I DON'T KNOW WHERE I'M GOING BUT I KNOW I SAMPLE (1) by Michèle Champagne The review of a curious graphic design symposium Published: January 7, 2011

AMSTERDAM, NL—On December 18th, 2010, the curtains rose on an interesting graphic design symposium. Located in Amsterdam's Paradiso, it was called I Don't Know Where I'm Going But I Want To Be There and it was organized by Graphic Design Museum (2). The take away: graphic design's leading contemporary practitioners (3) didn't know where graphic design [was] going (4). Nevertheless, they continued to navigate the world (5). And this made the symposium and graphic design very curious, complicated (6) and exciting.

Despite complications, one clear thread had emerged: that of sampling. Sampling means taking a small part of any sound, text or image, and re-using it to renew or enrich (7) the heterogeneous repertoire of culture (8). Many practitioners at the symposium were busy doing so, in one way or another. Daniel van der Velden re-mixed amateur aesthetics and corporate logos (9) for his WikiLeaks identity project (pictured above). Erik Kessels turned the professional cliche of roundabout art (10) on its head. Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky) sampled from pop culture for his music and books (11). Sophie Krier was inspired by tropes from other disciplines like juggling (12). So too, this review is actively quoting, paraphrasing and re-contextualizing.

At first glance, an array of sampled media, methods, styles and ideas (13) seems like new territory for graphic designers. Even cutting edge (14). Or, it seems like a way out of 20th century notions of graphic design from the West: a culturally defined, craftsmanship based profession (15). In this 20th century profession, the abstract notions of originality, creativity, authorship and ownership were valued above all. Concerned with market implications, original designs were sold and cemented into copyright law to avoid copying—from Busby Berkeley's opening credits for The Hollywood Hotel, to Paul Rand's logo for UPS.

The symposium, however, claimed graphic design was now on the move (16). When did the new movement begin? Maybe it started recently, at the beginning of the 21st century, when visual identity and branding (17) usurped a complex image economy (18)? Maybe it was at the end of the 20th century, when electronic and experimental hip hop (19) album covers borrowed from the visual world around them? Or maybe it was at the beginning of the 20th century, when collage and photomontage (20) emerged as a 'thing' in the visual art world?

Or, maybe, just maybe, the movement started in the 2nd century BC, when religious books sampled ideas and visual allegories from other cultures? Does it sounds counter-intuitive to consider sacred, original texts as sampled? Let's deconstruct the original text (21).

In the Christian Biblical canon, there's a book called the Old Testament. In theory, the Old Testament is the word of God. Its also known as the Hebrew Bible, the historically true story of Israel and Judah. In practice, however, its a mixed-tape made by bricoleurs (22): a fiddled compilation of varied samples from sources, like scriptures. The Christian Orthodox church includes 51 scriptures in the Old Testament, whereas the Protestant church includes 39 (23). Like DJs who mixed bootleg 8 track tapes in America's 1980s music underground, compilers of the Old Testament also liked to pick-and-choose, with whatever materials were at hand.

Like the tracks on a mixed-tape, scriptures within the Old Testament sample from other sources too. In Exodus scripture, the crime and punishment idea of lex talionis (24) is taken from the Babylonian judicial idea of an eye for an eye (25). In Jeremiah scripture, the visual allegory of a decorated evergreen tree (26) is taken from the Pagan tradition of evergreen decoration in the Roman empire (27). 

And so on and so forth.

If the act of sampling is still very much the modern world (28), its also very much the ancient world. Taking and mixing and matching is old. Very, very old. In that sense, one could argue culture is sampling. Sampling is at the root of human history and creativity. And, as seen at the symposium, perhaps it always will be.

If culture is sampling, maybe it seemed inside the box (29) or even dishonest (30) for the symposium to be all up in arms about sampling as a new breeding ground (31). The symposium focused on today's expanding field of graphic design (32), but had it looked back—way, way back—at things like the Old Testament, it would have known how embedded sampling is within the DNA of culture. In other words, it might have been more interesting to literally connect the past with the future (33), as the title of another Graphic Design Museum exhibition suggested.

