Rats Constructing Labyrinths Vol. 1

Rats Shruthinaya Minjeong Beena Shinaza Gab Mendes Constructing
Qureshi
Taghian
KimKumar
Labyrinths
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INVENTED METHODS FOR
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‘We are rats constructing the
labyrinths from which we plan
to escape.’
Raymond Queneau

Rats Constructing
Labyrinths
Experiments in Chance,
Constraint, Disruption and
Automation
Vol. 1
2023–24
MA Graphic Design
Cambridge School of Art
ARU
Ruskin Arts Publications

Prelude
Invented in 1961 by Jean Lescure, the
literary method known as ‘N+7’ invites the
author to replace each noun in a text with
the seventh common noun that follows it in
a dictionary. ‘This method,’ wrote Lescure,
‘is evidently a method with variable results.’
It is intended to be modulated; an example
of N+12 would be:

Rationalists Constructing
Ladders
Expositions in Channel,
Containers, Distance and
Avarice
Voyage 1
2023–24
MA Gravel Detection
Cambridge Scintilla of Artifice
ARU
Ruskin Artifices Pugs

Overture
A More Interesting Place
In Joe Fig’s Inside the Painter’s Studio (Princeton, 2009) the
painter Chuck Close observes:
‘We are much too problem-solving oriented.
It is far more interesting to participate in problem
creation. Ask yourself an interesting enough
question and you will soon find yourself in a
more interesting place.’
Forty years earlier, graduated from Yale and already
recognised as an accomplished painter, the 27-year-old
Close would ask himself just such a question: what if he
put away his brushes and chose instead ‘to do things I had
no facility with?’. It was a deeply counterintuitive move,
and it forced him to develop a method of painting that
would redefine his practice and reinvigorate the world of
portraiture. ‘A more interesting place’ indeed.
For the newly-arrived MA Graphic Design student, an
interesting question to start with might be: what is an MA
for? Often the answer will pertain to ideas of refinement
or excellence: the student has arrived with a portfolio
containing some controlled and precise design work, and
may expect on graduation to have refined it to the level of
excellence.
It is perhaps a reasonable expectation, but it is not
necessarily the function of an MA to enable students
to design ever more controlled and precise outcomes.
Nor is it the case that increased control or precision will
automatically confer the condition of excellence. The
greater function of an MA (or at any rate, of our MA) is to

develop in the student new ways of thinking and making:
to expand frames of reference, to challenge creative habits
and inclinations, to explore complex ideas they may not fully
understand, to begin making more nuanced intellectual and
imaginative connections, and to bring all these to bear on
the perceived boundaries of design practice — their own,
and of the design profession more widely.
For the project we call ‘Rats Constructing Labyrinths’
our students are invited to question not just the role,
purpose and value of an MA, but of design and the designer.
To do this they must set aside for a spell the assumption
that problem solving is the central concern of design and
designers, and begin instead to engage with the more
interesting business of problem creation.
The methods we use to explore ideas of problem
creation — namely chance, constraint, disruption and
automation — can at first be disorientating. Habitual
design processes might be reliable but can quickly become
engrained, and thereafter self-limiting; to challenge them,
or to have them questioned as in some way being ‘wrong’
or insufficient, can throw a design student into disarray.
Often the more confident the designer, the more deeply
this is felt. To some extent this is just as intended, but as
we will discover in this book, these methods are not meant
to replace established models of design thinking: rather, to
provide an alternative perspective on means and ends.
Students begin this holiday from convention
by reading, looking at and discussing some of the
experimental works and methods used by various figures
from literature, poetry, music and art. In other words:
almost anything but graphic design. This naturally raises
the question of how such ideas might apply to graphic
designers. It’s a fair question and, in the spirit of our course
aims, one we carefully neglect to answer: it is what we
are asking them, such that they might seek and find for
themselves ‘a more interesting place’.

