The future...

Context: Process: Content

We seem to be sketching out three main themes within our examination of the Manifesto - Context, Process and Content. If we're looking to create an automatic manifesto generator, we have to consider all three of these elements. We have to design parts of each, in different ways. How do we prototpye? Is it through the Studio Project with the second and third years? I like the idea of running semi-scientific test cases, where we run the same 'system' but change each variable slightly: move a chair into a different position, run the test on the day of the big brother final, ask people to only select 4 points.

Architecture of the spaces of debate: #1 The Meeting Room.

I want to briefly collect/explore/collate the architecture of debate. Starting with the actual physical spaces of debate, first of which is the meeting room.

I have started a collection of meeting rooms. I will post them all soon.

The spaces of debate

What maintains a manifesto?

Manifesto's are often created within a forum, a socially dynamic space, in which debate and rhetoric are utilised to boil down the moral justifications of our actions. When we leave this context and begin to bring these manifestos into existence within the everyday, they often become diluted or ignored. Why is this? Is it because we give the context or the 'institution' ownership of the manifesto, only existing as a group ideal, and as individuals we leave our responsibility for its maintenance at the door?

Does the manifesto only truly exist in its essence as a trace within the physical space it was defined? Is this physical space, this room, this studio, library, kitchen, cafe, pub, the place that holds potential to maintain the true quality of the manifesto. What if this place could always exist in its original state, a place where the manifesto makers could revisit to rekindle their ideals and refurbish their moral calculators?

What does a place like this afford us?

(Utilizing the unreal worlds of interactive gaming to create a forum in which discussion can happen)

A real, and yet unreal world, accessible anytime. A world in which the actual architecture can be defined to enhance debate/discourse and rhetoric, shaped and molded to expand and focus the practise of manifesto making. A space in which physical mapping can be enacted by representations of ourselves (our ideal selves) and recorded, documented and replayed. A space where extreme actions of debate can be tested, played and refined. Manifesto the game!

So we are back to cooking?

Ingredients of a Manifesto

I agree with the need for a radical reflexivity in design - it's an essential part of developing a rich and thoughtful design practice - how, as a designer, one articulates and declares your own positions, values and prejudices is important if a clear direction, or manifesto, is to be reached.

I'm interested in trying to work out the structure of a manifesto - a meta-manifesto or metafesto - what does a manifesto need to contain? Reflexivity is one key element, the self-reflexive engagement with your own, internalised, design process (i.e. We shall design by... ), but also it needs elements of engagement with outside agents and contexts. Now this starts to move into a ethical dimension, so it's important to keep the language and mechanism of articulation open and flexible.

I like the idea of creating heat, forging an idea in the fires of discourse ;-) How does a design position emerge from heated debate? What drives the debate - could it be any controversy?

Reflexivity

The idea of creating a frictional space for contradiction and discourse is brilliant, with its mechanical references of steel rubbing steel in motors, creating heat! The heat we create is debate, but how do we create a forum, perhaps a mechanised one, that creates heat without the fire?

I have been reading a bit about ‘situational analysis’ at the moment, the sociological methodological practise that attempts to take into account the ‘postmodern turn’. It uses cartographical approaches to solve some of the issues of complexity.

1. situational maps that lay out the major human, nonhuman, discursive and other elements in the research situation of inquiry and provoke analysis of relations among them;
2. social worlds/arenas maps that lay out the collective actors, key nonhuman elements, and the arena(s) of commitment and discourse within which they are engaged in ongoing negotiations---mesolevel interpretations of the situation; and
3. positional maps that lay out the major positions taken, and not taken, in the data vis-à-vis particular axes of difference, concern, and controversy around issues in the situation of inquiry.

...[The] maps center on the ‘situation’ of inquiry. The situation per se becomes the ultimate unit of analysis and understanding its elements and their relations are the primary goals...It's an on going analysis where enquiry is seen to also have an affect that must be taken into the picture.

Adele E. Clarke’s SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS: GROUNDED THEORY AFTER THE POSTMODERN TURN
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005).


These mapping techniques, although quite dry and to us designers quite naive perhaps, do look at interesting ways of reflexive analysis. This is something that as designers I have always felt we do not do enough of- looking back at ourselves, our practises, our processes, our outcomes and the decisions/beliefs/ethics that drive us. Does this ‘space of contradiction’ , this ‘forum of friction’ exist within practises that enable better reflexive analysis?

Latour below talks about the practise of looking deeper into the situations in which we practise, what i like about this quote in particular is the element of having to look with others. This I believe could be at the heart of the significance of creating an machine in which groups of people can debate and through this process create manifestos that test their own design practises.

