Mitch Miller | The Glasgow School of Art (original) (raw)
Books by Mitch Miller
The PhD research asks what insights the dialectogram and its methods of depicting space, place an... more The PhD research asks what insights the dialectogram and its methods of depicting space, place and social networks offers to the development of socially engaged practices in illustration. The term ‘socially engaged’ is somewhat under-defined and indistinct in Illustration contexts. Mario Minichello used the term to describe contemporary political and propagandic illustration (2013). This definition seems very different to its use in fine art or design contexts and does not address the participatory or dialogic principles that define ‘socially engaged’ practice. In general, illustrators are still determining what socially engaged means in/for their discipline (Vormittag, 2014).
My original contribution to knowledge is the dialectogram itself, in particular, the participatory methodology used to create these illustrative works. A dialectogram is a neologism made from adding dialect/dialectic to diagram and borrows from practices in anthropology, ethnography, architecture, cartography and sequential art. They are large- scale illustrations of a location in aerial view that map out the narratives, imaginative associations and the ‘tactical consumption’ through which its inhabitants make a place for themselves in the world (Certeau, 1988). A dialectogram documents the process of engagement and discussion through which it is created, by its focus on artefact creation also stimulates it.
The dialectogram methodology in place at the beginning of this research resembled the socially engaged practices explored in largely fine art contexts, but has, through the practice-as research process of the PhD, come to incorporate democratised practices in design through Bruno Latour’s notion of the Thing as a socio-material assembly (Thompson, 2012:19, Björgvinsson et al 2012: 104, (Latour, 2005a: 24). I varied the degree of collaboration and altered project structures to test the limits, and potential of the dialectogram. Taking inspiration from the ‘Art of Inquiry’ coined by Tim Ingold (2014), the dialectogram now emphasises learning from a context rather than about it, encouraging the participants to guide the process and lead the illustrator as to how they can, or should, frame the drawing.
I will argue that the dialectogram is an example of an emergent illustrative practice that I have termed social text illustration. This thesis presents the ‘documentary trace’ of the dialectogram as a messy and tangled line of inquiry, less a route to be followed than an unruly parliament of lines where debate and creative exchange can find its place.
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A creative work of interdisciplinary non-fiction, Nothing is Lost brings together three artists -... more A creative work of interdisciplinary non-fiction, Nothing is Lost brings together three artists - Alison Irvine, Chris Leslie and Mitch Miller, to interrogate the complicated legacy of Glasgow's East End, and the impact of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
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Papers by Mitch Miller
Published in issue 35 of The Drouth, this article discusses the shifting, complex role of the Lan... more Published in issue 35 of The Drouth, this article discusses the shifting, complex role of the Lanternist in Bill Douglas' Comrades as a cipher for the movement of ideas embodied in the shifting identities of the travelling showman.
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This article discusses the role of fairground performance and presentation of the self in the dev... more This article discusses the role of fairground performance and presentation of the self in the development of early cinema on travelling sideshows. It draws upon oral histories and ethnographies among Scottish travelling showpeople alongside analysis of extant fairground topicals, to demonstrate the interplay between showmanship techniques and the 'imprinting' of everyday life onto film.
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VaroomLab Journal Issue Two: Spatialising Illustration, Nov 8, 2013
A dialectogram is an invented, slightly tongue-in-cheek word combining ‘diagram’ with ‘dialect’ o... more A dialectogram is an invented, slightly tongue-in-cheek word combining ‘diagram’ with ‘dialect’ or ‘dialectic’ to describe large, detailed drawings of places in Glasgow. The drawings use ethnographic methods to collate personal narratives, local knowledge, feelings and imaginings about place, to create a unique social and aesthetic document. The dialectogram has been used to create documentary illustrations of the Red Road Flats as part of the Red Road Cultural project (now acquired by the People’s Palace Museum), and to record the living arrangements of the travelling showpeople of Glasgow’s East end (Fig. 1, 2). The DRAW DUKE STREET residency (Market Gallery, 30th of October to the 16th of December) was the first of a series of case study dialectograms for my PhD. These case studies centre on locations that are; in deprived and marginal areas; ‘hidden’ from public view or; are in a state of transition.