Someone who has permitted chance to govern his
work completely is Daniel Eatock. For an exhibition curated
by the Japanese designer Akiko Kanna, Eatock was invited,
along with thirteen other designers, to produce a poster. He
responded not with a design but an instruction: to originate
his poster by overprinting all thirteen posters contributed
by the other invitees. The method was even to be applied
to the poster’s title: it should be formed from the titles of all
the other posters, in alphabetical order.
As these other posters had yet to be conceived Eatock
could have had no way of anticipating what his poster
would look like (or be titled). It is a technique he has used
more than once, with variable results. The question of
whether or not such a deliberately disengaged approach
is mitigated by the thinking behind it is debatable; whether
it constitutes design at all, perhaps more so. These are, of
course, just the right kinds of questions for a postgraduate
designer to grapple with.
To demonstrate the role and value of chance-based
operations in practice, our students were given a twopart
assignment. For Assignment 1.1 they first cut a
printed letterform into equally-sized fragments and then
reassembled it, selecting each fragment randomly. For
Assignment 1.2 they used viewfinders to crop areas of this
reassemblage, using their critical judgement to identify any
engaging secondary compositions contained within.
By such means, as with Hans Arp and Philippa Wood,
our students were first using chance to initiate a piece of
work, and later their judgement to identify interesting visual
tensions and harmonies. Many of them were surprised to
discover that some of the compositions they encountered
were at least as innovative as anything they might have
produced using conscious thought. The realisation of
such a counterintuitive idea can be the moment in which a
student begins to seriously question the unassailability of
their design habits.

Assignment 1.1: fragmenting and reassembling a letterform using chance.

Assignment 1.2: cropping the outcomes to identify secondary compositions.

II.
Constraint
Chance is not the only means by which a creative might
effect a radical change in their process: another is with the
application of a carefully designed set of constraints.
Graphic designers are quite familiar with the idea of
working with constraints, whether they are imposed by a
client (with type specifications and colour palettes defined
by brand guidelines), by budget (working with a single
colour to reduce the cost of printing, or to maximise the
print run), or by themselves (designing to a mathematically
structured grid or working with a single typeface).
Constraints can be thought of as simple rules set
out in advance: ‘you can do this, but not that.’ Such rules
need not be limiting, and in practice are usually quite
the opposite: a clearly defined set of constraints should
automatically generate interesting complexities, which in
turn can effect more inspired outcomes. The most familiar
demonstration of this principle is the game of football, a
creative activity with almost limitless scope for invention,
improvisation and self-expression. But it is also played
within an extensive and very tight set of constraints: the
rules of the game that dictate the number of players, where
the players can be at any given time, the boundaries of play,
which parts of the body can be put to the ball, and so on.
Without these rules there is only a man in a field with a ball.
Gianfranco Contini — who sounds like a footballer
but who was in fact a philologist — encapsulated this
idea when he wrote in Varianti (Einaudi, 1970): ‘The
departure point for inspiration is the obstacle’. He was
writing about poetry and the formal structures of rhyme
scheme, rhythm and metre. But the same principle applies
to the achievement of almost any creative endeavour, be
it football, falling in love, communing with God, or even
designing a book. Constraints, Contini was saying, do not
obstruct inspiration: they force it.

Of all the practitioners to have embraced the idea of
using constraints as a means of provoking more interesting
outcomes, it was the French interdisciplinary group Oulipo
who embraced it most tightly. Founded in 1960, Oulipo
(Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or ‘workshop of potential
literature’) was conceived as a loose formation of writers,
poets and mathematicians. Their thesis was that creative
energies could be unleashed not by the application of
chance or the unconscious but by rule-bound procedures
and severe formal restrictions. Their objectives were,
and remain, twofold: to identify or create useful literary
constraints, and with these to produce original work that
would demonstrate their potential in interesting ways.
Oulipan constraints include the ‘Snowball’, a poetic
form in which each line is a single word, with each
successive word one letter longer than the last. (Beena
Qureshi demonstrates a prose variant of this with ‘Plus One’
in this book.) There is also the ‘Kick-Start’, in which every
sentence in a text starts with the same phrase (for example,
‘I remember’, as in Joe Brainard’s mesmerising biography of
the same name; Minjeong Kim takes up the challenge here).
And perhaps most famously there is Jean Lescure’s ‘N+7’,
which invites the author to replace each noun in a text with
the seventh common noun that follows it in a dictionary. (An
example of ‘N+12’ precedes this essay.)
It was Raymond Queneau, the co-founder of
Oulipo, who described what they were doing as ‘rats
constructing the labyrinths from which we plan to escape’.
By concentrating their efforts on creating a method rather
than an outcome, and then running that method to see what
surprising results might be produced, the Oulipans were
both lab rat and labyrinth-maker.
What this amounts to is that by inventing and
developing such rigorous constraints the Oulipans were
also inventing games: games intended to be adopted and
adapted by others. One of the most astonishing exhibitions

