Conditional Design / Luna Maurer & Roel Wouters
in partnership with Nexus Interactive Arts
State 1 Ritual State 2

Workshop July 12 - July 15 2011
Public lecture / Performance July 12 2011

Download "State 1 Ritual State 2" workshop booklet (coming soon)

See and download Luna Maurer & Roel Wouters’s lecture (coming soon)

Luna Maurer

Trained as a Graphic Designer, Luna Maurer works as an independent designer in the field of interaction and media design in Amsterdam. Her interests lie in technological developments that transform our media into fluid digital environments, and finding design solutions for it. Central to the work of Luna Maurer is the theme of 'control'. This leads to design methods in which designing the environments for visualization or creation of content is more important than designing the end product. The structure and the process become an important part of the message. She applies her approach of designing environments, conditions and tools to all kinds of media: dynamic media (web, tools, animation and video) but also to print, installations and performances. Her work has been exhibited a.o. at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum de Paviljoens, Almere, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, London Design Museum. Luna Maurer currently collaborates with Jonathan Puckey, Roel Wouters and Edo Paulus, developing and discussing their working methods under the term 'Conditional Design'.

Roel Wouters

Dutch artist and designer Roel Wouters joined Nexus Productions for worldwide representation in 2007. Having featured in the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase, Shots magazine, a memorable guest appearance at BUG music videos event and chosen to be part of Creative Reviews ‘Creative Future 2008’, Roel’s conceptual and cutting edge work has certainly got people wanting more. Roel studied graphic and typographic design at KABK Den Haag and later completed an MA at Sandberg Institute’s Design Department. Since then he has worked on a myriad of projects and collaborations including installations, interactive art, video performances and has exhibited his work at museums and notable venues across Europe. Work includes the critically acclaimed ‘zZz is playing:Grip’, which consists of a one-take overhead shot featuring trampolining gymnasts. It has won awards including Prix du Clip at 2008 Festival Clip, France. Following on from the success of this promo, Roel directed another for zZz’s track ‘Running with the Beast’, which won the NPS Early Bird award at Int’l Film Festival Breda 2009. Other notable promos includes a concept interactive video for C-mon & Kypski, which won Best Design for Digital Media at the 2010 Dutch Design Week and was also nominated at the 2010 UKMVAs.

State 1 Ritual State 2

The workshop investigates rituals as code and how we can invent new rituals for our present time and integrate them into our lives. Rituals consist of a carefully designed sequence of actions mostly performed in front of or together with a community.

Due to technological developments we are faced with an increased trust in technology and science. Simultaneously we realize that even though our amount of control of our environment is much greater than ever, in the end we are facing a world that is not in our hands - out of control. Borders as we know them get blurred, new borders emerge and therefore new transitional states arise. Rituals are developed mostly for moments of transition. It is an acknowledgement or even celebration for being on the border, in between two states. We know plenty of rituals that accommodate our life transitions: getting born, from youth to adolescence, from single to partnership and from school to profession, from live to death. These are the most obvious ones. In states of transition we belong neither to the one nor to the other, transit, passages without a clear outline. We want to embrace these rather undefined, unclear and in-stable moments and spaces.

Moments and spaces of transition have increased if we consider all the states and possibilities that we can identify ourselves with. We personally face the transitional state of being an artist or designer and having multiple Nationalities. We even see the switching between the virtual and physical space as a transitional state. In the workshop we develop new rituals for these moments and spaces of transition that we face today. The most important aspect is how to design a ritual. We want the ritual consisting of several components and actions. We see it as a process of actions with a visual or audible quality. The ritual itself always has an aesthetic value. The workshop therefore focuses also on designing processes and behaviour. As means for the ritual one can consider a lot of different components: performance, fashion, photography, video,2D and 3D.

Schedule:

Day 1 – Tue 12 July

10:00 – 12:30: Lecture/performance by Luna+Roel. The students/audience are part of the lecture. The lecture is a dialogue that encompasses thoughts and concepts that are relevantto our practice. One can see simultaneously examples of our work projected that are mentioned in the dialogue.

Workshop introduction: we introduce the assignment and tell more about the background. How does it relate to our practice? We show examples of projects that are interesting and deal with the topics of the workshop. Discuss questions on the workshop assignment, discussion on the theme of rituals, rituals nowadays, designing behaviour, crowd participation, the aesthetics of mass participation, crowdsourcing. Group forming: Participants have to make groups of 3. We develop a ritual to do this.

12:30 – 14:30: Lunch + Idea development. Groups can get to know each other via lunch. 2 hours time to develop an starting point based on personal observation and communal interest. They have to have an idea in what direction to go, what media to work with.

14:30 – 15:30: Communal presentations of first rough ideas with brief comments by us. Everybody can hear what direction the others are going.

15:30 - 18:00: Further development of the idea in the individual groups. We will give advice to groups individually if necessary.

20:30: Optional: Watch a film together in relation to the workshop.

Day 2 – Wed 13 July

10:00 - 11:00: Communal presentations with brief comments by us.

11:00 - 12:00: Mini lecture. Discussion and focus on topic of (crowd) participation and it’s aspects: We show examples of our practice that deal with participation and talk about our experience. E.g. simplicity of action is crucial. One can imagine the extra value of a group of people executing (as in a protest march). But how to approach people? Which channels are working and which not. What is the reward for the participant?

12:00 – 18:00: Groups develop their projects further, L+R coach the groups individually where necessary.

Day 3 – Thu 14 July

10:00 – 11:00: Mini lecture. As the day before we focus on a topic that forms part of designing a ritual: e.g. Designing limitations and rules: how much freedom do you give to the participant of a ritual. We discuss this by successful examples of our practice like 'Fungus' and 'One Frame of Fame' and also less successful attempts like 'Levend Archief' and 'Now Take a Bow'. We talk about designing the right balance and controlling the framework very precise... Individual groups talks, R+L together with each group.

11:00 - 11:30: group 1
11:30 - 12:00: group 2
12:00 - 12:30: group 3
12:30 - 13:30: Lunch
13:30 - 14:00: group 4
14:00 - 14:30: group 5
14:30 - 15:00: group 6
15:00 - 15:30: group 7

Evening: Working

Day 4 – Fri 15 July

10:00 - 16:00: L+R co-ordination, collecting material for a small booklet, or website. The students are working on the final presentations of their rituals.

16:00 - 17:00:Presentations, in the form of executing the rituals or presenting the concept.

17:00: Drinks

For further information:
Fabrica Press Office
fabrica@fabrica.it
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