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Object Timeline

2010	Work on this object began.
2012	We acquired this object.
2013	We photographed this object. This was an Object of the Day.
2024	You found it!

Poster, David Bowie 1976-84

This is a Poster. It was designed by Non-Format and published by Non-Format. It is dated 2010 and we acquired it in 2012. Its medium is screenprint on paper. It is a part of the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department.

For the 10th anniversary of their design firm Non-Format, Kjell Ekhorn and Jon Forss self-published a limited edition set of posters celebrating the work of music icon, David Bowie. The project was inspired by a text written by one of Bowie’s famed record producers, Brian Eno. The piece, titled “Axis Thinking” and published in his 1996 book, A Year with Swollen Appendices, Eno argues that by looking at something on a spectrum of two extremes—an axis—one can find undiscovered areas within an already familiar creative endeavor.
For Eno, axis thinking was a method that could be used in the music studio. Non-Format utilized axis thinking to retrospectively examine the musical output of David Bowie. They categorized each of David Bowie’s albums against idiosyncratic and arbitrary extremes. The album Scary Monsters, in their estimation, was more “Bridge” than “Tunnel” and more “Scissors” than “Rock,” while the album Station to Station was more “Fight” than “Flight” and more “Heart” than “Head.” To visually communicate these classifications, Non-Format used icons of mixers and sliders (echoing the equipment Eno might have used in the recording studio) to “describe each Bowie album within Non-Format’s own framework of extremes.” The project resulted in two posters representing Bowie’s musical albums. The first covers the years 1969–75 and is printed in gold on black paper. This poster is the second, which encompasses the years 1976–84 and is printed in silver on black paper. The posters were featured in the Communication Arts 2011 Design Annual.
This work is part of a larger gift proposed for acquisition from Non-Format. The gift in its entirety would offer an overview of the firm’s work from 2006 to 2010, allowing the museum to showcase their evolving practice. An impression of this poster was included in the 2011 exhibition, Graphic Design: Now in Production.

This object was featured in our Object of the Week series in a post titled Less Ziggy, More Stardust.

This object was donated by Non-Format. It is credited Gift of Non-Format.

Model Of Hyperbolic Space (USA)
wool.
Museum purchase from General Acquisitions Endowment Fund.
2011-16-1

Poster, Grammo-Grafik [Record Graphics]
lithograph on wove paper.
Gift of Sara and Marc Benda.
2009-12-19

Book, Ord For Dagen Mordknull by Odd-Magnus Williamson

Book, Ord For Dagen Mordknull by Odd-Magnus Williamson
edges in black foil, blind debossed covers.
Courtesy of Non-Format.
59.2015.1

Our curators have highlighted 1 object that are related to this one.

Digital image of a matrix of blue, red, yellow, green, orange and black dots arranged in an irregular plaid pattern, with mostly blue and green dots on either side of the matrix and mostly red, orange and red in its middle. A few points seem trickling away at the bottom of the matrix. There is no explanation of the significance of the different dot colors. There are more columns than rows, so the matrix appears as a wide rectangle. A legend on the left (title: Taxonomic depth) indicates that each row in the matrix represents a different type of bacteria. The legend consists of several bars next to each other (in a gradation of colors from light yellow to magenta) that show the classification of bacteria in its hierarchical subdividision. A bar next to most rows reads “Bacteria” (yellow); on its right, a light orange bar is split in “Proteobacteria”, “Actinobacteria” and others; Proteobacteria is further subdivided in the next bar (dark orange), in “Alphaproteobacteria” and “Betaproteobacteria”, and so forth. Thus the legend indicates that rows in the matrix are clustered according to the scientific classification of bacteria, so that rows next to each other represent bacteria that are more closely related on an evolutionary scale. A diagonally aligned text at the top of each column creates the illusion of depth and, although the font is very small and hardly readable, appears to indicate that each column represents a different gene product (a specific protein). Overall, the impression gained is that of a summary of genetic diversity within a sample of bacteria, organized both according to the type of bacteria (rows) and the diversity of specific metabolic functions (columns) identified within the sample. Above the matrix is a general title of the visualization: 'Thiocyanate bioreactor genome summary. High density genome summary matrix linked to a phylogenetic hierarchy'.

Metagenomic Data Visualization, 2016
videos (2), data visualization.
Courtesy Banfield Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley and Stamen....
NATURE.010

Its dimensions are

101.8 x 66.2 cm (40 1/16 x 26 1/16 in.)

Cite this object as

Poster, David Bowie 1976-84; Designed by Non-Format; Norway; screenprint on paper; 101.8 x 66.2 cm (40 1/16 x 26 1/16 in.); Gift of Non-Format; 2012-12-4

Short URL http://cprhw.tt/o/48J4F/
Accession Number 2012-12-4
Object ID 35456773