Design - Graphic & Interaction Design
Emi Plapis
- Graduation work
Design - Graphic & Interaction Design
The publication gathers sixteen postcards sent to Groningen and is an appreciation of the depth that postcards present, speaking of absence as presence and, despite their brevity, momentarily pull you into a full and vivid world. Through a common destination, it becomes a partial portrait of Groningen, a collective memory left behind in the local antiquariaat. My work also asks how images, and equally so the viewer, can be influenced by (re)contextualization.
It poses questions on how structuring can influence our perception and confront automatic recognition or more active seeing. The first viewing is constrained to the recognition of a postcard, details, subtleties, and patterns dismissed in favour of the whole: the holiday artifact. Through zooming in and shifting familiarity, switching from recognition to seeing, the publication challenges the reader to notice fragments and commonalities within stamps, textures, or typography. Whether the handwriting is cursive or crudely disjointed, written with a brisk hand or poured over with patience, neat or tangled, pen or pencil, patterns emerge. Ordering postcards to compare the same word can emphasize the narrative of a preference in large, swoopy letters. Reorganizing them can show a preference in writing material and colour. Reorganizing them yet again may reveal an underlying and subconscious grid behind the text. My practice focuses on dissection, observation, and creating new images through merging and (re)arrangement.
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