PREPOSITIONTOOLS (2009)

Prepositions usually indicate spatial, temporal or logical relations in a sentence. Since we cannot but think relationships through so called natural languages such as English, I designed prepositiontools to explore the potential of grammatical prepositions to analyse, ideate and materialise design proposals “in relation to”. Human beings use prepositions to define: what is outside, inside, above, below, before… acts which influence our perception of relations among things. Through the use of prepositiontools, one might playfully challenge assumptions by thinking not only what is, but also what can be. This could be performed by asking “what if?”. What if this (x) was… without, beside, etc.

This project was developed in the context of my PhD studies, while experimenting with design versions to articulate the process and notion of languaging, as a displacement of sense that brings forth a world.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

prepositions-6 hand-through

The rubber-stamp seems to modify the way a user perceives the relation by being literally ‘stamped’, carried on the thing itself.

prepositions-1 prepositions

Selected prepositions and their pictorial representations. This is a selection of 32 prepositions commonly used in the English language.

prepositions-2 DSC09820

Preposition cards – The backside of
the cards symbolize ‘directionality’, in this case illustrated with icons formed by arrows or small triangles spreading from a centre.

prepositions-3 against

Detail. Rubber used to create the stamp set.

prepositions-4 stamp-set

Detail of a rubber-stamp with the box as background.

prepositions-5 stamps-paper

Paper with marks left by some of the rubber-stamps.