of these games was produced by the writer Georges Perec.
Having identified the constraint known as the lipogram, a
form of writing in which particular letters are avoided by
the author, he demonstrated it by writing La Disparition
(Gallimard, 1969), a 300-page novel that does not contain
the letter E — an almost unimaginable achievement being
that E is the most common letter in French (as it is in
English). He followed this in 1972 with Les Revenentes
(Editions Julliard, 1972), a ‘univocal’ novella that uses no
vowels except for E.
But it was Queneau himself who created perhaps
the most complex and visually alluring demonstration of
Oulipan technique with A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems
(Gallimard, 1961). Aiming to construct a sequence of poems
that could be read in multiple ways and thereby spawn
multiple meanings, Queneau’s solution was a collection
of ten sonnets, with each line printed on a separate strip
of card. Turning each strip in the book produces a new
permutation of the sonnet in view; turning all the strips in
combination produces a quadrillion different permutations.
To put that number into context, it is estimated that to read
every permutation would take more than 200 million years.
It is a marvel of applied thought, and to realise it Queneau
would need the help of both a mathematician (Francois Le
Lionnais) and a designer (Robert Massin).
The idea of the Oulipan constraint can be modulated
to suit almost any creative discipline, and since the
formation of Oulipo there have emerged a number of
offshoots that concern themselves exclusively with aspects
of the visual arts, including Oubapo (for comics); Oupeinpo
(painting); Ouphopo (photography); Oucarpo (cartography);
and Ougrapo (graphic design). To test our design students’
potential for Outypo membership, they embarked on their
next set of studio assignments. For these they explored the
effects on the design process of applying both time-based
and material constraints.

Using scissors and card, for Assignment 2.1 students
were invited to cut a letter T of their own design within
ten seconds. For Assignment 2.2 they were asked to cut
a second letter T, this time taking exactly ten minutes and
with the scissors cutting at all times. For Assignment 2.3
the scissors were discarded and they were asked to tear a
letter T (in Clarendon) from the card by hand.
In each case it is the perceived inappropriateness
and inconvenience of the method that has led to such
interesting and unpractised results. There is no sense that
one outcome is ‘better’ than another; each has its own
qualities determined by the circumstances of its making.
III.
Disruption
Of all the methods our students would explore for this
project, disruption has perhaps the greatest capacity
to transform an individual talent. But it can also be the
most unnerving, the most counterintuitive, and the most
productive — which might tell us something about what
these conditions have in common.
The key proponents of disruption as a creative
methodology are Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, whose
Oblique Strategies have become the wellspring for
creatives seeking to surprise themselves. Taking the form
of a deck of printed cards, the strategies provide a series of
enigmatic instructions for the artist to integrate into their
work. This can be achieved in two ways. The first is for the
artist to draw a card at random before commencing a piece
of work, and use the instruction found there to disrupt their
habitual creative impulses. The second is for the artist to
work exactly as they always have, and having produced a
satisfactory outcome, to then disrupt it by drawing a card
and applying the instruction, iterating the work towards
something radically different. As Eno explained in 1980:

Assignment 2.1: cutting a letter
T in less than ten seconds.
Assignment 2.2: cutting a letter
T in exactly ten minutes.
Assignment 2.3: tearing a
Clarendon letter T by hand.

‘The Oblique Strategies evolved from me being
in a number of working situations when the
panic of the situation — particularly in studios
— tended to make me quickly forget that there
were others ways of working, and that there
were tangential ways of attacking problems that
were in many senses more interesting than the
direct, head-on approach. If you’re in a panic,
you tend to take the head-on approach because
it seems to be the one that’s going to yield the
best results. Of course, that often isn’t the case:
it’s just the most obvious and — apparently —
reliable method. The function of the Oblique
Strategies was, initially, to serve as a series of
prompts which said, “Don’t forget that you could
adopt this attitude,” or “Don’t forget you could
adopt that attitude.”’
By applying the Oblique Strategies to their process the
artist is forced to set aside their usual creative tendencies
and with them their inherent limitations. The obliqueness of
the strategies (‘Abandon normal instruments’; ‘Don’t stress
one thing more than another’; ‘Do nothing for as long as
possible’) ensures that the individual designer — or painter,
sculptor, musician or dancer — is able to interpret their
chosen instruction within the context of their practice.
To experiment with some strategic disruption of
their own, for Assignment 3.1 our designers enacted an
interpretation of the strategy ‘Only one element of each
kind’. Working in pairs, one designer (or element) would
be in control of a computer keyboard and attempt to type
a supplied text, in this instance the UK national anthem.
Meanwhile the other designer would intrude upon and
frustrate this attempt by manipulating the mouse and
clicking on-screen commands at will. Communication
during this process was prohibited.