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Scottish Affairs no. 83, Spring 2013, Jun 15, 2013
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Journal of War and Culture Studies Volume 5 Issue 2, Nov 2012
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Scottish Literary Review, 4 (1). pp. 151-168., Jul 2012
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Screen Vol. 52 No. 2, May 2011
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Screen Vol. 52 No. 2, May 2011
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Conference Presentations by Mitch Miller
"A “dialectogram” is a large, detailed documentary drawing of place, drawing upon multiple viewpo... more "A “dialectogram” is a large, detailed documentary drawing of place, drawing upon multiple viewpoints and guided by the feelings, impressions and relationships of those who live there, or use it. The word dialectogram is a neologism created from a pun on the word “diagram” created by inserting ‘dialect’ and later, ‘dialectic’. Having previously assumed this mostly was just a play on words I found that this pun reflected my attitudes towards formal ‘drawing languages’ and that this could be linked both through analogy and direct inspiration, to recent trends in Scottish literature and the post-colonial ‘abrogation’ of Standard English by writers such as James Kelman and Tom Leonard.
Similarly, maps and other forms of technical drawing adopt a standard visual language derived from ‘colonial’ assumptions that are challenged by alternative traditions within drawing (de Certeau, 1988, Ingold, 2007). Dialectograms attempt their own abrogation by borrowing from these traditions in an idiosyncratic fashion to attempt a closer link between the subjects of the drawings and the ‘drawing language’ in which information about them is conveyed. When the dialectogram borrows the ‘totalising’ bird’s-eye view of the diagram to depict grounded, subjective and often idiosyncratic, detail of place, it is at its most dialectical. It creates a tension that encourages the viewer to make their own readings –and possibly syntheses - from the images, just as the characters of James Kelman insert their own language into those of the authorities to subvert it and find their own existential sense of reality. The paper argues that illustrators and other drawing practitioners can learn a great deal from the dialectical relationship between Standard and ‘non-standard’ language use, both verbally and visually.
Keywords: Drawing, Dialect, Dialectic, Literature, Abrogation"
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A dialectogram is an invented, slightly tongue-in-cheek word combining ‘diagram’ with ‘dialect’ o... more A dialectogram is an invented, slightly tongue-in-cheek word combining ‘diagram’ with ‘dialect’ or ‘dialectic’ to describe large, detailed drawings of places in Glasgow. The drawings use ethnographic methods to collate personal narratives, local knowledge, feelings and imaginings about place, to create a unique social and aesthetic document. The dialectogram has been used to create documentary illustrations of the Red Road Flats as part of the Red Road Cultural project (now acquired by the People’s Palace Museum), and to record the living arrangements of the travelling showpeople of Glasgow’s East end (Fig. 1, 2). The DRAW DUKE STREET residency (Market Gallery, 30th of October to the 16th of December) was the first of a series of case study dialectograms for my PhD. These case studies centre on locations that are; in deprived and marginal areas; ‘hidden’ from public view or; are in a state of transition.
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Taking its cue from Goffman’s dramaturgical theory of the presentation of the self in everyday li... more Taking its cue from Goffman’s dramaturgical theory of the presentation of the self in everyday life, de Certeau’s notion of the tactical consumer, and the work of ‘mythogeographers’ such as Phil Smith (Goffman: 1959, de Certeau: 1988. Smith: 2011) this paper will offer a guided tour of selected dialectograms and argue that they describe, through drawing, the shaping of knowledge through a series of performances or ‘Acts’. The first is that of the researcher-practitioner, who must visit the place, gain the trust of its occupants and come to understand it (Bachelard: 1958, Rabe: 2003). Secondly, there is the performance of the space itself according to the various meanings invested in it. The third Act comprises the performances of the participants who behave and react in response to the practitioner’s research process and their own feelings about the place in question, while the fourth returns to the practitioner’s own performance as an illustrator and ‘enactive’ thinker, making lines and marks in response to the other three elements (Cain: 2010).
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The PhD research asks what insights the dialectogram and its methods of depicting space, place an... more The PhD research asks what insights the dialectogram and its methods of depicting space, place and social networks offers to the development of socially engaged practices in illustration. The term ‘socially engaged’ is somewhat under-defined and indistinct in Illustration contexts. Mario Minichello used the term to describe contemporary political and propagandic illustration (2013). This definition seems very different to its use in fine art or design contexts and does not address the participatory or dialogic principles that define ‘socially engaged’ practice. In general, illustrators are still determining what socially engaged means in/for their discipline (Vormittag, 2014).
