IN 2008 AMSTERDAM-BASED DESIGNERS LUNA MAURER, EDO PAULUS, JONATHAN PUCKEY, AND ROEL WOUTERS BEGAN GATHERING ON TUESDAY NIGHTS AROUND MAURER’S KITCHEN TABLE. Since they found it difficult to define their combined practices with a term limited to a specific medium, such as graphic design or interaction design, they decided instead to articulate a way of thinking. After months of weekly discussions, they developed the Conditional Design Manifesto. The resulting principles guided them through a wide range of individual and collaborative exercises and projects that privileged process: input, output, logic, and subjectivity. Using both digital and physical materials the Conditional Design members established strict parameters and then put systems into play. Their approach harkens back to Karl Gerstner’s experiments with design as a range of possible permutations and to artist Sol LeWitt’s instructions for wall drawings.1 Unlike these 1960s methodologies, however, Maurer, Paulus, Puckey, and Wouters ultimately strive to create systems that take on lives of their own. As Maurer notes, “From simple rules and ingredients, complex things can happen. Behaviors emerge.…The system talks back to you.”2 As the group’s members maintain in their manifesto, they want “to reflect the here and now.” Their practice moves beyond the unified formal and conceptual systems of modernism to take on the complex structures and behaviors made possible by the exponential growth of computing.3

CONDITIONAL DESIGN:

A MANIFESTO FOR ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS

LUNA MAURER, EDO PAULUS, JONATHAN PUCKEY, ROEL WOUTERS | 2008

Through the influence of the media and technology on our world, our lives are increasingly characterized by speed and constant change. We live in a dynamic, data-driven society that is continually sparking new forms of human interaction and social contexts. Instead of romanticizing the past, we want to adapt our way of working to coincide with these developments, and we want our work to reflect the here and now. We want to embrace the complexity of this landscape, deliver insight into it, and show both its beauty and its shortcomings.

Our work focuses on processes rather than products: things that adapt to their environment, emphasize change, and show difference.

Instead of operating under the terms of Graphic Design, Interaction Design, Media Art, or Sound Design, we want to introduce Conditional Design as a term that refers to our approach rather than our chosen media. We conduct our activities using the methods of philosophers, engineers, inventors, and mystics.

PROCESS

The process is the product.

The most important aspects of a process are time, relationship, and change.

The process produces formations rather than forms.

We search for unexpected but correlative, emergent patterns.

Even though a process has the appearance of objectivity, we realize the fact that it stems from subjective intentions.

LUNA MAURER
Interview with Helen Armstrong 2010

LOGIC

Logic is our tool.

Logic is our method for accentuating the ungraspable.

A clear and logical setting emphasizes that which does not seem to fit within it.

We use logic to design the conditions through which the process can take place.

Design conditions using intelligible rules.

Avoid arbitrary randomness.

Difference should have a reason.

Use rules as constraints.

Constraints sharpen the perspective on the process and stimulate play within the limitations.

INPUT

The input is our material.

Input engages logic and activates and influences the process.

Input should come from our external and complex environment: nature, society, and its human interactions.

1 To read more about connections with Sol LeWitt and Karl Gerstner, see Andrew Blauvelt, “Ghost in the Machine: Distributing Subjectivity,” in Conditional Design Workbook (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2003), iii–vi.

2 Interview with the author, October 7, 2010.

3 In addition to the Conditional Design collective, Maurer, Wouters, and Puckey formed a new design studio, Moniker, in 2012.