Assignment 3.1, in which two designers worked on the same computer, one in control of
the keyboard and the other the mouse.

Assignment 3.2, in which the designers again cropped their outcomes to identify
secondary compositions.

The results of these experiments were printed out
and, for Assignment 3.2, again subjected to some critical
judgement with the viewfinders. The outcomes are as
lively and as interesting as anything that might have been
produced by ‘head-on’ approaches, and could be viewed
either as speculative artworks in themselves or as starting
points for more consciously developed designs.
Despite the evidence of these successes none of our
students wished to revisit or reinterpret this method for
their own projects. Relinquishing control to the limitations
imposed by chance or constraint is, perhaps, one thing;
to submit to the disruptive will of another human being
quite something else. Being that such a process feels like
such an anti-collaborative act — inviting another to spoil
one’s good intentions — it may be too counterintuitive a
process for many designers to countenance. Still, a project
like Alain Robbe-Grillet and Robert Rauschenberg’s book
Traces Suspectes en Surface (Things Are Not What They
Seem; ULAE, 1978) provides thrilling evidence of what
such methods can achieve. Not so much a collaboration
as a creative conversation — or possibly an argument —
conducted over six years, Robbe-Grillet would first inscribe
his text directly onto lithographic plates. These were then
sent to Rauschenberg, who responded by imposing his
photographic collages. Robbe-Grillet apparently gave
little or no consideration to Rauschenberg’s intentions
or requirements when setting out his texts; the book’s
dissonances as a result are a key component of its beauty.
IIII.
Automation
In 2017 the designers Hamish Muir and Paul McNeil were
invited to design the cover for issue 94 of Eye magazine.
They responded by proposing not one cover but 8000
different covers, one for every copy printed.

1.
Remember
Engage a friend or work colleague
in conversation for at least ten
minutes. Immediately afterwards,
transcribe the conversation just as
you remember it.
Gab Mendes
Hey Martin, here is your tea. Oh, cheers
buddy! I have a question for you as we
never talked about it before: where do you
get your fish? Considering we aren’t near
the coast. There’s a market in London,
a fresh sale every Friday and Saturday
morning. You must be familiar with fish as
you are from Madeira, surrounded by sea.
Well, yeah, but my mom is the expert. My
favourite is salmon and tuna — but fresh,
not canned. One of my favourite dishes
is called ‘atum descabeche’. (Shows a
photo of the dish). Mmmm, that looks
lovely. Anyway, what were you reading?
It’s a book that gives you tips on how to
meditate. Right, cool. Yeah, I’ve been
doing it recently and saw some results
already. If you work your mind your body
will follow and nice things will happen. I
see. I haven’t studied that area too deeply,
but it sounds interesting. Yeah, it’s ever
since I had a paranormal experience,
when I saw a blue figure, a being, in my
bedroom window. That’s nuts! Reminds
me of those alien and UFO cases. I can tell
you, the conspiracies are coming true. Do
you believe in conspiracies? I mean, yeah.
They exist because there’s an assumption
that something’s being hidden. Yeah,
that’s how the, let’s say ‘governments’,
the big guys on top of us, try to hide
something really important from us. Yeah,
yeah. But some of those things have been
discovered to be mostly fake. Like in Peru,
these archaeologists discovered some
alien remains. But when more research in
laboratories was done, it was discovered
the materials in the ‘alien’ corpses where
actually manufactured, for example
industrial glue, and different parts of
animal bodies. So essentially these ‘aliens’
or mummies were made with those
different parts and glued together to give
the appearance of other-worldly beings.
Well. I’ll leave you to it. To continue your
meditation, with aliens in this case, ha ha.
Yeah, alright. We’ll speak later.