My original contribution to knowledge is the dialectogram itself, in particular, the participatory methodology used to create these illustrative works. A dialectogram is a neologism made from adding dialect/dialectic to diagram and borrows from practices in anthropology, ethnography, architecture, cartography and sequential art. They are large- scale illustrations of a location in aerial view that map out the narratives, imaginative associations and the ‘tactical consumption’ through which its inhabitants make a place for themselves in the world (Certeau, 1988). A dialectogram documents the process of engagement and discussion through which it is created, by its focus on artefact creation also stimulates it.
The dialectogram methodology in place at the beginning of this research resembled the socially engaged practices explored in largely fine art contexts, but has, through the practice-as research process of the PhD, come to incorporate democratised practices in design through Bruno Latour’s notion of the Thing as a socio-material assembly (Thompson, 2012:19, Björgvinsson et al 2012: 104, (Latour, 2005a: 24). I varied the degree of collaboration and altered project structures to test the limits, and potential of the dialectogram. Taking inspiration from the ‘Art of Inquiry’ coined by Tim Ingold (2014), the dialectogram now emphasises learning from a context rather than about it, encouraging the participants to guide the process and lead the illustrator as to how they can, or should, frame the drawing.
I will argue that the dialectogram is an example of an emergent illustrative practice that I have termed social text illustration. This thesis presents the ‘documentary trace’ of the dialectogram as a messy and tangled line of inquiry, less a route to be followed than an unruly parliament of lines where debate and creative exchange can find its place.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
A creative work of interdisciplinary non-fiction, Nothing is Lost brings together three artists -... more A creative work of interdisciplinary non-fiction, Nothing is Lost brings together three artists - Alison Irvine, Chris Leslie and Mitch Miller, to interrogate the complicated legacy of Glasgow's East End, and the impact of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
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Published in issue 35 of The Drouth, this article discusses the shifting, complex role of the Lan... more Published in issue 35 of The Drouth, this article discusses the shifting, complex role of the Lanternist in Bill Douglas' Comrades as a cipher for the movement of ideas embodied in the shifting identities of the travelling showman.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This article discusses the role of fairground performance and presentation of the self in the dev... more This article discusses the role of fairground performance and presentation of the self in the development of early cinema on travelling sideshows. It draws upon oral histories and ethnographies among Scottish travelling showpeople alongside analysis of extant fairground topicals, to demonstrate the interplay between showmanship techniques and the 'imprinting' of everyday life onto film.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
VaroomLab Journal Issue Two: Spatialising Illustration, Nov 8, 2013
A dialectogram is an invented, slightly tongue-in-cheek word combining ‘diagram’ with ‘dialect’ o... more A dialectogram is an invented, slightly tongue-in-cheek word combining ‘diagram’ with ‘dialect’ or ‘dialectic’ to describe large, detailed drawings of places in Glasgow. The drawings use ethnographic methods to collate personal narratives, local knowledge, feelings and imaginings about place, to create a unique social and aesthetic document. The dialectogram has been used to create documentary illustrations of the Red Road Flats as part of the Red Road Cultural project (now acquired by the People’s Palace Museum), and to record the living arrangements of the travelling showpeople of Glasgow’s East end (Fig. 1, 2). The DRAW DUKE STREET residency (Market Gallery, 30th of October to the 16th of December) was the first of a series of case study dialectograms for my PhD. These case studies centre on locations that are; in deprived and marginal areas; ‘hidden’ from public view or; are in a state of transition.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Scottish Affairs no. 83, Spring 2013, Jun 15, 2013
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of War and Culture Studies Volume 5 Issue 2, Nov 2012
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Scottish Literary Review, 4 (1). pp. 151-168., Jul 2012
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Screen Vol. 52 No. 2, May 2011
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Screen Vol. 52 No. 2, May 2011
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
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"A “dialectogram” is a large, detailed documentary drawing of place, drawing upon multiple viewpo... more "A “dialectogram” is a large, detailed documentary drawing of place, drawing upon multiple viewpoints and guided by the feelings, impressions and relationships of those who live there, or use it. The word dialectogram is a neologism created from a pun on the word “diagram” created by inserting ‘dialect’ and later, ‘dialectic’. Having previously assumed this mostly was just a play on words I found that this pun reflected my attitudes towards formal ‘drawing languages’ and that this could be linked both through analogy and direct inspiration, to recent trends in Scottish literature and the post-colonial ‘abrogation’ of Standard English by writers such as James Kelman and Tom Leonard.