If the symposium wasn't exposing new pathways (34) per se, then what was so exciting about it? Perhaps it was exciting to see sampling so openly promoted and advertised (35); perhaps sampling was beginning to receive proper credit in Western graphic design organization and production (36). Not because sampling didn't underlie all types of media (37) for two millennia. But because it had been shamefully veiled and attacked by pro-copyright legal cartels, like The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

So why is sampling finally seeing the light of day? Why now? Is it because of symposiums like this one? Is it because Western graphic design practitioners feel comfortable doing it and talking about it?  Is it because laws that used to strangle creativity (38) are expanding with alternatives like Creative Commons? It is because computing increases the sampling rate (39) of sounds, images and texts at breakneck speed? Is it because the internet so easily allows the hypertextuality (40) and intertexutality (41) of culture worldwide? Or, all of the above?

Surely some interesting questions to think about as 2011 launches, and another creative year begins to unfold.

Sources: (1) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T title remixed, 2010 (2) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T brochure text, 2010

(3) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T brochure text, 2010 (4) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T brochure text, 2010 (5) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T brochure text, 2010 (6) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T, when Wim Crowell talked about how complicated graphic design seemed to be today, 2010 (7) Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind , p. 18, 1966 (8) Ibid. (9) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T, when Daniel van der Velden talked about borrowing from WikiLeaks amateur visual aesthetics (and corporate logos), 2010, http://vimeo.com/18088132 (10) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T, reference to when Erik Kessels talked about cliche 'green' advertising and public art on roundabouts, 2010, http://vimeo.com/18087726 (11) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T, when Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky) talked about sampling in his music and book, 2010, http://vimeo.com/18089969 (12) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T, from Sophie Krier's talk entitled Why designers need to learn to juggle, 2010 (13) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T brochure text, 2010 (14) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T recontextualized from brochure text, under LUST's bio, 2010 (15) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T brochure text, 2010 (16) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T brochure text, 2010 (17) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T brochure text, under Metahaven's bio, 2010 (18) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T, from a Metahaven slide, 2010, http://vimeo.com/18088132 (19) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T brochure text, under Paul D. Miller's (DJ Spooky) bio, 2010 (20) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T, reference to a question in the audience about Metahaven's practice in relation to John Hearfield's photomontage work, 2010 (21) Goodwin, "Sample and Hold: Pop Music in the Digital Age of Reproduction," in Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin, eds., On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word , p. 270–71, 1990 (22) Ibid. 7 (23) Exodus 21:22–25 (24) Paraphrase of a sentence in the Old Testament entry from Wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Testament (25) Code of Hammurabi §129 (26) Jeremiah 10:2–4 (27) Tertullian, "On Idolatry," XV (28) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T, re-contextualized from the text and title of a t-shirt and mini-zine presented by Experimental Jetset, 2010 (29) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T, re-contextualized from Thomas Lommee's talk entitled 'thinking inside the box', 2010 (30) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T, re-contextualized from when Alice Rawsthorn talked about honesty in design, 2010 (31) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T brochure text, 2010 (32) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T brochure text, 2010 (33) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T, from Mieke Gerritzen's talk entitled 'Welcome to Design Wonderland', 2010 (34) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T brochure text, re-contextualized from text under LUST's bio, 2010 (35) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T, re-contextualized from a slide where Stefan Sagmeister talked about whether design could do more than just promote and advertise, 2010, http://vimeo.com/18088734 (36) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T brochure text, under Mieke Gerritzen's bio, 2010 (37) I.D.K.W.I.G.B.I.K.I.W.T.B.T brochure text, 2010 (38) Reference to Lawrence Lessig's TED lecture entitled 'How creativity is being strangled by the law', 2007, www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q25-S7jzgs (39) Yamaha CDV-1600 player brochure (40) Gérard Genette, Palimpsests: literature in the second degree, trans., Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky , 1997 (41) Julia Kristeva, Séméiotikè: recherches pur une sémanalyse (Paris, Seuil), p. 255, 1969