Conditional Design

Conditional Design
A manifesto for artists and designers.

Through the influence of the media and technology on our world, our lives are increasingly characterized by speed and constant change. We live in a dynamic, data-driven society that is continually sparking new forms of human interaction and social contexts. Instead of romanticizing the past, we want to adapt our way of working to coincide with these developments, and we want our work to reflect the here and now. We want to embrace the complexity of this landscape, deliver insight into it and show both its beauty and its shortcomings.
Our work focuses on processes rather than products: things that adapt to their environment, emphasize change and show difference.

Instead of operating under the terms of Graphic Design, Interaction Design, Media Art or Sound Design, we want to introduce Conditional Design as a term that refers to our approach rather than our chosen media. We conduct our activities using the methods of philosophers, engineers, inventors and mystics.

The process is the product.
The most important aspects of a process are time, relationship and change.

The process produces formations rather than forms.

We search for unexpected but correlative, emergent patterns.

Even though a process has the appearance of objectivity, we realize the fact that it stems from subjective intentions.

Logic is our tool.
Logic is our method for accentuating the ungraspable.
A clear and logical setting emphasizes that which does not seem to fit within it.

We use logic to design the conditions through which the process can take place.

Design conditions using intelligible rules.
Avoid arbitrary randomness.
Difference should have a reason.

Use rules as constraints.
Constraints sharpen the perspective on the process and stimulate play within the limitations.

The input is our material.

Input engages logic and activates and influences the process.

Input should come from our external and complex environment: nature, society and its human interactions.

In groups of 4, everyone held a different coloured marker (black, blue, red and green). Each person made a dot on the piece of paper no further apart than 10cm’s. From this the players take turns drawing lines. Each line drawn has to connect to another dot on the paper keeping in mind that the angles of the lines must be within the following range: 0 to 45 degrees for the black lines, 45 to 90 degrees for the blue lines, 90 to 135 for the red lines and 135 to 180 degrees for the green lines. Trying to connect the line to an existing line if possible and draw the shortest possible line from your starting point.

This time in groups of 2, my partner and me had to write down out birthdays in Roman letters in this order (Date/Month/Year).

My partner's worked out to be
XI V MCMXCII (11/5/1992)
and mine was
I II MCMXCIV (1/2/1994)

Then finally we had to design our own rules for the exercise. Which are:

1) The first letter starts in the center and it continues like a spiral to the left.

2) If there's a letter before the "X" , the two letters need to join.

3) For the "I", the circle needs to be at the two extremes of it.

3) When a double I comes - "II" - a double line is over the both letters.