the boundaries of a painterly style and the pen and ink accents of 19th century engravings. It’s a heady experiment, and even in transit, it’s clear that Sousanis is ambitious about what comics can accomplish in the 21st century."

See the Beat's full piece here, with images and details on all the other artists featured.

This review also made me reflect on my own experience as an arts journalist in Detroit for thedetroiter.com, a publication I co-founded with my brother John and ran from 2002-2008. During that time I wrote around three reviews of shows every week, along with interviews, editorials and more about Detroit's thriving arts community. (The site is currently mothballed, but if interested you can get a view of some of that history in my final editorial before heading to NYC here.) What I came to realize is that for so many of the artists I wrote about, this was the first thing ever written on them, and given the state of arts journalism, often the only serious consideration of their work in public. This perspective has given me a great appreciation for the role journalists play in supporting the community by bringing such efforts to light and in providing a much-needed record. As is apparent by the space given to arts journalism in our daily papers - it's an underrecognized profession - but I believe of vital importance for the health of the community it serves. So support your local arts writer - and a great thank you to Hannah and the Beat!

Pictured, thumbnail sketches for new pages in the works. I just finished one and the other is nearly there - so will be posting the finished pages any day now... - Nick

MoCCAfest 2013!

This weekend, April 6 and 7, I'm pleased to participate at the Society of Illustrators/Museum of Comic and Cartoon Arts annual festival at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington between 25th and 26th. The event features 100s of local, national, and international cartoonists and comics authors, publishers like First Second, Pantheon, Drawn & Quarterly, and more, as well as panel discussions and book signings.

I'll have on hand copies on hand of my dissertation in progress, excerpts as a giveaway, and my collection of pre-dissertation work as well. Come by to say hello and talk comics and things education. (I'm at Table B45.) Also, i'll be sharing my table with Yen Yen Woo & Colin Goh - the creative force behind the super cool DimSum Warriors comic/app. Comics writer and critic Adam McGovern will also be holding down the fort as well - with some newly penned works to share from Magic Bullet.

MoCCAfest runs Saturday and Sunday 11am to 6pm - come on out!! - Nick

P.S. If you're new to my work and want a quick primer:
Click the "dissertation" label to get excerpts from the dissertation including the complete chapter 2,
For talks and interviews, click the "interview" label, which includes the Chronicle of Higher Ed, Russia's Theory&Practice, and a podcast with the UofAlaska Fairbanks.
Or just click around as you please. - N

Flatness, Ch1, and Detroit exhibition

As I'm plugging away at Chapter Three (the first sequence of which can be seen here), an excerpt from Chapter Two is on view as part of an exhibition opening Friday, March 1st at the Detroit Artists Market (Ch2 in its entirety can be found here). In thinking about Detroit, I'm realizing that while I've posted parts of Chapter One (on tracks, boxes, testing, and standards), I haven't shared the opening pages to the dissertation at all. I thought I'd post a bit of it now and in the process, connect the dots to a past work of mine from Detroit that served as a visual and thematic inspiration for the notion of flatness that underlies this work. 

In April 2004, I installed a public art billboard along Woodward Avenue in Ferndale, Michigan just outside of Detroit. For the project, I sought to address and depict transformation by embedding two images – two concepts – in one piece. The primary image used space as standard, flat billboards do. On a series of equally-spaced slats, I encoded a second image, whose edges faced oncoming traffic such that they were nearly invisible. However, in coming alongside it, drivers would witness a fleeting transformation as the slats lined up to reveal the second image. The motorist’s own movement brought about the metamorphosis, a conceptual transformation whose imagery is well-described borrowing words from Herbert Marcuse (1991, 1964) and Maxine Greene (1998) respectively:

Of the seemingly endless rows of colorless sleepwalkers: “Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior in which ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe.” (p. 12).
 The red leaping figure offered an alternative: “To break with the ‘cotton wool’ of habit, of mere routine, of automatism, is … to seek alternative ways of being, to look for openings. To find such openings is to discover new possibilities – often new ways of achieving freedom in the world” (p. 2) 

