- What do we learn about the process of the designers and the artist discussed in the text? What is the role of “process” in their overall activity?
Conditional designers believe that “the process is the product”. Since we live in a society that experiences constant changes in interactions and social contexts, the designers think that the restlessness that’s felt by modern people should be expressed in art as well. In the process, the collaborative designers make changes constantly in an attempt to respond to one another, adjust their mutual relationships, and adapt to the environment. Though the outcome is usually less predictable, the process has offered the work a “nonsensical logic” (kind of like expressing subjectively in an objective way) and produced formations along the way.
- Describe how their approach differs from designs or drawings you have created in the past and what the impact on the resulting work is.
- The work completed under the collaboration of designers can be much different from the individual work which I am used to. The collaboration requires a sensibility of unpredictable changes and the capability to deal with complex relationships. To be more specific, when I am doing an individual design, I have absolute control over my work and am free to make adjustments based on my own ideas. But in group work, it’s more like playing a survival game that asks you to both express yourself and be cautious about stepping into others’ boundaries or being swallowed by others.
- The condition is more goal-driven. The conditions that I’ve encountered mostly surround themes, materials, and formats. While the conditions in their approach are more directly toward the outcome, like drawing a perfect circle or a continuous line on a sheet of paper for hours. Such conditions seem more fixed but can actually bring more possibilities because people switch their focus from the result to figuring out how the work’s been made, which can be pretty surprising and fun to explore.
- The text introduces the concept of conditional drawing, where the artwork is the result of a series of instructions (rules) being performed. Can you imagine a (short) set of rules that, when followed on a sheet of paper, might produce an interesting, or unexpected, result?
- Four artists use pens of different colors each.
- Everyone thinks about a setting (like a classroom, a park, under the sea, etc.) (they don’t tell one another) and starts drawing stuff in the settings together.
- Everyone, while drawing, needs to observe others’ drawings. Their goal is to constantly make changes to things that they’ve already drawn and finally make the canvas look like a complete one.
For example, there are artists A, B, C, and D. The settings that they come up with are:
A: under the sea
B: a forest
C: the main street
D: a classroom
When they start drawing, B starts to draw a few trees and C draws a long road. Then D draws a desk and a boy with a back bag. A draws several fish. With these being drawn, they all kind of get some ideas about what settings each other are having in mind and they start to make adjustments.
B continuous drawing trees but lines them along the road that C drew. D changes the desk into a showcase of a store. And A follows what D did, changes the fish into a poster of fish, and hangs it on a wall.
In fact, everyone tends to get close to the setting that C came up with because he’s is considered the most inclusive one, with more possibilities to add new things. However, if D insists on drawing a classroom, then others may make other changes to adapt to the environment that D creates.
- Describe your thought process when devising your rules. Can you imagine the resulting image in your head, or are you tempted to act out your own rules on a sheet of paper – just to get an idea of what the result might look like? (If the latter, try to identify what part of your rules made you do so.)
I tried to devise a set of rules that may reflect what’s inside the artists so that when people see the final work, they may start to think about the interests and personalities of the artists, which I believe would be super fun. For example, to come up with a setting shows the ongoing or desired lifestyle of an artist. And by asking them to make adjustments when drawing, you can make a guess at what kinds of personalities the artists possess. The ones who change their setting immediately may have more submissive elements in their personalities, while those who insist on their original ideas or try to convince others may be the opposite. Those who come up with a setting that’s more inclusive in the first place may be a considerate person or actually someone who likes to dominate. I can roughly imagine the result, but since there are tons of possibilities, there’s no right or wrong answer.