With my final project, due to me selecting a piece of conditional design to discuss within my essay, the aim was to create a design prototype that reflects the essay question. The basis of the essay question was about structure and the interactive possibilities within a selected design piece.


To begin my design process, I wanted to dive further within what conditional design is, what it stands for, and more existing designers out there that have created pieces that are heavily impacted by the design method, or have certain similarities.

Red Fungus

This was an activity given to exhibition visitors from the initial entry, with 4 stickers, they had the task of placing them on the floor, but following a set of rules. With particular rules being set, there was still opportunity for a variety of direction and positioning for participants, yet due to the psychological aspect of looking at the existing pattern that has come before you and reacting from that, usually the result is a similar approach. Therefore, all visitors of the exhibition work in collaboration to create the design.

Rules:

1 - Connect the stickers to the ones already affixed to the floor.
2 - Elements can be connected anywhere but may not cross over each other.
3 - Open line-ends are not allowed: connect them to other lines or to a circle.

Sol Lewitt

To best understand something in the now, gaining knowledge on what came before brings a true understanding. Sol Lewitt, was an American artist that was linked to many design movements, but more in particular that relates to this topic was his instruction based art. Lewitt believed that the artist was the generator of ideas, and that the idea itself could be the work of art, therefore playing with how interaction works between the designer and user.

“Like an architect who creates a blueprint for a building and then turns the project over to a construction crew, an artist should be able to conceive of a work and then either delegate its actual production to others or perhaps even never make it at all.” – Sol Lewitt

The Instructions

The instructions themselves were somewhat simplistic and to the point, which didn’t give much room for choice with certain specifics, although he states that particular aspects can be done at random, which relates back to the conditional design method.

The piece of work displayed here is by the artist Eric Doeringer, who followed Lewitt’s instructions to create his own interpretation.

Here is a video of someone else interpretation, notice how the outcome has similar characteristics due to process being the same, yet they both contain unique differences.

Out Of Line

When researching into relating design to the conditional method, I came across an interactive music video for a song called “Out of Line”. The video in its beginning stage of release invited users to draw over the video at particular points. All the lines in the video were rendered into data and visualized for visitors to the page like myself.

To summaries, the video itself has an open interaction with viewers, with some rules being set, yet they can be broken if the user chooses (see in the video when she’s removing her makeup). This piece therefore has some characteristics to conditional design, and shows potential of what can be done digitally using this method.