If your job seems a bit humdrum, what should you do? If you're anything like these two Auckland creatives, you self-publish something that combines your passions for art and science. Rebecca Barry talks to the creators of Auckland's coolest art journal, Pie Paper.
Convincing us maths and science are fun used to be the role of our embattled school teachers. Now a couple of Kiwi designers have taken on the mission. Simon Oosterdijk and Markus Hofko's publication Pie Paper won't get you an A in physics but it's likely to pique your curiosity with its irreverent mix of science, art and philosophy.
The magazine is a bit like a pocket art gallery, a portable exhibition of compelling images and ideas brought together by one concept. Their first issue in 2008 was paradoxically numbered "0" and took on a "circle" theme. Then came "Repetition" the following year. Their third issue, "Trace" is due out within a few weeks.
What started as a humble pie project to ward off boredom and stoke their creative fires is now gaining traction as a cult read. They have no distributor other than an international network of artists, designers and collectors around the globe, yet Pie Paper is sold at boutiques in London, Berlin, Tokyo, Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland. Its first print run of 3000 sold out after it launched at the annual design forum, Semi-Permanent, in 2008. It's also available through their website, piepaper.com, and Oosterdijk and Hofko are now looking to expand their reach with Pie Paper encyclopaedias and Pie-related products, and multimedia content to their website. The next issue comes with a mixtape featuring up-and-coming musicians and bedroom producers. Despite the newsprint suggesting a throwaway quality, the pages are more likely to be pulled out and displayed.
Pie Paper was born out of a drive for creative collaboration. Both freelance graphic designers, Oosterdijk, 36 (who is half Dutch) and Hofko, 34 (German) met when Oosterdijk was running The Wilderness, an Auckland design studio with an edgy commercial repertoire including bottle design for 420 Spring Water, sleeve artwork and music videos for local acts Dimmer and Concord Dawn. He'd also seen Hofko's wife, artist Karin Hofko, speak at a Pecha Kucha event, where creative experts give slideshow presentations about their work. The pair collaborated on the Translate for Tiger Beer event, featuring multi-disciplinary artists from throughout Asia.
Hofko moved to New Zealand in 2006 after realising he needed a change of scenery from a "monotone" existence in Augsburg, southern Germany, where he'd been working for several years at a graphic design agency.
"We were a both a bit bored with our everyday jobs and wanting to do something without clients telling us what to do," he says.
"Doing the commercial work is a way to be creative and earn a living at the same time," adds Oosterdijk. "But it's a matter of keeping the creative running. Projects like this keep everything flowing. They feed each other. It's food on the plate to create."
The mag is put together in a sparse white exhibition space big enough to ride your bike in - just as well, as it's in the same inner-city building as motorcycle cafe Deus Ex Machina.
What sets Pie Paper apart, other than its penchant for finding beauty and mystery within the forces of nature, is its art-over-commerce approach. It doesn't sell itself on the premise of helping readers lose weight, buy the latest gear or learn to cook a chicken. Besides a few small classifieds, there's almost no advertising; Oosterdijk and Hofko would like to break even but see it foremost as a vehicle to flex their creativity. Unlike the bevvy of alternative rags available to the art and design crowd, Pie Paper's theoretical approach gives it a nostalgic quality, reminiscent of the science trivia found in encycopaedias, now a dying format.
Mathematical riddles such as Fibonacci's Golden Ratio and the secrets of the number 9 - multiply any whole number except 0, then add the digits and you'll always end up with 9 - are explained alongside art and photography that finds humour in the banal. In the Repetition issue: an amusing globe of stacked chairs, poetic musings on the nature of infinity, the mind-boggling sight of 200,000 North Korean children dancing in unison at the kitschy Mass Games. Tibetan Mandalas, the cross-section of a pine needle and the Large Hadron Collider find common ground in the Circle issue.
"In a lot of the magazines we'd seen, everyone seemed to be getting their content from the same places, the same hot artists or designers. But no one was really addressing the inspiration behind the artworks," says Oosterdijk. "It was more about the people and their output rather than the fundamentals, these timeless truths. All these things that are lost from the media because it's this whole sensationalist thing, what trends are emerging. But if you scratch the surface and get under that, I think that's where the interesting stuff is."
"The biggest point of difference is the science and maths perspective," adds Hofko. "We've found you either get strictly maths or science-oriented publications. Most of the magazines that do art do art and design only. The correlation [between art and science] is really big. That's what makes it interesting, to find the overlaps, to see the art in science and the science in art."
The content is a mix of the designers' own research-based artwork, plus images sourced from the web, most of the contributors providing exclusive works to use in the magazine, a win-win as they get to promote themselves in print. Local artists account for about half the content in the first issue but that has dwindled slightly.
"When we first started we commissioned some of the designers in our circle of friends because we knew the quality of their work," says Hofko. "But we didn't want to repeat ourselves, so we're trying not to always feature the same artists."
Kiwi contributors include illustrator HD Steve and creative studio Special Problems. Some of the bigger international contributors include award-winning American film-maker and performance artist Miranda July (whose film Me And You And Everyone We Know won prizes at the Cannes and Sundance festivals in 2005), US street installation artist Mark Jenkins and acclaimed Dutch portrait artist Levi van Veluw.
Quotes by the likes Friedrich Nietzsche make sense of some of the more abstract images. Others come from public libraries and institutions. Nasa, for example, provided a striking satellite image of Mt Taranaki that clearly shows the man-made circle around the base of the volcano that map-makers used to mark the line between protected forestation and farmland. Another image shows a picture of urban activity on our planet at night. "Are the lightened spots on our land the winners, holding up their shining trophies?" the accompanying article muses. "Are the others disorientated and lost in darkness?"
The process has opened the pair's eyes to the realities of copyright, with many galleries refusing to let them reproduce images without paying exorbitant fees. On the other hand, Oosterdijk and Hofko have been surprised at how many artists are willing to provide their works free - in turn, they get exposure by including links to their websites. Doing things on the cheap also means finding creative solutions - they'll often stumble across amazing images that cost up to 500 euro ($907) and will negotiate with galleries or artists for alternative arrangements.
Although it's not easy to monitor who's reading it, they've fielded sales inquiries from artists, designers and curators - anyone with an interest in design or science.
Much of the maths and science content comes from a layman's perspective, say the mag's creators, who don't resort to over-arching, complex explanations, preferring plain English over a pretentious style.
"We're learning all this stuff," says Oosterdijk. "That's the most exciting part because trying to fit that into a job is quite hard otherwise. This platform gives us an excuse to ring up mathematicians or talk to physicists."
The Trace issue is perhaps more obscure than the first two but features famous 19th century French scientist and photographer Etienne-Jules Marey, who used a shot-gun camera, that allowed him to study the flight of birds, frame by frame. Because it often takes money to get image rights, they keep overheads low by printing on newsprint.
"What we make is not money," laughs Oosterdijk. "We make contacts. We're building this network of like-minded people. It's a labour of love."
Pie Paper is available from piepaper.com. The second day of design forum Semi-Permanent is on today at Aotea Centre. Go to semipermanent.co.nz for more information.