Minjeong Kim
‘Set the text within a complex
shape, the point size for each line
of text defined by the equation:
Number of lines in shape
-1 = first line point size
First line point size
-1 = second line point size
Second line point size
-1 = third line point size
and so on.’

2.
Eavesdrop
Go to a place where people are: a
shop, a café, a station. Move among
them. Listen to what they are saying
and write it down. Do not attempt
to transcribe whole conversations;
stick to sentences, phrases, clusters
of words. Do not interact. Remain
unobserved.
Gab Mendes
Americano but normal. Fingers crossed.
It’s stuck in your head. Can I take a chair?
Like a soap? There’s a new priest. No,
no we should go! And then he said...
Cambridge museum. It returns. It felt
amazing, ha ha ha. Behind the line or
whatever. I was told that maybe in April.
Here. God! Friends in their head? Do you
know where the big bus station is? Cross
that road and you’ll see a Tesco. This is
King’s College, so... Right, no problem.
This is the worst. HEY MAMA! It’s not that
heavy. I’m good today. What time are you
going? You’ll follow Mena. Go together.
Sorry. Like someone is learning to drive.
Just a piece of chocolate. At what time
do you engage? I don’t know. As I was
saying we go back then. Well, that’s true.
Yeah, wow! That’s exactly how I saw it.
I’ll relax. Yeah, I’ve got showers. Mmm,
that’s kinda private. Bro, I’m here. Man,
shut! Literally is, sorry. What did you say?
Do you remember the name? You told her.
Yes, it was close to that, close by. Not like
I was happy but it was funny. My favourite
is manga. She’s like thirty-eight. You might
go as well. Nor was I. Do it! Trying to sort
of, describing it. We just passed it. So
many lately. Yeah it’s stupid. Just send
and audio. The way it hosted, wasn’t. One
system or another. They are just boring.
Please, wash your hands before it. George,
George! Come on! They are ready to go.
Clear them all. Cheers, have a good one.
He was talking to a researcher. There he
is, flying. Absolutely, then more, I’m just
going to throw this. It’s only there, on your
t-shirt. Grab them up. I’ve got to put them
somewhere. Daddy can I have that? That’s
money. A bit soggy innit? I’m gonna take
some flowers, see ya later. I was struggling
earlier. How’s your new house smell?
Sorry, I’m just having a look. In Poland
never works. Just a little kids. Don’t go in
there! Mommy’s getting hungry. Apologies
guys, but this area needs to be clear for
storage collection. Thanks mate.

Shinaza Taghian
‘Take a pair of scissors and some
card and set a timer for 15 seconds,
because that’s how long you have to
cut each letter.’

3.
Signs
Go for a walk. On this walk consider
that people everywhere are trying
to tell us things that are important
to them. Look for the signs: ‘Sale!’,
‘Bicycles will be removed’, ‘Beware
of the dog’, ‘Baby on board’,
‘Driveway in use at all times’. Look
for both common and uncommon
signs. Create a list of all those you
have seen on the walk.
Shinaza Taghian
No unauthorized parking
Dry mixed recycling
Except cycles
Keep clear
Do not push gate past 90 degree angle
Roadwork ahead
Speed limit
Beware of dog
24HR CCTV
No smoking
Loading bay only
Commercial refuse store
Fire exit
Keep clear
No stopping
No bicycles
Car park
Deep excavation
Keep out
Danger
College deliveries next door
Baby buggies

Minjeong Kim
‘Set the text in concentric circles,
with letterspacing defined by the
circumference of each circle.’

4.
Select
Select a book. Select a page from
that book. Devise a method of your
own for selecting certain words
from that page, e.g. only words that
contain a certain number of letters,
or according to numbers you see
around you during the day. Make the
method as complex / interesting /
strange as possible.
Beena Qureshi
At saw chance terrorism their were own in
finally frowning Jilly of called or wondered
vegetable whether at been a into this
them a of well-placed nodded scary I with
I even. Guess I have letter little real the
I there got a of good awarded my lovely
right? Everything week share nudge. What
palled home cleared two only into baby
difficult sound even to eleven budging.
Him how why bit too she let her few had
bit her she but the one not far job yes
you see lot all got sell. Knocked touched
honestly clenched because remembered
superior violence willpower thought
mumbling writing waiting smashing
together.
[METHOD: Place the type tool cursor
at the beginning of the text. Think of a
number. Hold the right arrow key, count to
that number, and release. Extract the word
you find there. Repeat.]