In opening the black box of scientific facts, we knew we would be opening
Pandora’s box. There was no way to avoid it. . . . Now that it has been opened, with plagues and curses, sins and ills whirling around, there is only one thing to do, and that is to go even deeper, all the way down into the almost empty box, in order to retrieve what, according to the venerable legend, has been left at the bottom—yes, hope. It is much too deep for me on my own; are you willing to help me reach it? May I give you a hand? (Latour)

Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto has some really nice elements. I particularly like:

No.3: Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
No.8: Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
No.14: Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
No.28: Make new words.Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

Another idea for a semi-automatic manifesto: harvest, edit, re-write: find elements of previous manifestos that strike a chord - re-use, revitalise! A global/historical/collective manifesto of the greats.

I don't want anything...

Dada manifesto:

I am writing a manifesto and I don't want anything, I say however certain things and I am on principle against manifestos, as I am also against principles… I am writing this manifesto to show you can do contrary action together, in one single fresh breath; I am against action; for continual contradiction, for affirmation also, I am neither for nor against and I don’t explain because I hate common sense. (Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto, 1918)

I love the idea of a contradicition generator - maybe this is at the heart of what we are trying to achieve: a space of contradicition, friction and tension where new design directions are formulated and mobilised.

Mechanised

Why attempt to mechanise the creation of manifestos?

The repetition of a mechanised process often affords the viewer greater chances of criticality. This is due to the observation of similar, if not identical actions being made in order for a process to be completed. It can be argued that ethical judgements are often shaped by 'fashion'; individual's opinions defined by the current political, environmental, social, technological and economical climate. Todays manifestos differ greatly in direction and sentiment from those of 100 years ago. The climate in which the Futurist Manifesto was written in 1909 was filled with the excitement of the industrial revolution and the technophilic, world changing drivers towards a bigger, faster, petrol fueled future. Today's manifestos might be shaped around non-petroleum futures, where 'snail' paced living is respected and the economy is stable not crunching.

So what would building a machine that utilises current and 'normal' trends of ethicality to create mass produced manifestos afford us?

As discussed it could allow for a greater amount of critical observation to take place. This could then afford us significant insights into why we make the ethical choices we do. Secondly it could allow for 'ideals' challenges to take place, like throwing a spanner into the works, literally.

Importantly though, it could be 'the process of making the process' that affords us the deepest and most significant understanding of the 'manifesto'.

The future of Suburbia

From the New York Times...

“The suburbs have three destinies, none of them exclusive: as materials salvage, as slums, and as ruins.”

There are many ways of describing the fiasco of suburbia, but these days I refer to it as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.

I say this because American suburbia requires an infinite supply of cheap energy in order to function and we have now entered a permanent global energy crisis that will change the whole equation of daily life. Having poured a half-century of our national wealth into a living arrangement with no future — and linked our very identity with it — we have provoked a powerful psychology of previous investment that will make it difficult for us to let go, change our behavior, and make other arrangements.

Compounding the problem is the fact that we ditched our manufacturing economy for a suburban sprawl building economy (a.k.a. “the housing bubble”), meaning we came to base our economy on building even more stuff with no future.#

Read On..

Semi-automatic manifesto #1

Items needed:
1. Another persons manifesto
2. A pen
[taken from Living Sober, 'Some methods AA members have used to stop drinking']

The Futurist Manifesto 1909.

"Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!"

"Heap up the fire to the shelves of the libraries! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious canvases swim ashore! Take the picks and hammers! Undermine the foundation of venerable towns! The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten years to accomplish our task. When we are forty let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts!"

See full manifesto

Inspiration... the design machine

The Design Machine: Concept
Originally uploaded by mattward

The Automatic Manifesto Project takes its inspiration from a one off 'design performance' in 2007 at Coolbrands. The design of a space (or machine) to generate ideas, whilst revealling to the public some of the hidden elements of the design process, was a great success. The project started as a tongue in cheek critique of the 'dance monkey dance' element of the design profession. It wanted to show what we, at Goldsmiths design, do best - think through doing - the developmen of a rich and creative design process.

By creating a performance and by designing the tools of production, we managed to design an environment of collective creativity. In Automatic Manifesto we intend to build upon this experience in order to generate a new design future.

Automatic Manifesto

The goal of this project is to create a series of manifesto generators - designed assemblages to provoke, stimulate and produce a collective manifesto for design. We intend to examine the means by which design discourse can be effected by the impliments and objects that surround us in our daily environments.