Motyf: International Symposium and Media Art Exhibition.
From 2013 via 2021 into the Future.
Motyf is a conference occurring every two years or so that focuses on the interdisciplinary exchanges between academics, industry practitioners and students on interactive and dynamic text design. Founded in 2013 by Prof. Ewa Satalecka, Prof. Anja Stöffler and Prof. Ralf Dringenberg it has hosted four such events since (the fourth being this year). Each year a new theme is explored by experts from design, technology, media and creative arts. This year’s theme is Communicating Complexity.
The conference’s beginnings are humble enough though, and you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise when tracing it back through the years and exploring what it’s achieved. It came from a request from students to have more contact with the international scene so as to better contextualise their work and research. This request was taken by Prof. Satalecka to Mainz as she travelled to Germany having been invited to take part in the Moving Types exhibition organised at the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz (curated by Prof. Stöffler and Prof. Dringenberg). It was there that Ana Stöffler agreed to meet one of Ewa’s students, Zuzanna Szyszak, to discuss her diploma video A Farewell to the Little Warrior. This interaction prompted an invitation to students from the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology (PJAIT) to include their typographic animations in the exhibition.
The reason why this anecdote opens this article is because it highlights the way in which Prof. Satalecka runs the New Media Arts Department at PJAIT. Which has, in turn, affected the projects, conferences and research groups associated with it: Motyf, If: Social Design for Sustainable Cities and Future Text, plus many more. The students’ development and interaction with professionals takes a front seat in an educational structure in Poland that has traditional favoured hierarchy over horizontality.
So it was decided at this meeting in Mainz in 2011 that the event should be a yearly occurrence. Starting in 2013 the first Motyf was officially opened in Warsaw at the Polish-Japanese Academy, partnered with the National Museum in Warsaw. This first iteration in 2013 feels a long time ago, especially given the general reaction from the local journalists and art and design historians. For whom kinetic and animated typography was completely new. But that was then and this is now: 2021. Interactive and dynamic text design, while still not widely known among the general public, has been thrust into the spotlight as our lives have moved further and further into the digital.
One of the keynote lecturers and workshop hosts for this year’s Motyf was Zach Kaiser. The subject he was exploring with the students was Design within and for a Post-Scarcity Society:
The Covid-19 pandemic and accelerating climate change have laid bare the horrifying nature of global capitalism. We have no choice but to imagine different socio-political-technical configurations — a massively complex endeavour. Many theorists who imagine a post-scarcity future rely on a false idea about the power of automation, the prominence of which belies other economic shifts. If “abundance is not a technological threshold to be crossed,” however, but instead a “social relationship,” what does a post-scarcity society actually look like? This workshop — a theory-driven seminar-studio hybrid — asks what a post-capitalist, post-scarcity society might look like, and how design is done in such a society. It will critically engage with ideas about automation and ask what design means when basic human needs are met, economic growth is no longer an imperative, and necessary labor is shared and not relegated to certain classes of society.
This is a subject not only close to the hosts and curators of this year’s Motyf (Brian Lucid and Jan Piechota), but to Prof. Satalecka too. When asked how the Polish context and the increased social role and potential of design has changed over the years, Ewa had this to say:
It’s changed definitely, I think due to the international conferences and access to international events because there are plenty of typography presentations connected both with a typeface design, typeface engineering and generative graphics, etc. So people are now much better educated that all text based communication is going into new media…This is a good period of time to show people opportunities and to give them time to experiment, to connect with another people to work in interdisciplinary groups; to open their hearts and minds for human problems for cross cultural forms of communication… I am focused more on development and teamwork than individual artistic careers.
This openness is characteristic of an academic, practitioner and teacher whose enthusiasm provides a platform for these and future collaborations. The first round of workshops have already taken this April. However there will be a symposium (online) and an exhintion (hosted at Nga Pae Mahutonga Massey University, Aotearoa, NZ) in November that will tie all this together and further explore the subject of Communicating Complexity.
The potential of social design, and design in general, to tackle these subjects is up for debate. There needs to be huge structural change before our complex world becomes at least comprehendible. But to have generosity, openness, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural exchange at the root of the effort gives us the best possible chance of communicating this complexity: Allowing us and others to react and then act.
Motyf’s 2021 presenters, hosts and workshop leaders included: Brian Lucid (Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand), Paul Tobin (Weta Workshop, Aotearoa New Zealand), Silas Munro (Otis College of Art and Design, USA), Anja Stöffler (University of Applied Sciences Mainz, Germany), Zach Kaiser (Michigan State University, USA), Henrik Gieselmann, Dr. Hilary Kenna (IADT, Ireland), Dr. Mark Bradford (Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand), Ralf Dringenberg (Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany), Dr. Ewa Satalecka (Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technologies, Poland), John Howrey (Savannah College of Art and Design, USA), Andre Murnieks (Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand), Anna Foltinek (Futurice, Germany), Nils Weger (University of Applied Sciences Mainz, Germany), Dr. Jan Piechota (Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technologies, Poland), Angela Morelli (Info Design Lab, Norway).