Shinaza Taghian
‘Split / divide the text and delete
fragments first randomly, then
intuitively.’

Shinaza Taghian

6.
Plus One
Find a one-letter word. Find a twoletter
word. Find a three-letter
word. Keep going until you have the
longest word you can find.
Beena Qureshi
I so now want focus design signage
involved attention fragmented prototyping
regenerative investigative organisational
experimentation ultralightweight
contemporaneously distinguishability
miscellaneousnesses
A to see need seven around forever
creation jellyfish strawberry abnormality
airboardings quickstepping vaccinations
acknowledgement experientialists
untrustworthiness characteristically
professionalisation
A is way aqua metal camera genetic
aircraft gazillion everything backbencher
ambidextrous conjunctively zincographical
telegraphically uncompromisingly
untrustworthiness disproportionately
large-capitalisation
O of egg look sizes button country
analysis hatchback motivation earthquaked
bluestocking academicalism quadricyclists
observationally multiculturalism
extraprofessional unquestionableness
nonrepresentational

Beena Qureshi
‘Print and cut the text into strips and
weave them together, such that
the words are reconfigured by the
forces of chance.’

Beena Qureshi

Interlude
Devised by Seymour Mayne, the ‘word
sonnet’, is a poetic form consisting of
fourteen lines with one word per line.
Mayne did not intend that they should
rhyme, nor for the poet to use an online
rhyming dictionary.
Acritude
Hebetude
Disillude
Pinguitude
Promptitude
Crebritude
Mollitude
Orbitude
Desuetude
Lippitude
Parvitude
Celsitude
Hastilude
Misconstrued

7.
Define
Choose one of the following
words: television, internet, money,
attraction, ambition, travel. Ask your
friends, family and peers to define or
describe that word as best they can.
Write down their answers.
Minjeong Kim
AMBITION: To let my soul control myself
instead of ‘external temptation’. Striving for
the best. Ambition is knowing that anyone
can make tons of money and have a great
life by working hard, and thereby deciding
that you’re gonna take that for yourself.
Desiring strongly to achieve a certain goal.
A great vision. Your will to strive towards
something. A goal/target/dream in your
life. To be very ambitious means that you
dream big and have many goals that you
want to reach, and you feel determined
to do those things. To want it all! But
ambition can be dangerous sometimes
because if you lose control, you could hurt
yourself. My desire to improve myself and
make a meaningful contribution wherever
I am, but I am aware that it’s not always
achievable because we all are prone to
making mistakes that make us weaker.
My industry is currently on the verge of
collapsing owing to corporate greed, thus
my goal is to try to prevent that with what I
can. The urge to pursue the highest goals
we have for ourselves in our personal or
professional lives. What you are willing to
do to get what you want. A drive, a quality.
It’s something to choose from SIMS. If
you are an ambitious person, you just
keep going, you never know when to be
satisfied. Building my own house. The
desire to fill the cup even if it overflows.
Never-ending. Picturing something in
your dreams and actually following it.
Understanding the ultimate meaning of
life. A tiger. For me, ambition is like ‘Do not
give up unless you cannot achieve it.’ My
own inner fire and determination to reach
my life goals and dreams. A powerful and
compelling inner drive or desire to achieve
specific goals, often characterized by a
strong sense of purpose, determination,
and a willingness to put in significant
effort and time to attain those objectives.

Gab Mendes
‘Manipulate the text such that it only
appears to be readable.’

8.
Me Me Me
Set your phone to record and have a
normal conversation with someone.
Later, use a speech-to-text app to
convert only the words that you
spoke into text.
Shruthinaya Kumar
Hey, how’s it going. That sounds great. I’ve
been binge-watching a new series all day.
Stranger Things. It’s a sci-fi show with a
twist. Yeah, I did. Their pasta is fantastic,
you should definitely go. Speaking of
the weekend, do you have any other
plans? That’s a great choice. I recently
redecorated my room. By the way, how’s
your new job going? I am searching for
a job. I have an idea of returning to India
ASAP. Ha ha. I stopped playing badminton
once I came to the UK. It was my dream to
become one but I couldn’t. Yeah, yeah. It’s
alright. Call me once you get free. See you
then. Bye.