I grounded the work both physically and conceptually in Detroit’s history. The city’s hub-and-spoke street plan sees Woodward (the country’s first paved road) intersect cross streets at 60° angles making my optical transformation possible. The imagery alludes to assembly lines and the Motor City defined and ultimately deserted by the automobile. The sleepwalkers could be Henry Ford’s average workers, who, he said, “want to be led. They want to have everything done for them and have no responsibility” (Flink, 1975, p. 80). By asking, in my accompanying artist statement, “Can art awaken something dormant within us?” I sought to offer a rebuttal and a reminder of our complexity, intending for commuters, if but briefly, to open their eyes, as I wrote then, to “a glimmer of possibility often obscured.”

The original post about "Spring," which was on view for about four months the summer of 2004 can be found here. The images shared here are from the actual installation as well as the preparatory cardboard mockup that sits on my desk today.

As I was figuring out what I meant by "unflattening" and thinking on "the importance of seeing double" enfolding two perspectives at once and comics as an amphibious medium holding two modes of thinking in the same space, this past work sprung to mind as a means of two forms in one, as showing transformation, and the imagery made its way into the dissertation. Visually both the billboard and the current work drew heavily on Piranesi's "le carceri" (the prison) etchings, a bit of Anton Furst's designs for Tim Burton's Batman film, and plenty of other things. The opening is intended to be triptych, though for formatting requirements won't appear as such in the dissertation itself.

Ok, that was a lot of words - hope you enjoyed a bit of the backstory, onward into Chapter Three! - Nick

Testing, testing... extended sequence from Ch 1

As I'm putting together the final pages of Chapter Two, wanted to share a few unseen pages and a complete sequence from Chapter One - reflections on being stuck and how systems perhaps built with the best of intentions, end up becoming a trap. I shared two pages on "Boxes" before as they were on view at Gallery Project in Ann Arbor, MI for the exhibition Quantified Self. Four other pages I've yet to share on my site were on view at Gallery Project's Grammar of the Elite. End of Ch 2 coming soon. - Nick 

(As always, these are low resolution images of the actual work.) 

On Exhibit: Quantified Self

This week, i'm revealing two pages from Chapter One of the dissertation. They're a couplet (as many have been throughout Ch1 and the Interlude) and will be on display starting this week as part of the exhibition "Quantified Self" at Gallery Project in Ann Arbor, MI. The show features local and national artists, and apparently famed information designer Edward Tufte... Wish i could check it out!

Thanks to Rocco, Gloria, and the curators for the invitation to participate. Please find gallery info below - and also, I've shared a few of the early sketches that led to these pages - and ways that they almost became a single page. Hope you enjoy a little bit of the behind the scenes play... - Nick 

 

Gallery Project presents Quantified Self, a multimedia exhibit in which 34 local, regional, and national artists examine how individuals collect and often project information about themselves and others in the digital world. Artists examine the quantified self from two unique perspectives: one, how information about individuals is collected, stored, processed, and used by these individuals and communicated to others; and two how entities collect information about individuals and groups for commercial and other purposes.  Artists in the exhibit include Peter Adamczyk, Brett Ian Balogh, Emily Blyth-Jones, Seder Burns, James Davenport, Sage Dawson, Rocco DePietro, Nicholas Fenton, Jason Ferguson, Laurie Frick, Roland Graf, Richelle Gribble, Deborah Gumucio, Megan Hildebrandt, Sinimaria Ikonen, Kyle Kramer, Susan Krueger, Beili Liu and Rino Pizzi, Louise Ma, Collin McRae, Michael Nagara, Mark Neuman, Shelby Olsen, Erica Podwoiski, Gloria Pritschet, Colin Raymond, Mark Royal Schroll, Bethany Shorb, Nick Sousanis, Cedric Tai, Edward Tufte, Ben Utigard, and Mark Wentzl. Gallery Project collaborators Colin Raymond and Kyle Kramer are curating this exhibit.

