how can conditional design create and inspire creativity?

My degree project is about how conditional design can create and inspire creativity.

Conditional design Participatory design Contextual design

Co-creation Collaboration

Experiential design Generative design Relational Design

Conditional design has many names all of which can be described as the 3rd phase in the history of modern design.

Pragmatics context

Semantics content

Syntax form

Where we have moved from form and content to context. Its about understanding, exploring, and examining the role of design.

As an adaptive approach and process that uses conditions, constraints, and input that can only be completed within a specified context.

Michael Bierut

I think of artists as creative because they have to invent something out of nothing. I think designers design because they can’t invent something out of nothing. Or at least that’s why I design.

Being in design at an art school, this quote by Michael Bierut explains the intentions behind this project. He thinks of artists as inventing something out of nothing—creating from this internal desire and not necessarily being conscious of what they are doing. This idea that artists and designers are two different things. Where we are on this opposite end of the spectrum simply working things out, while understanding WHY we are doing what we are doing. And I think that most designers have this desire to create work that we are drawn to just as human beings. We still want to express who we are through our work, but we are taught not to. I think that everybody should be an artist, that every artist should be a designer, and every designer an artist.

This is a design project and an art venture that is rooted in the everyday—

it is a fundamentally ambiguous attempt to grasp the things that mean nothing,

the unconsciousness that consumes everything,

and the insight of having realized something meaningful, thoughtful, and beautiful. It is a collaborative and participatory idea, experiment, social event, friendship, installation, and exhibition exploring the relationships between artists, designers, and audiences.

In researching socially engaged art, I came across this map by Thomas Hirschhorn reflecting the exchange and limitations between artists, art experts, and what he calls the non-exclusive audience or the public. Here he illustrates how institutions are evaluating artists and deciding the value of the work and influencing the audience’s judgement of it.

So I have re-visualized those relationships and roles within my project where all roles are essential to the work. Artists are creating work they put out into the world in hopes of it finding its own audience. They want to make work for “whoever cares” right? But artist’s are not always the best at clearly communicating their intentions and this is where design can take place. Rather than an a institution evaluating work a designer can examine it and clearly aid in visualizing it in a way that allows the audience in not judging the work, but understanding it and adding to it. The viewer is not seen as empty and artwork is not passive but an open and expansive framework.

This was the linear process that I set out for this project. I had people from different departments create a prompt or brief based on their artistic practice…From there I would send all the prompts to each participants to complete to their choosing. And after evaluating those outcomes, I wanted to open up

the process by allowing the participants to complete them as well.

Ideas.

When I asked for people’s prompts, I didn’t really know what I was doing for what I wanted, so this part of the process was pretty open-ended. The only requirements of the prompts that people created were that they be affordable, reproducable, and accessible. And as a result the ideas I got back were pretty broad. Many were very deep and thoroughly explained their artistic intentions, but I’ve simplified them for presentation purposes.

1. Pick up a six-pack of beer. This will be the title of your poem.!

!2. Start drinking.!!3. Choose a set of messages from your phone.!!4. Start recording; method, style, and format is up to you, but you must maintain content fidelity.

Drink beer, record and maintain content fidelity of a text conversation. This one made me laugh and it was very clear and direct, while being flexible in creativity. I also loved how it brings up this awkward relationship of what is private and what is public.

These were two results that participants completed together, which were pretty much expected from a strong set of directions.

1. Preserve something that has brought you joy. Focus on the positivity.!

!2. Observe a sound that reminds you of your childhood; Before bed, meditate on the sound.!!3. Destroy something that has no positive function or value within your life.

Preserve, observe, and destroy something. This one although direct, was a symbolic act.

This had no responses. So I took some elements and tested it by installing prompts in the hallway.

I simply asked them to write down what brought them joy and to place it in a jar. Results included everything from coffee to the sound of distant wind in the forest.