Beena Qureshi
‘Select fonts, colours and effects
by holding the down arrow key,
counting to a given number (e.g.
3) and applying the font, colour
or effect you find there. For
quantifiable adjustments use
multiples of 10 (e.g. -30, 30, 300
etc.)’

10.
Sounds
Go into the street. Make yourself
comfortable. Close your eyes for a
while. Listen closely. Write down
everything you hear that is not
people’s words. Listen for things
near and far, loud and quiet. Listen
for the details and describe them
in detail. Listen to what might be
happening. Take your time.
Gab Mendes
High heels clicking confidently against
the path. A cyclist changes gears, the
mechanical buzz of the bike’s chain
intermingling with wind whispering
through the leaves. Indistinct chatter
forms a constant undercurrent, fragments
of life stories exchanged in passing.
Laughter erupts, spontaneous and
contagious. A motorcycle engine revs,
briefly overpowering the sounds of the
street. Powerful footsteps resonate, their
purposeful stride capturing the attention:
a man, perhaps late for a meeting, rushes
past with quick, rhythmic strides. A chair
is dragged across the pavement, a scrape
signifying a change in position. Church
bells chime loudly, marking the passing
hours. The wind, now stronger, whistles
through the alleyways, carrying with it the
promise of weather about to change. An
espresso lanceta clicks into place. Plates
collide, the distinctive sound of a meal
shared in a nearby cafe. Rock music bursts
forth from a passing cyclist, a loudspeaker
strapped to his back. Children engage
in spirited chatter. A small dog barks
repeatedly, announcing its presence to
anyone within earshot. A cyclist glides
by, freewheeling at a moderate speed,
leaving only the faintest whisper of rubber
on pavement. A paper bag is crinkled
and crushed, a brief moment of tactile
satisfaction. Dog nails tap rhythmically
on the stone, a furry companion following
his owner closely. A soda can hisses as
it’s opened, releasing its effervescent
contents into the world. And in the
distance, the loud wail of an ambulance’s
alarm signifies that, between the urban
symphony, life’s dramas continue to
unfold.

Minjeong Kim
Isolate one sentence and set it in
type. Take the remaining sentences
and set them perpendicular to
the first such that every letter is
‘checked’ (like a crossword).

Minjeong Kim

12.
Kick-Start
I forget... I was thinking... Perhaps
you’re one of those people who...
The day I... I wish I... What would
you do if...? Will I ever...? Pressing
this button would... Sometimes I
wonder... These are all examples
of the Oulipo constraint known
as the ‘kick-start’. Choose one of
these kick-starts (or create one
of your own) and write as many
continuations as you like.
Minjeong Kim
I believe dogs can only live up to fifteen
years. I believe the colour green does not
represent grass. I believe you can hold
your breath for four minutes straight. I
believe this pillow is not as comfortable
as the one before. I believe that tomato
paste is the best sauce for pasta. I believe
that chocolate is the most commonly
chosen flavour. I believe we can hang
out on Wednesday. I believe talking with
your eyes is easy. I believe this is the right
way to get to the supermarket. I believe
you are the best human being in the
world. I believe she likes that boy from
our math class. I believe Barcelona has
the cheapest apple mangos. I believe
writing with a laptop does not help with
studying. I believe in a story that starts
with ‘Once upon a time...’ I believe that
lions are stronger than horses. I believe
I can fly, I believe I can touch the sky.
I believe grocery bags are only for the
groceries. I believe babies can talk within
two months. I believe public bathrooms
are only for peeing. I believe eating
alone and watching Netflix is the best. I
believe not everything is perfect from the
beginning. I believe she said those words
to you. I believe jogging will help with
stress-related problems. I believe doctors
earns tons of money. I believe I am tired
of writing this sentence. I believe cotton
candy is not made of cotton. I believe
horse-riding is only for rich people. I
believe that I am in love with you.

