Workshop: Corset, Skeleton, Skin
"Jan Tschichold was of the opinion that in order to create aesthetic surfaces and efficient workflows, he needed the objective canon of a historical grid. He also pointed out repeatedly that it was his privilege, or even responsibility, to intervene ((”‘A line has eight to twelve words, more is wrong’. This is a rule. Rules want to be observed because they can be broken: I can make longer lines”. Consistent Correlation Between Book Page and Type Area, Jan Tschichold, The Form of the Book, Essays On the Morality of Good Design, Lund Humphries, 1991)).
Working with constraints is as old as design itself. But Print-On-Demand, dynamic websites and style macros put under strain the reassuring thought that there will be always room for a ‘final touch’. What does it mean to think of design as a conditional process? How to interact with the many technical protocols (standards, software, hardware, code) that co-define the things we make? Which gestures do we develop in dialogue with automated systems? What type of visual patterns and typographic forms can we emerge?
For Corset, Skeleton, Skin I would like to use disparate practices such as tracing, skinning, tight lacing and forensic reconstruction as mental images that help interrogate the shifting location of design. They will form a point of departure for experiments with templates in all their facets, mixing short exercises, screenings and readings with idea development. We will work on prototypes that can be fictional, performative and/or typographic."
Femke Snelting
http://snelting.domainepublic.net/corsets/
Twenty Tasks
After experimenting with all kinds of borders, boundaries and limitations during this week. We saw something happening, that we didn’t really expect.
The outcome of our project in deed raised more new questions to us than it has answered –
still the experience in dealing with tasks out of several aspects was very interessting and enlightening for us though.
And so in an other way we still reached the goal we had:
To gain a better and more detailed insight into the very blurry field of tension between the task itself and fulfilling it and how all this relates somehow to the task-giver and the person that recieves the task as well as their personal relation to each other.
What happened
We experimented in a playful way with giving and executing tasks in a small scale. Dividing our group into two small ones. These groups were creating
10 tasks for each other demanding to fulfill them and document their results however they feel like doing this.
We hoped to figure out what will happen and even more what
results would come out of that.
Due to all the former small
expercices we did and what came out of discussing the reader it became obvious, how many relations between different aspects are contained even in this seemingly simple task/fullfilling relation.
A lot of questions appeared up as we were looking into the
results of our experiment: Was it the task itself that designed how it could be done or was it even more the person who was executing it who was in charge to decide the outcome and result? It became clear, that within this simple situation there’s way more involved than one might think: It is not just a question of executing tasks right or wrong. It is not just about documenting how you solve the task, because even the documentation on it’s own can be the reason for manipulation or the designer of what you actually do. It is also about trust between task-giver and fulfiller. It is about interpretation and many other complex influences.
What we found is, that in deed the real tension – the interesting spot of solution – is where one really tries to stretch the conditions of a task as close as possible to their boundaries.
The point where you try to
almost break the rule but still reach the goal. That’s where it is fun and interesting.
Conclusion
In the end of our experiment we figured out that with finishing the 20 given tasks was for sure not the real end of our process but more just a point to beginn. A lot of questions came up and some suprising relations we didn’t expect to find in the first place showed up. Also it created lots of curiousity to look deeper into our now gained insight of this field.
We are interested how these findings could effect our work and understanding on graphical tasks and our daily life in general. So the result of this project is more a basis for further investigation than an answer to unsolved questions.
Text: Tobias
In collaboration with:
Albina
Christina
Tobias
