The more intelligent the rules, the more numerous and exciting the possibilities for variety in a game … and in design! Principles, systems, and grids can be found in various contexts.
How can we use and modify methods and structures for our own creative work in an exciting way? »Standing leg, free leg« describes a posture both in art and in sports, that lends both stability and calm, as well as ease and freedom – an attractive attitude also for (prospective) designers.
Regularities are not only integral to our cosmos, but to all of human creation. Irregularities provide vitality. »Fixed« vs. »variable« – that’s the essence. These two contrasts attract each other and merge like yin and yang. Why? Where? and how? – this is what we explore in the course of this method workshop. As representatives of the regular, we will encounter orders, principles, methods, systems, modularity, organisations, grids, structures, conventions and many more, in various forms and places.
We find variations, exceptions, breaks, inconsistencies, interferences, paradoxes, improvisations, modulations, crossings et cetera, as examples of the playful. What makes one or the other occur? What makes the two antagonists good, interesting, indispensable, disagreable … individually and together? Trying to figure this out, we examine parts and relations. We have a look at what happens when we modify existing relations by changing dimensions and contexts, by setting up analogies, by inverting, repurposing, disassembling and assembling in a different way, thereby leaving something out, adding something similar or different and so on. Systematization can be a whole lot of fun.
procedure
Practical tasks alternate with theoretical digressions and short presentations. The participants work in groups, in twos, and on their own on what either I or they bring. Individual perceptions and creations go hand-in-hand with analysis and reflection to allow generalisable insights and starting points.
aim
The beginning of an individual method kit that offers well-tried conceptual components, as well as tools for future projects. This kit can expand increasingly over the course of a professional life span, and prove to be a veritable treasure chest. Growth of clarity and structure in thinking and proceeding. Taking delight in exactness, thoughtfulness, and sober-mindedness. Increased consciousness of the sparks of creative possibilities that the cooperation between the playful and the regular can ignite.
compatibility
I am looking forward to come to your university, studio, institution, company. Just send me a mail so we can arrange details and dates.
The golden rule is that there is no golden rule.
George Bernard Shaw