Mannam
Five Graphic Dialogues
in New York

Curators
Hoon Kim &
Andrew Sloat



In partnership with the design-oriented stores Project No. 8 and 8b, Mannam (Korean for meeting) investigates the relationships between Korean and non-Korean designers. Participants are invited to start with one-on-one dialogues, and to generate form that responds to both their developing dialogue, and the context of the commercial space. Recording or keeping a record of these dialogues in some way is required, and at the project’s completion, the curators will search the transcripts for significant moments, engage in a dialogue of our own, and publish a survey and archive of the project.

Mannam is an experimental method for the generation and exhibition of original work by graphic designers. We believe that the displayable and interpretable work of a graphic designer should not be limited to a discrete and familiar “deliverable”, but can be broadened to include their research, their self-education, their thought process, etc. In the end, Mannam is an opportunity to publicly present work of designers we admire.

Exhibition
February 28—July 30, 2010
Project No. 8: 138 Division St
Project No. 8b: 38 Orchard St

Hours
Tuesday—Sunday, 1—7 PM
Closed Monday



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First Dialogue
Subcurrents


Participants
E Roon Kang &
Christian Marc Shmidt



This project explores the cultural significance of data frequencies. Four projection surfaces display data feeds describing the intersections between seemingly mundane aspects of our collective everyday experience. Numbers, colors, and complementary word pairings are scraped from Twitter, isolated from their original message context, and displayed in real-time, generating visual and temporal patterns intrinsic to the data. Each display represents a single dataset, juxtaposing past and present, the individual and the multitude, the frequent and the infrequent. The outcome is a conversation, and a space for contemplating the connections that may emerge from the overlooked moments in our lives.


From February 28

Second Dialogue
Block 294, Lot 28 /
Block 298, Lot 13

Participants
Jae Jeon &
Abi Huynh



This project responds to one of the only constraints set by the open project brief—the location. The sites of Project No. 8 and Project No. 8b inspired a search for the past incarnations of these present-day storefronts: the story of the Division Street shop is told through a set of narrative fragments from a varied and shadowy history; in contrast, the Orchard Street shop was the location of a sign fabricator that remains in business nearby. Selected fragments of their discarded signs have been brought back to Project Number 8.


From March 28

Third Dialogue
Temporary Authority


Participants
Yoonjai Choi &
Ken Meier



In 1991, the first known webcam went live, broadcasting the fill status of the Trojan Room coffee pot at Cambridge University's Computer Laboratory. Known as XCoffee, the cam was linked to the internet in 1993 and ran continuously until 2001, when it was disconnected and sold at auction. Today, consumer webcams are used less as do-it-yourself monitoring devices but instead to allow real-time communication between two or more people, or to display web-accessible images of a public space (see SF State's venerable FogCam). Along these lines, Temporary Authority connects Project No. 8 and 8b via a simple web feed, but filters the images through modified camera software, rendering each space in XCoffee-era ANSI graphics. Additionally, portraits documenting various project participants are collected, printed, and hung at both locations.


From April 25

Fourth Dialogue
Standard Local Time


Participants
Chris Ro &
Huy Vu



This project is an attempt at bridging the geographic, temporal, and emotional distance between two people who live half a world apart: one participant is in Korea, the other in New York. Over the course of the show, their conversation will take residence in Project No. 8 in the form of two fax machines that will display feelings, declarations, and ideas in a common and public space. This setting allows them to have a disjointed dialogue that, due to an extreme time zone difference, happens simultaneously at night and day. Visitors to Project No.8 are encouraged to send their own faxes and join the conversation.


From June 15

Fifth Dialogue
Chain of Thought


Participants
Min Lew &
Koen Malfait



This dialogue starts from the project’s primary brief: to be relevant to its location. >> Project No. 8/ No. 8b is a store that represents designers by selling their work. >> At the same time, these designers collectively represent Project No. 8 / No. 8b. >> Eleven of the designers were asked to participate in telling a story by each adding one line to the sentence they received from the previous designer. >> The final collective story is integrated into the experience of shopping at Project No. 8 / No. 8b. >> When a shopper encounters one piece of the story, they are encouraged to pursue the full story, spread in pieces throughout the store.


From July 19