Similarly, maps and other forms of technical drawing adopt a standard visual language derived from ‘colonial’ assumptions that are challenged by alternative traditions within drawing (de Certeau, 1988, Ingold, 2007). Dialectograms attempt their own abrogation by borrowing from these traditions in an idiosyncratic fashion to attempt a closer link between the subjects of the drawings and the ‘drawing language’ in which information about them is conveyed. When the dialectogram borrows the ‘totalising’ bird’s-eye view of the diagram to depict grounded, subjective and often idiosyncratic, detail of place, it is at its most dialectical. It creates a tension that encourages the viewer to make their own readings –and possibly syntheses - from the images, just as the characters of James Kelman insert their own language into those of the authorities to subvert it and find their own existential sense of reality. The paper argues that illustrators and other drawing practitioners can learn a great deal from the dialectical relationship between Standard and ‘non-standard’ language use, both verbally and visually.
Keywords: Drawing, Dialect, Dialectic, Literature, Abrogation"
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
A dialectogram is an invented, slightly tongue-in-cheek word combining ‘diagram’ with ‘dialect’ o... more A dialectogram is an invented, slightly tongue-in-cheek word combining ‘diagram’ with ‘dialect’ or ‘dialectic’ to describe large, detailed drawings of places in Glasgow. The drawings use ethnographic methods to collate personal narratives, local knowledge, feelings and imaginings about place, to create a unique social and aesthetic document. The dialectogram has been used to create documentary illustrations of the Red Road Flats as part of the Red Road Cultural project (now acquired by the People’s Palace Museum), and to record the living arrangements of the travelling showpeople of Glasgow’s East end (Fig. 1, 2). The DRAW DUKE STREET residency (Market Gallery, 30th of October to the 16th of December) was the first of a series of case study dialectograms for my PhD. These case studies centre on locations that are; in deprived and marginal areas; ‘hidden’ from public view or; are in a state of transition.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Taking its cue from Goffman’s dramaturgical theory of the presentation of the self in everyday li... more Taking its cue from Goffman’s dramaturgical theory of the presentation of the self in everyday life, de Certeau’s notion of the tactical consumer, and the work of ‘mythogeographers’ such as Phil Smith (Goffman: 1959, de Certeau: 1988. Smith: 2011) this paper will offer a guided tour of selected dialectograms and argue that they describe, through drawing, the shaping of knowledge through a series of performances or ‘Acts’. The first is that of the researcher-practitioner, who must visit the place, gain the trust of its occupants and come to understand it (Bachelard: 1958, Rabe: 2003). Secondly, there is the performance of the space itself according to the various meanings invested in it. The third Act comprises the performances of the participants who behave and react in response to the practitioner’s research process and their own feelings about the place in question, while the fourth returns to the practitioner’s own performance as an illustrator and ‘enactive’ thinker, making lines and marks in response to the other three elements (Cain: 2010).
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What is eye-level? What is the ‘correct’ eye-level? The term hints that there is an ideal vantage... more What is eye-level? What is the ‘correct’ eye-level? The term hints that there is an ideal vantage point from which to view art; the onlooker is expected to see what is intended to be seen, becoming a member of an unspecified community defined by the assumption of shared principles and values. Yet human physiology is not a level playing field – each human body is unique. This exhibition animated the conflict between encounters on an individual level, the possibility of a shared vision, and the impossibility of a universal, absolute way of seeing.
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Red Road Underground showed previously unseen material concerned primarily (but not exclusively) ... more Red Road Underground showed previously unseen material concerned primarily (but not exclusively) with the underground leisure complexes built at Red Road, based on the extensive documentary photographic and illustrative work of Leslie and Miller as part of the Red Road Cultural Project.
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Journal of Oral History, Volume 39, Issue: 1, Jan 16, 2011
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