Gab Mendes
‘Ask AI to write an easily modifiable
code that will generate textual
compositions. Run the code,
experimenting with modifications.’
Tools:
chat.openai.com
python.org
code.visualstudio.com

Gab Mendes

Gab Mendes

Postlude
Extract from J.L. Austin’s Philosophical
Papers, opened at random during a pause
in designing and editing this book.
SPECIMENS OF SENSE
1.1
1.11
1.21
1.211
2.1
What-is-the-meaning-of (the word) ‘rat’?
What-is-the-meaning-of (the word) ‘word’?
What is a ‘rat’?
What is a ‘word’?
What-is-the-meaning-of (the phrase) ‘Whatis-the-meaning-of’?
SPECIMENS OF NONSENSE
1.1
1.11
1.12
1.21
1.211
1.22
What-is-the-meaning-of a word?
What-is-the-meaning-of any word?
What-is-the-meaning-of a word in general?
What is the-meaning-of a word?
What is the-meaning-of (the word) ‘rat’?
What is the ‘meaning’ of a word?

Rats Constructing
Labyrinths
Vol. 1
2023–24
MA Graphic Design
Cambridge School of Art
ARU
EDITOR
Nicholas Jeeves
CREATORS
Shruthinaya Kumar
Gab Mendes
Minjeong Kim
Beena Qureshi
Shinaza Taghian
PRINTER
Langham Press
langhampress.co.uk
TYPE
Neue Haas Unica W1
PAPER
GF Smith
Colorplan Mist
THANKS
Apurba Kundu
Texts and images are
under copyright of the
respective authors.
Ruskin Arts
Publications

1.
5. 6. 7. 10. 11. 12. 3. 4. 8. 9. Rats Constructing Remember
Eavesdrop
Exactly Plus Define Sounds Comments
Kick-Start Signs Select Me Record Me One Me Vol. 1
Labyrinths
2023–24
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words: comfortable. comments: you’re that normal conversation characters, people book. word. a one television, conversation café, Devise of YouTube, everywhere Find a Close Write those station. including for a a internet, three-letter
down your method people with TikTok, least Move are eyes spaces everything someone. money, ten who... trying of among Reddit for your and a
a a
in shop, 68
MA Graphic Design minutes. them. punctuation. word. attraction, while. etc. The to own Later, that tell Select day you for use Keep Listen TYPE selecting I... see. things Immediately a ambition, one I going speech-to-text wish closely. The Look or what that I... sentences certain until two for What are travel. they Write details. afterwards,
comments you important words are would down have app Ask need saying Look to your the to
Cambridge School of Art transcribe and make longest friends, everything from you to convert at what them. do write a that sense variety if...? Neue is word family only Look page, it happening. the you Will down. but the you Haas of for conversation and hear I e.g. they places words ever...? can Do peers Unica only that do signs: not Write find. that and Pressing not words is to attempt W1 not define ‘Sale!’, as you posts. need just fast that
to or
ARU
you to express describe people’s Collect this ‘Bicycles contain spoke as transcribe you remember button into can the a anything. words. that will certain text. and would... ‘best’ whole word it. as Listen removed’, number ones much as Sometimes conversations;
best together. for as of things ‘Beware they you letters, can. I
Do
stick Write near not wonder... of or Do the according not add and to down dog’, linger sentences, PAPER any far, These ‘Baby their context. loud to numbers are any answers.
and phrases, all board’, one Do quiet. examples not person you attribute Listen clusters see or
PRESCRIBED METHODS
EDITOR
for the of ‘Driveway around activity. words. the comments. Oulipo details you G Do Do . in F not during use Smith not constraint and interpret at interact. describe the all times’. day. known what Remain Make them Look you the
Nicholas Jeeves unobserved.
in as for method are detail. the both seeing. ‘kick-start’. Colorplan as common Listen complex Do not to Choose and Mist what be / interesting self-conscious
uncommon might one be of /
FOR GENERATING TEXTS
happening. these signs. strange about kick-starts your Create as possible. words. Take a list your (or Do of create all time. not those think. one you Only
CREATORS
of have record. your seen own) THANKS on and the write walk. as many
Shruthinaya Kumar continuations Apurba as Kundu you like.
Gab Mendes
Minjeong Kim
Texts and images are
Beena Qureshi
under copyright of the
Shinaza Taghian
respective authors.
PRINTER
Shruthinaya Shinaza Gab Beena Minjeong Mendes
Qureshi
Taghian
KimKumar
Langham Press
langhampress.co.uk
No unauthorized parking
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TEXTS GENERATED believe that I am in love VIA with you.
contents into the world. And in the
PRESCRIBED METHODS