Interpolate

Workshop

Interpolation is the act of inserting something of a different nature into something else.

During the session, we will be asking participants to interrogate a collection of objects through two opposite words, digital and analogue, on each side of a circle drawn on a circular table. Alongside this intense material investigation, the participants will be introduced to theoretical texts to underpin the interrogation. Two students in each group will capture/ transcribe the dialogue directly onto the circles, forming new knowledge for future provocations and discussions.

Students and staff will be running the workshop, breaking down the barriers of hierarchy between the teacher and the learner. During Interpolate, we will not be teaching anyone rather than creating a discussion where we learn from one another.

Themes such as new forms of literacy in a digital world, the link between art and language, language and maths, maths and art, the concept of print and digital fluency, the real and the unreal amongst many others are discussed as they naturally unravel from the original provocation. By using materiality as a starting point, we hope that the audience and ourselves will grasp a more grounded understanding of the ideas discussed.

Timetable

Introduction (10 min)
Workshop discussion (20 min)
Round up (15 min)

For a total of three possible workshops split into two sessions - one in the morning one in the afternoon - 2 hours 25 minutes each. Possibility of reducing it to an hour and a half.

Interaction

Without a physical example, defining interpolation is complex and difficult to explain to audiences. We will introduce object-based learning as a spring board for analysis. We will build the context and create the stimulus for thought and discussion. However, it is the audience that will lead the discussion and interact with each other. We will also participate and discuss and debate without suggesting or forcing the audience in going into a specific direction. By having materials on the table, we are inviting them to interrogate the presence of the objects in the first place, from which it will naturally develop into a discussion about the opposition digital and analogue. From the discussion, we will then conclude by unveiling the idea of interpolation by using their discussion as the defining example.

Takeaway

To interpolate is to think in a different way, examining the cross sections between digital and analogue, by exploring what can happen in the middle is a new way of generating endless potential for ideas. The breakdown of teacher and student hierarchy is also demonstrating new methods of approaching teaching and collaboration between individuals.

We wish to create environments and methods of thinking which will make the participants of the workshop explore the thinking behind digital and analogue in a way they might not have previously done. This creates new nuances and ways of viewing the theme which the audience may have not previously explored.

The provocations and the discussions outcome will be written and documented by both the students and the staff. Each provocation outcome for each opposition will allow the Interpolate members to further discuss and provoke the area of knowledge previously explored. We will combine the outcome in a research folder where we will attempt to understand the audience's perspective around digital and analogue.

In addition, both the audience and us will be introduced to new methods and ways of analyzing each others provocations.

Finally, we will give to each audience an Interpolate bag with:

• An original letterpress print of the object presented
• A reader's group with our own choice of extracts from various theoretical texts referring to Interpolate.

Outcomes

We plan to record the discussion in order to advance our research on interpolation and to generate new workshops at university in order to create an environment of free discussion and debate between the staff and students. We plan on applying the learning outcomes into our individual practices and courses.

Some of the students intend to write about the workshop in their third year dissertation. We also intend to add the outcome onto our research website interpolate.org.uk and compile a research book documented by all the members of the Interpolate workshop group. Finally, we intend to give our website address to the audience in order to collect feedback directly from them.

Abstract

The 'Interpolate' project makes connections between typography, language, technology, and human agency, via both critical dialogue and hands-on making (code/letterpress/other). As co-investigators within in an intensive 'interrogative' space; one located within graphic design and typography, it reaches out to other subjects, and asks probing questions about the discipline of graphic design, through the lenses of other subjects, whose ways of proceeding are related but often radically different. These include critical thinking/philosophy & the humanities/poetry/critiques of technology/science/coding, and 'other'.

Interpolate seeks to expose what's hidden within practice, including the substrate of binary code, which 'sits beneath' the visible world of screen and digital production, and the materiality of language itself (speech/print/writing), which allows communication to happen.

Interpolate deliberately collapses the hierarchies between staff and students by bring all together within one space of intensive dialogue; in workshops which sit alongside the main curriculum It uses old technologies in new ways and new technologies in collaboration with old ones. It's (paradoxically) both blind to, and respectful of tradition/s.

The verb 'to interpolate' also suggests that we might interrupt and/or corrupt the connections we find: dismissing them as too easy… Finally, Interpolate seeks to contest accepted disciplinary conventions and orthodoxies within the disciplines of typography and graphic design, by contesting those canons of practice. It seeks contestation rather than resolution: problem finding rather than problem solving. Connect/disconnect/contest are at the heart of Interpolate, in both intent and method.