User:StanHaanappel/CRAFT

CRAFT:

I have a graphic design background for 6 years know and in this time i developed a personal interest and fascination within my discipline. In this years i started to investigate form and how this form has been reached. I began to get the urge to redefine my visual designs and projects. The design method i got really fascinated about is to give the design process out of hand which gives the maker no clue of what the outcome will be. For many people this sometimes will be considered as ugly but for me this is the opposite. In a world where anybody with a computer can be a graphic designer i don’t want to be that designer who just creates something beautiful. Next to finding a tool to create with, i also have to continuously question myself in what my role is in this process.

New technologies gives the opportunity to create new tools for designing. In this form of craft the outcome is generated by a particular process, data, accidents or existing technology. To gain these things i need to experiment, create tools or do research to find a existing technology to work with. It will not always conclude a technological approach, it can also create analog tools and design rules to manifest people in making. To accomplish this craft, i always need to gain knowledge with researching and experiment to learn what the possibilities are.

The big question after curating the generated outcome is what are you going to do with this data. When there is a outcome there are still many decisions to make for me as the designer. What do i show? How many result do i show? Is it a realistic visualisation of more a poetic? For who am a making this? etc.

If you ask me where these kind of projects belong after they are finished i will naturally respond “a exhibition”. But i don’t want to narrow myself down to only this platform. A want to take my audience broader and find a way to also use it for example, in the commercial field of graphic design. There is a big possibility that i am going to take part of this work field and therefore i really want to find connections between my digital craft findings and graphic design.

For me a really interesting moment for computer art and science was the exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity in shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London in 1968. This exhibition contained al sort algorithms and devices for generating music, machines and installations, kinetic environments and displayed moving images. The exhibition provided the energy for the formation of British Computer Arts Society which continued to explore the interaction between science, technology and art. This exhibition curated by Jasia Reichardt is about “happy chance discovery’s”.

An really inspiring exhibition “Software”, Curated by Jack Burnham in for the Jewish Museum in New York 1970. In this exhibition there was one installation that i really love: “The 1970 experiment SEEK by MIT by students of the Architecture Machine Group, headed by Nicholas Negroponte was developed and built. It was an cybernetic world behavioral model and experimental laboratory. It was a big plexiglass box with a computer-controlled machine arm and a bunch of small toy blocks. The box was the house of a colony of gerbils who continuously changed the position of the blocks whereafter the machine arm the block pattern restores. I think it’s really interresting how they investigate the relation and outcome between the predictable machine with the unpredictable gerbils. Eventually the animals broke down the machine.

Your line or mine is a project by Moniker what really inspired me when i participated in their installation at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. I will always remember it as a nice experience to take part in and having the power to influence the outcome of this art installation. Also the fact that the whole proces is a really graphical installation where human drawings form the dynamic outcome. I need to analyse why this human factor in this particular project is of a big value. For a participant there where only a few rules for the drawing. As this was giving your made your line artwork and scan the outcome. All the previous results where exhibit with a beamer in a rapidly tempo. It’s been i while since i first saw this project but i still know that this particular project gave me a lot of inspiration in giving de design project out of hands.

Since the emergence of computers “generative design” is more accessible. For me a big obstacle is that i am not a educated scientist of mathematician and I do not have an born talent for writing code. But still i am trying not to be scared for this whole direction that i really like the most. Sometimes i am really scarred to step into a world where i do not know the language. Still i know from the past that when you don’t try you will never understand it. What do I do if a technology does not cooperate? This is something i am trying to embrace and see that this is also a really meaningful moment. You can reflect on this moment and sometimes it will bring you to new more interesting approaches. I don’t have to master every technology i want to experiment in and i also can collaborate with people who are in other fields for example my little brother who is currently studying artificial design in Utrecht. But still, you really need to know what the possibilities are and with what techniques you can accomplish the result you want to have.

Bronnen:

Cybernetic Serendipity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8TJx8n9UsA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSwovB28B34
Software Information technology: its new meaning forart:
https://monoskop.org/images/3/31/Software_Information_Technology_Its_New_Meaning_for_Art_catalogue.pdf
Studio Moniker: Your line or mine
https://yourlineormine.com/