Conditional Design Workshop
Members of Conditional Design are:
- Luna Maurer, graphic designer (poly-luna.com)
- Roel Wouters, graphic designer (roelwouters.com)
- Edo Paulus, sound artist (www.eude.nl)
- Jonathan Puckey, graphic designer (jonathanpuckey.com)
Conditional Design is a tight knit collaboration that we have had since many years and FORMALISED in 2008 through weekly meetings at the kitchen table of Luna Maurer. During the first half year we worked on a manifesto, which could act as a framework for our meetings and discussions. It was also important to us that this manifesto would be shared with the outside world and could therefore also be discussed and critiqued outside of our personal surroundings.
The process is the product.
In a spirit of Conditional Design we conducted a workshop trying out 4 of their designs.
Perfect Circle
Rules
Each worker receives a coloured marker to draw with and is asked to execute the simple but sometimes self contradicting rule. Each turn took exactly one minute and the rule was executed exactly 60 times.
We also ended up with very visually pleasing side effect of the exercise which was the bleed on the following page.
Hatching
Initial setup
- Play with four players.
- Each player as a coloured pen: red, green, blue and black.
- Each player places a dot on the sheet at an arbitrary position but not further than 10 cm from each other.
- The players take turns:
Task to be performed every turn by each player
- Draw a straight line
- The line must connect two dots.
- The angle of the line 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 degrees for the red lines, 135 to 180 degrees for the green lines.
- Connect the line to an existing line if possible.
- Draw the shortest possible line from your starting point. If you enclose an area (a plane surrounded by lines) then hatch it with lines parallel to the line you enclosed the area with. The enclosed area may not contain unconnected dots or open ended lines.
- Place a dot
- The position of the dot is not further away than 10 cm from other dots and not inside the convex hull of all dots.
The Beach
Instructions
- Each turn, find the most empty space on the paper and place a dot in the middle of it. Do this as quickly as you can in 5 minutes.
First try:
Second try:
FluxFold
Initial Setup
- Play with four participants.
- Each participant has a colored pen: red, green, blue or black.
- The participants take clockwise turns.
Tasks Performed the First Turn by Each Participant
- Lift your corner of the paper from the table and bring it to any place on the paper so that one other corner must be lifted too.
- While keeping the corner at its position, press the paper fat and make a fold.
- Unfold the paper again to its standard position.
- Place a dot somewhere on your fold.
Tasks Performed All Following Turns by Each Participant
Folding the paper
- Bring your corner of the paper to the end of the line drawn by the participant on your right.
- If that participant has only placed a dot, bring your corner to that dot.
- While keeping the corner at its position, press the paper fat and make a fold.
- Unfold the paper again to its standard position.
- If the fold is almost parallel to the edge of the paper, place some small dots at the ends of the fold, so to clearly mark it as your fold.
Draw a straight line
- Start your line at the end of your last drawn line.
- Your line should always follow a fold.
- Your line may cross other lines but it may not be on top of other lines.
- The end of your line should always be where one of your own folds crosses a fold by someone else.
I really enjoyed those exercises. It's really great to sometimes take of your mind from worrying about the outcome and focus on the process instead. Mostly working in a group you never know what other people are going to do, where to put a dot or how long their line is going to be. It allows you to be playful, relaxed, but still end up with an amazing design.
We been asked to try some more design while on our GIS week. I met up with Adela, Eva, Sabina and Kriti and created the following:
Encircling
Preparation
- Play with four participants.
- Each participant has a coloured pen: red, green, blue or black.
- The participants take clockwise turns:
Goal
The goal is to connect as many completed sets as possible.
To Start
- Every player draws a small circle somewhere on the paper.
- Tasks Performed Every Turn Hereafter by Each Participant
- First, draw a big circle and try to encircle small circles with it.
- Then, draw as many new members as you have encircled.
- If you complete a set draw three new small circles: two members and one outside the sets.
General Rules (see diagram below)
Make Sets:
- A set is a big circle of one colour containing three small circles [members] of the three remaining colours.
- A set may not contain twice the same colour.
- The diameter of the big circles should be between 5-10 cm, the small circles between 1-2 cm.
Intersect Sets:
- A small circle has to be member of two sets.
- At maximum only two sets may intersect on one location (see diagram: wrong- and right intersection).
Complete Sets:
- A complete set means, all its members are members of another set as well, a set is then intersecting three other sets.
- If a set is completed, the remaining (not intersected) area has to be coloured by the colour that is completing it.
Knots
Rules
- Elongate your line on both sides by looping it over and under a line of another colour.
- You may not loop your own line or the line you looped in your last turn.
- If you have no options left on one of the sides, that side is dead.
- When both sides are dead, you may place a new line.
First try:
In the first go we completely forgot about the rule of not looping the line from the last turn so we decided to repeat it.
Second try:
Crossing Lines
Game created by Eva Rieger.
Rules
- You play with four people.
- Every player gets different colour marker.
- Every colour have it's own direction (for example green - vertical, orange - horizontal, red - diagonal up, black - diagonal down).
- You have to cross someone else's line, but at most two other lines.
- You are not allowed to cross your own line.
- You can cross lines anywhere on the paper.
What do I think about it all?