Relational Mapping

Exploring Glasgow as a case study, Relational Mapping is an immersive web-based experience which considers how the visual language of mapping can express relationships overlooked by a solely geographical focus.

When traversing urban spaces, particular materials appear repeatedly in different social and historical contexts, forming both the literal and metaphorical ‘fabric’ of the city. By treating these materials as a lens through which to explore and organise the urban environment, Relational Mapping highlights the temporal and socio-political relationships inseparable from these spaces.

View the website here, or watch a full walkthrough here.

Signal in the Noise

This outcome consists of two process-led responses. The first, Fauna, began by feeding random patterns of coloured squares into an algorithm trained to identify objects in images, which frequently misrecognised these as wildlife. In the form of a wildlife spotting handbook, this uncanny visual interpretation foregrounds how radically the ‘black box’ of the algorithm’s understanding differs from that of the human.

The second response, Flora, began by feeding scientific image archives of plant species into photogrammetry algorithms, designed to reduce a bank of images into a single structure. In the form of botanical illustrations, the distorted representations of each species—due to the software fabricating relationships between natural and artificial elements—again explores how organic forms are interpreted in a computational process.

The Politics of Type

The Politics of Type explores how typography is embedded within wider political relations.

In 1929, the traditional Ottoman script for written Turkish was replaced with a Latinised version, intended to ensure the Atatürk regime’s long-term cultural influence.

Two hand-painted signs announcing this change became the basis for a new typeface, recontextualising its letterforms from a tool of governmental discipline into one open to new modes of communication.

The typeface was applied to a promotional poster for a forthcoming documentary, which examines the wider political contexts which made the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria so destructive.

Collaboration with Tom McFarlane.

National Assembly

In today’s politics, a turn towards reactionary nationalism is increasingly prevalent. Nationalist agendas often appeal to particular interpretations of history, constructing (pseudo-)historical narratives to form a unified national consciousness and identity.

National Assembly interrogates these constructed historical narratives through a speculative museum exhibition catalogue. Set in a fictional future England following the dissolution of the United Kingdom, the catalogue explores how nation-building uses hyperbolic narratives to reimagine objects as national symbols, part of a broader process of (re)constructing history.

View a flip through here.