Michael Beck
Graphic Research
and Design

mail@beckmichael.de
Swimming Pool Water Swimming Pool Water Swimming Pool Water Swimming Pool Water Swimming Pool Water Swimming Pool Water Swimming Pool Water Swimming Pool Water Swimming Pool Water Swimming Pool Water Swimming Pool Water Swimming Pool Water
The upper-case alphabet in twenty-six paragraphs &mdash Text &mdash An excersise on induction.
Artikel &mdash Typeface &mdash Under construction.
Remake &mdash Typeface &mdash Remake of ‘Poster-Typeface’
Nieuwe Vide, Final Play &mdash Theatre beam, Computer &mdash To the final Event ‘A play’ of ‘The Object Lag’ — a year long project at the Nieuwe Vide Gallery in Haarlem — I contributed with a performance based on my work ‘Like Russian Dolls’. During the play a theatre beam illuminated a corner in the gallery space and hence repro­duced its light situation during the period of the entire ‘Object Lag’ in time-lapse.
Sekunde &mdash Typeface, 172 Characters,
3 Weights &mdash
Ongoing Project.
Installation Kunstvlaai Amsterdam 2010 &mdash Beamer, Computer, modified Keyboard &mdash The installation was a presentation of my work ‘Like Russian Dolls’, developed during the ‘Object Lag’ at the ‘Nieuwe Vide’ Haarlem. Using the arrow keys of a modified keyboard, the public could swap through the observations I transcribed into a complex system of folders.
Like Russian Dolls &mdash based on the MacOSX Graphic User Interface &mdash The documentation of a corners continous change in the ‘Nieuwe Vide’, Haarlem during the collaborative project ‘The Object Lag’. The documentations final form manifested in language, variably structured in the finder of a MacOSX.
Corners &mdash Public reading &mdash I compiled excerpts of Deleuze's ‘The Fold’ and Bachelard's ‘Poetics of Space’, concerning corners.
Datenschleuder Magazine &mdash 148 x 105 mm, 64 pages, Laserprint &mdash In a collabo­ration, Stefan Nauert and me proposed a redesign for the ‘Daten­schleuder’ — the club-magazine of the Chaos Computer Club, Germany. To keep the production costs low, our concept focussed on a ‘programed design’, which could be exe­cuted on each issue by anybody of the club, unfamiliar to visual design proc­ess­es. Core of our proposal was a software which ensured the intuitive illustration of articles with web-based image material.
Product &mdash Part of ‘Mutation’ series, Clay &mdash Reproduction of a mug, executed with the ‘Machine’-Clay-Cutter.
Raphael &mdash Typeface, 62 Characters &mdash Based on the logotype of a liquor-brand, ‘Raphael’ is the design of an eponymous typeface.
Complex &mdash Based on the MacOSX Graphic User Interface &mdash The work is quot­ing takes advantage of the MacOSX's capability to thread text, by linking and nesting folders into each other. As a result it allows to compile and fragment lan­guage in an elastic text-structure. The work reveals unexpected alignments of words and depicts the circular and infinite structure of language. Controlling device is a modified computer keyboard.
Manual of ‘Machine’ &mdash Part of ‘Mutation’ series, Based on ‘Machine’-Clay-Cutter, 210 mm x 297 mm, 60 Pages, Ana­logue B/W Copies &mdash The booklet translates the concept of the Tetrahedron-cutting ma­chine into a printed matter. To forge the machine-parts to new ones and hence to permute their mechanical function into a symbolic one, their image was reproduced with an ana­logue copy machine on A3, to be randomly compiled, folded and bound into booklets.
1 2 1 &mdash 210 mm x 237 mm, 92 Pages, Laserprint, 22 different papers &mdash The attempt to translate the physical attributes of an object as well as their change over time into a graphic printed matter. Format, volume, colour and tactility of the paper-medium, as well as the number of objects it displays, correspond to the attributes of the initial object — a can of PU-foam — and its content.
Cast &mdash Wood, screwed, glued &mdash Supporting constructions to build Machine
Machine &mdash Part of ‘Mutation’-series, welded, screwed &mdash This work quotes a computer-device developed at the Uni­versity of Tokyo, which projects ghost-like, invisible but tangible objects into midair. To reverse, blow up and slow down the ubiquitous digital reproduction of the world, I constructed a machine which en­a­bles to reproduce threedimensional digital models as tangible clay-objects in a series of simple movements. The ana­logue ap­pa­ra­tus is built of fragments from found, old mechanisms and hence is both: A mir­ror of the concept its own production is subjected to and a physical diagram of semiotics.
Tiles &mdash Typedesign, 26 Characters &mdash Based on the few letters, found on the package of tiles I de­signed this typeface.
Typemanual &mdash Print Publication,
210 mm x 297 mm, Collaboration &mdash
Design of one chapter and the cover.
Fahrenheit 451 &mdash Print Publication,
105 mm x 180 mm, Collaboration &mdash
Redesign of Ray Bradbury's book which was first released in 1953.
Bookshelf &mdash Image sequence, diagram
of book references &mdash
This image se­quence is the result of a research about individual information contexts. The book sculpture manifests the coherence of a private library.
Basilica &mdash Typeface, 54 pages &mdash To illu­strate the approach of 'Barock im Vatikan' on Baroque architecture, I de­signed a volumetric typeface based on blackletters. The font is deployed on the cover, for the pagenumbers, and as drop caps within the text.
Barock im Vatikan &mdash 250 mm x 660 mm, 132 pages, Hardcover, white Linen, red book jacket, punched &mdash In 2006 the Kunst­halle Bonn launched the exhibition ‘Barock im Vatikan’ and released an as­so­ci­at­ing catalogue. As part of a seminar at the University of Applied Sciences Hamburg I compiled excerpts of this cata­logue in a special edition. My design fo­cus­es on the typographical characteristics considered typical for the Baroque, and intends to carry the periods artistic attitude.
Vizualisation of musical structure &mdash Infomation Design &mdash An attempt to unveil patterns in a sequence of musical inter­vals, based on visually developed al­go­rithms. Object of investigation was the 1. Fugue C-Dur, BWV 846 of »Das wohltemperierte Klavier« by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Voice Over &mdash Handrawn Posters,
594 x 841 mm &mdash
To emphazise the ge­ne­ral use of posters and their role as a public me­di­um, Keith Ein and me staged in a col­lab­o­rational project its self-reflective po­ten­tial. In a series of handrawn posters we re­pro­duced the song-lyrics of ‘Don’t let me be misunderstood’.
Prime &mdash Typeface, 172 Characters,
3 Weights &mdash
Inspired by the particular means of a text from Yugoslavian writer Ivo Andric in the context of written lan­guage, I de­signed a typeface, to re­pro­duce this text. The initially illustrative design passed significant transformation and finally appeared as a typeface of 3 weights, usable for body text.
‘Love and Hate’-Poster &mdash Typedesign, Silkscreened, 1189 mm x 841 mm &mdash
To announce the ‘Love and Hate’ film­screening at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, I de­signed a handwritten typeface and a poster.
Sculp &mdash Interface design &mdash ‘Sculp’ is a software to generate interactive realtime-3D-environments and a collaboration with programer Sascha Merg. Within the pro­ject I supported the programs con­cep­tion, designed the interface and tested its usa­bility. ‘Sculp’ enables the user to control form, texture, lighting, position and be­ha­viour of virtual objects and their virtual stage. We develop and adjust the soft­ware for interactive life-performances.
Announcement Poster &mdash Inkjet-Plot,
841 mm x 1189 mm &mdash
Announcement Poster for the ‘Stilvorlagen’-lecture series at the University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg.
Tetrahedron Object I &mdash Antennas, Plastic, Duck-Tape
Announcement Poster &mdash Inkjet-Plot,
840 mm x 420 mm &mdash
Announcement Poster for Leonardo Sonnoli as a lecturer at the ‘Stilvorlagen’ course of lectures at the University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg.
Aniversary Poster &mdash Inkjet-Plot,
420 mm x 840 mm &mdash
Anniversary Poster on the occasion of the 110th birthday of Lazlo Moholy Nagy.
On
my current research


