ras+e are collaborators. when he’s code, she’s human. we are graphic designers, fine artists, writers, thinkers, inventors, and musicians. our skill set is frenetic; our commentary is rooted within this collision, this dialogue. i’m a girl. i’m a boy. so you know, this doesn’t happen simultaneously or immaculately. you can think of her as digital. you can think of him as physical. we are anti-antioxidants. we amplify the destructive effects of prolonged exposure. if she’s courier, he’s cardboard. we are ryan shelley and elizabeth herrmann (ras+e) and we generate humanistic commentary on critically detached communication using limited means. we want your discarded mediums, your boxes, excess bits of a busted culture; when life gives you lemons, we make grenades. design is making anything for anyone out of anything. re: is design without numbing agents; it’s design beyond impact and lara croft posed all contrapposto on a supermarket tabloid. our premise is based on working with cheap democratic materials paired in exploitive relationships. medium follows idea; text and image melt together. his design is fine art. her writing is graphic design. think of them as two easy going (slow) tectonic plates inevitably inclined to friction. the result is combustion: re.ink.art.nation. think mount st. helens with toner. video. screenprinting. letterpress. digital and alternative darkroom photography. stencils. book arts. installation art. music. projection. alternative printmaking. writing. performance art. graphic design. this is our mud puddle. in an increasingly impersonal world of iphones, ipods, isync, iblinders, our collaborative re: projects are pro-real. what is the intrinsic allure of default digital communication when we take five thousand snapshots of the same person standing in front of niagara falls, in front of a nondescript ocean, in front of iwhatever? the truth is, after the shutter claps, you’ll never look at that chameleon behind a forehead- greased sheet of plexi at the national zoo again. the truth is, sixty rubberneckers behind you will shoot the same bloody image as fetched by Google. photographing the zoo is good. snapshotting the zoo is lazy. this is not about the zoo, this is about incessant viewfinding as a disconnect. choose your eyeballs, cellphone versus the occipital lobe of your cerebral cortex. reality is an option; sit on a train, plug in your earphones, check your email, and ignore the person (your child) sitting next to you. six hundred black and white airplanes suspended by fishing line contain six months of photocopied email correspondence. a stop motion video of two people standing in a projector’s headlight communicate, but never interact. personal narrative written in web programming code is screenprinted onto skin. re: is design as writing as fine art in response to people being absent from where they are. our backgrounds in activist art, collectives, and collaborative projects highlight our desire to invent art for people with people. we slam disparate mediums together; we design from original content. ras+e is more than creating a void where synapses engage in dialogue with each other; we want design/art to go out from our heads and be interruptive. using lo-fi processes and democratic supplies, the re: projects encourage viewers to engage, to re:spond, to re:act.