Counterimage

(as medium and method)
a design research methodology and critical framework entangling materiality, bodies, ecologies, and media  

 

Counterimage is a design methodology and approach to making that produces unexpected visual and physical representations. Particularly when all participants in the process of creation are willing to be malleable and changed. Counterimage is both a physical and psychological method that asks us to engage our whole selves and be willing to be guided into possibilities that would not otherwise have emerged or become visible. 

 

As Pallasmaa explains about experiencing architecture in The Eyes of the Skin, "[not] as a collection of isolated visual pictures, but in its fully embodied material, existential, and spiritual presence." Pallasmaa says that 'when one enters a room, they enter and occupy it while simultaneously the space enters and occupies them, too'. Hito Steyerl in In Defense  of the Poor Image, "The poor image is no longer about the real thing–the originary original. Instead, it is about its own real conditions of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities. It is about defiance and appropriation just as it is about conformism and exploitation. It is about reality.” In The Embodied Image, Juhani Pallasmaa refers to the poetic image as an 'internalized experience' that is 'evocative, affective, and meaningful sensory experience that is layered, associative and dynamic, and in constant interaction with memory and desire. 

 

Counterimage isn’t an answer to a problem or a new product solution, or a new way of making, it's a way of acknowledging the nature of making as it is. It's about genuinely collaborating with people and materials, drawing and building on the work of others, using your body, personal reflection, and thinking consequentially.