The
world comes to light,
as it dawns
in the spectator, wallpapered with
glaring electronic arcs and
shrill bursts
of neon.
With microscopic aspects of nature

plants, insects, glaced pebbles, reflecting drops, iridescent bubbles
and coruscating waves
that merge
into the panoramic colour
scales of deserts, woods and seas

our
interfaces
are wrapped into a divine fabric of luminiferous ether.

Subjected
to forces beyond common laws of physics

yet considering space and time

linguistic sediments rise to immobile massifs, erode to drifting moraines, undulate within granular dunes to finally transmute into a vortical fold of absolute matter: Language is the audio-visual construct of vowels and consonants — an intangible compound of particles, able to reveal and reproduce substance.
Inflections and inclusions within, unfold as words, continuously rephrased by an endless and puzzling morphological process.
The topology of signs therefor is in an unsteady vocabulary — cavernous containers and mineral abbreviations of facts, that change with every iteration, volume, mass and inertia.
In the context of electronical media, the fold is made visible as an ubiquitous, mechanical application to administer information.
As ‘folder’ inflected and enhanced to utter function, hyperlinked to a binary fabric, the fold is visually manifested as an archetypical icon.
As infinite optical reverberation it is hence both skeleton and skin of an obscure and pseudo-spatial body.

The fold develops to a phallic extension of space, a medium of light, a tool and device, to unveil and obscure; A Cathedral of wide dimensions and absent materiality, of force eluding contour and a colossally colored radiance.
Our electronic devices install a light room, which cause an immediate change from profane day to a lux divina — A glinting architecture, that tints man’s face with fervent shadows when entering.

We are members of a cult, believers of an empyreal beyond; absorbed by the binary apparatus and distilled into a luminous flux. And as we try to permeate through the diaphanous, transparent screens, to penetrate and to manipulate the ultra-cavernous structure, we further ascend, doomed on a garish surface. While the fibrillating stimulus and the accelerated speed of scene-changes on our electronic displays offer rich sensation, the flood of perception is about to turn into an experiential desert: A dense landscape of signs and sign systems that manifest in endless, selfreferential loops and refer to nothing but themselves. We are sweped away by the raging stasis of a maelstrom that suffuses and keeps on growing in us — divested of our own identity and turned into images of images. We worship the fold, as Prima materia, as Genesis of space, as yonic temple of Gods and Demons — as Ur-sign.


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