215 South Fourth Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48103 New Hours: Thursday-Saturday, noon-9; Sunday, noon-6; closed on Monday Thru Wednesday

734.997.7012 galleryproject@gmail.com http://www.thegalleryproject.com

MoCCAfest Reflections

Of late, this blog has started to transform into a blog proper - instead of solely serving as a repository for new comics. As I'm in the midst of a very long form comic in the form of my dissertation, this trend will continue for a while (and also, i have a proper site in the works! More on that later.).

MoCCAfest 2012 represented my first time at a comic convention on the creator side of the table. A learning experience. Had a great time, particularly meeting other creators. Thought I'd share a quick rundown of a little bit of what I saw - limited by the fact, I didn't leave my table for long...

My first visitor on the first day was legendary comics artist P.Craig Russell! A real treat - I recall his ink work (over Jim Starlin) way back to Detective Comics #481 (i had to look up the issue number, but I did remember the story) - and have been inspired by his approach to comics ever since. (Sandman - Ramadan issue, adaptation of Gaiman's "The Dream Hunters" - among other great stuff.)

For reasons unbeknownst to any of us, I found myself nestled between the Scandinavian comics artists contingent! Good folks and a lot of exciting work. Check out the Swedish Comics Association and all that they're doing to support artists and promote comics here. I shared a table with Wisconsin native turned-Norwegian, Max Estes. Delightful storyteller - in nearly silent tales. Also, I was seated next to the folks behind Sikhtoons - and enjoyed watching as their work invited conversations with all sorts of visitors to the festival. Great use of aesthetics and humor for opening dialogues.

I was kitty corner to Jessica Abel and Matt Madden (creators of Drawing Words and Writing Pictures and series editors of the Best American Comics) where they were showing off their new book Mastering Comics - available everywhere May 8! Expect Mastering Comics to join their original Drawing Words/Writing Pictures text as a must have for teachers of comics, comics makers, and more. This dynamic duo continues to give greatly to the comics medium.

Caught up with fellow doc student and comics artist Jarod Roselló and was introduced to his thinking about art in comics - a blend of fun storytelling and serious pedagogical discussions.

Jarod in turn introduced me to the Australian cartoonists (now on Tour!) This grand gathering included Pat Grant - whose book Blue from TopShelf is set to make serious waves. In my view it is seriously smart cartooning - a master class in thinking of how to convey story in comics. Definitely highly recommended.

Susie Oh stopped by my table - and shared her lovely and thoughtful illustrated stories. She was kind enough to share a few words on my work on her blog here. (On that note, thanks again to the Beat's Torsten Adair for including my work in his overview of Day 1 at the festival.)

Ran across yet another doctoral student also making comics - Marjee Chmiel and picked up her book (beautifully illustrated in black and white by Sandra Lanz) "Luci's Let Down." Smart and wildly imaginative in text and image.

Though not exhibiting this time, received a visit from Yen Yen Woo & Colin Goh - creators of the comic/app Dim Sum Warriors (one of the most interesting blends of tech and comics i've seen - check it out).

Thanks to everyone I met (this is only a little sampling - good energy all around) - and a big thank you to the organizers at MoCCA and all the volunteers - who made this happen!

Next up, I'll be heading down to Huntingdon, PA for the Sequential SmArt comics and education conference hosted by Juniata College. A great crew of comics makers/educators will be assembled. In the meantime - drawing away at this dissertation. I have pages to share - and will do so soon... - Nick

After MoCCAfest Day One - B4 Day 2

Finished up a long first day of MoCCAfest - plenty of good conversations and interest in expanding what comics can do.

The Beat's Torsten Adair was kind enough to post a few words about what i'm up to in his reflections on MoCCAfest day One column here! He mentions the Rabbit page from my Possibilities comic on Games - the entire piece is reprinted in full in my collection, but you can see the Rabbit page and a few others here.

the "Rabbit" page from "Possibilities"

I'm nestled in Row A in the midst of the Scandinavian delegation - lovely people all around. Come on by! - Nick