I also placed a trash can in which they could destroy something negative. Results included ex-lovers, cat poop, which I relate to, and sad things that said inferiority or my father and his wife.

Use this as !source material.

This prompt had no results. Participants described it as unapproachable and already finished work.

Create an archive !of yourself.

Create an archive of yourself through collecting bits of ephemera. Also quite successful and

This was a result which had much more refinement than what the artist imagined from the prompt.

I also easily translated it publicly by asking for people to pin scraps to a board. I loved that it forced people to notice things they they wouldn’t normally do. And as a designer I honestly find these things beautiful. Somebody, somewhere designed all these things.

This was really about being able to notice details, documenting and collecting information, looking for patterns, and drawing inspiration from life itself.

1. Create either an image or message.!2. Allow somebody to respond in the

opposite manner.

Create an image or message and allow somebody to respond in the opposite manner.

So the artist had taken these images she already had and presented them to other people blank side up and asked them to “free their words”. I loved that she was forced out of this isolated state of making, the spontaneity of the word and image comparison and letting random things become meaningful.

This result led me to expand on the idea by allowing random people to borrow a disposable camera and photograph anything they observed as significant.

1. Make something you value.!2. Put the work in a container.!3. Give it away. Leave it behind and

don’t look back.

Make something, contain it, and leave it behind. I was really worried about this one, because I was expecting to get things back, not for them to be given away. And step one seemed a bit open-ended too. As a designer, I’m use to having these restrictions and guidelines. I would be completely lost without

having some sort of purpose to initiate the process, but at the same time if you already have a set plan you aren’t really opening yourself up to possibility. I think both methods of working are highly important. It also brought up the idea of valuing the work you’re creating.

This artist created small cards with collages and poems

On the outside they said take me, open me, love me and were placed in public places like coffee shops.

This was another one where a print that was placed on an old public billboard.

These were instant photos that were left in places where the artist had been kissed by her girlfriend. I think from looking at these it becomes apparent that to create something valuable is to be personally invested in it…allowing you to inherently imbed meaning into the work you make.

1. Create a portable work of art.!2. Place and gain meaning from

context.

This one ironically was a bit complex/confusing in its original state, but somehow created my favorite response, because it explained the underlying basis for my project in about 8 sentences better than I could in 8 pages.

I guess I don’t understand the hierarchy of art

Along with these photographs it said “I guess I don’t understand the hierarchy of art…

I don’t understand why there are people who make art for billboards and soda cans

I don’t understand why there are people who make art for billboards and soda cans

getting treated differently than people who make art for museums and galleries

getting treated differently than people who make art for museums and galleries

and to me, it seems a little backwards to categorize art to patronize art

and to me, it seems a little backwards to categorize art to patronize art

when we should be encouraging art, producing art

when we should be encouraging art, producing art

don’t confine your art to the white of a wall

don’t confine your art to the white of a wall

make work to provoke emotions and create a dialogue, don’t let the environment define the art. good art will define itself.

make work to provoke emotions and create a dialogue, don’t let the environment define the art. good art will define itself.

brand

On top of all of that I also planned a little event for people to create source material to use as the overall look of the project.

I had people create letterforms, the only guideline being to maintain the proportions of a given typeface.

They were also drawing patterns that were characterized by a given feeling during the creative process: frustrated, angry, lost, and surprised.

exhibit

For displaying this project in the show,

Starting off, people can take a little pamphlet with them that contains a exhibition essay giving deeper understanding about the purpose of all of this, artists credits, and recommended readings. And these are currently being passed around for you to look at

something everyone

everything work

nothing ideas

I plan to show all of these things in three phases or levels: nothing being the ideas, everything being the results, and something is the ability for the viewer to add ideas and works to the installation or to comment on this way of thinking/working.

So something kinda like this…it would be a pretty organic display so that people have the ability to participate in the making, contribute prompts, and comment on questions like how do you come up with ideas, what is originality, what determines something as art? and what determines something as design?

Q+A

Thank you.