Göllgpie
During the course of the semester we dedicated our time to several graphic design experiments that would fulfill the requirements of the semester topic Stop Making Sense. In a group of five women we explored a lot of collaborative ways to create something together without being able to work physically in one room. In some experiments we passed our contribution one after the other via email or analogue mail to the next person who would continue working on it, reacting to it or drawing on top of it … In other experiments each one of us would receive an individual task that we then worked on at the same time – of course without knowing what the others were doing. At the end all the single results were combined to one collaborative piece. We regularly met on Zoom to talk and brainstorm about new experiments and to do live drawing sessions together. Some of our projects were inspired by childhood games like Folding Game or Stille Post. We also got inspired by the restriction of being home all day or by newly found pandemic features like the drawing function on Zoom. Working in that way was not only fun and entertaining but let us gain many new experiences. For instance giving up control because of not knowing and not being able to influence what the next person would do with your design. With five people involved time was scheduled differently and a sense of uncertainty was created. This sometimes felt extremely straining but at the same time it was joyous and rewarding to see the final result. It somehow felt like the mystery of developing analogue films in your childhood. We realized that the limitations and restrictions we imposed on ourselves seemed like a burden at the beginning but were actually so refreshing in the end. The results were much more interesting because we would stop using our oh so well-known tools and had to express ourselves by only drawing rectangles for example. Limiting the time frame also helped to not overthink and to just start creating – resulting in a more free and expressive way of designing something than usual. Even though the semester is over now and our project seems to be completed with handing-in this collaboratively created documentation, we all agree that we will probably continue doing some experimental sessions now and then in the future.
