Defining Relational Design by Tim Holloway

DEFINING RELATIONAL DESIGN a conceptual analysis by Timothy Holloway

Timothy Holloway 2012 timoholloway@gmail.com timoholloway.wordpress.com

INTRODUCTION I define Relational Design in terms of Levels of Engagement. There are 3 formsâ&#x20AC;¨of design:

FIXED We engage with our eyes

INTERACTIVE We engage with our eyes and ourselves

RELATIONAL We engage with our senses, ourselves, and others.

I see Relational Design as a new form of design that goes beyond the realms of traditional and established forms of communication. By adding a new dimension of audience engagement that can not be found in print and moving image (Fixed Design) or in typical interactive design, Relational Design offers a wealth of new possibilities. The creation of dynamic—and often unstable—relationships between the design and the audience is the key differentiating quality of Relational Design. Within Fixed and Interactive, the design exists regardless of the audiences engagement. It is either passive, like print and moving image, where the design is totally unaffected by the actions of the user. Or, as with interactive design, the extent to which the user is allowed to navigate a fully designed system is effectively designs the audience’s engagement. With both of these forms, the user can engage with the design to their own needs, and experience the pieces differently to someone else. For example you may read one section of a book, another may read the entirety; you may navigate a selfcontained interactive e-publication in a completely different way to another user, experience a very different narrative. The point is, the object is in a fixed state. You can not look at content that hasn’t been designed into the object, you can only look at what has been created within parameters set by the designer and within the constraints that are integral to the object (a book is limited to its pages, for example). The available content is potentially the same for all of those that use it, regardless of the way in which the user engages with it. Relational Design does not bind the user with these constraints. The design exists at the level of their engagement, without necessarily having any set parameters or defined outcome. This means that the design is actually an expression of the users engagement, its outcome is at least partly created by the user in a way that is independent from the designer.

You can compare Relational design to fixed design with the analogy of Film vs. Performance: For example: you go to watch a comedy at the cinema, it makes you laugh. You have engaged with the film, but not affected its outcome. Somebody else watches the film, they don’t find it funny, don’t engage with it, and leave half way through. It remains the same film for everyone else who watches it. The director wholly determines the outcome, regardless of the audiences level of engagement. This would be classed as ‘Fixed’. If the film came out on DVD with interactive content, and say the audience can select alternate ending; either A, B or C. The audience can interact with the film and decide what happens, in a sense they can determine its outcome. However they can not change the available possibilities of what is capable of happening. They can not choose to watch option D, because it doesn’t exist; the director did not film it. In other words, they can only interact within the designed system, they are not able to create a new path to the narrative. The director allows the audience to interact and shape the content to within designed parameters only. This would be classed as ‘Interactive’. You go to watch the same comedy at the theatre, it makes you laugh. Your laughter encourages the performers, they respond with bigger, better, more confident acts. Another night, a different audience: nobody laughs, many people leave, the performers are despondent and the show is weak. The audience has shaped the outcome of what is happening, and determined the outcome. Here the director hands the ‘design’ over to the audience and allows the Relationshipbetween the actors and audience to produce the final outcome: the actual event creates the work.1 This is, I would argue to be ‘Relational’.

1 ► Monika Parrinder & Colin Davies of Limited Language, Anything that cannot be marketed will inevitably vanish:on communication as a series of relations (2006) <www.limitedlanguage.org/articles/ relational.php> accessed on 17.03.12

ORIGIN Nicolas Bourriaud coined the term Relational Aesthetics in the eponymous essay of 1998 (translated into English in 2002) to describe emerging trends seen in contemporary art of the 90’s. It centres around the artist using the relationship between the work and the audience as its primary basis. He originally defined it as:

2 ► Nicolas Bourriaud,

“A SET OF ARTISTIC PRACTICES WHICH TAKE AS THEIR THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL POINT OF DEPARTURE THE WHOLE OF HUMAN RELATIONS AND THEIR SOCIAL CONTEXT, RATHER THAN AN INDEPENDENT AND PRIVATE SPACE.”2

Relational Aesthetics (2002) Les Presses du Réel, Paris.

His essays presented in this book have been criticised and reexamined many times; there are a number of problems with Bourriaud’s text that have made themselves known during the past decade—which I will not go into here—however I believe that many of fundamental ideas it contains hold true. In the past four years, the ideas have started to be used more explicitly in terms of communication design, and the discussion has evolved in various strands.

ANALYSING AND DEFINING RELATIONAL DESIGN I have summarised my interpretation of Relational Design into a criteria that aims to outline the theoretical and practical basis for a piece to be classed as Relational. The points elaborate on this basic three step definition I have developed: 1 The design only functions meaningfully as a direct result of the audiences engagement. 2 The audiences engagement is not prescribed by the designer, it's instead envisaged as an open ended dialogue. 3 The actions of the audience form the process that defines the output of the design.

THE DESIGN CREATES A SOCIAL  ENVIRO NMENT

This departure from Private Space into a Communal Space—which Bourriaud describes— is the most prominent and defining shift that separates Relational practices from other forms. Where traditional art clearly separates the creation of the work in the studio from its display in the gallery, and the viewers are left to form their own individual interpretations from what is presented to them; the Relational designer envisages the viewers as an active audience—a collective entity, who takes on a productive existence in experiencing the work.3 It is by the audiences engagement, with not only the piece itself, but also the other members of the audience that creates the full experience of the work:

MEANING IS ELABORATED COLLECTIVELY.4

3 ► Bennett Simpson, Public Relations: An Interview with Nicolas Bourriaud (2001) ArtForum, New York.

4 ► Claire Bishop, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (2004)

This moves the creation of the work into the forefront of the experience.

October Magazine, MIT

THE DESIGN IS CONTEXT UALLY SENSITIVE

In 2008, Andrew Blauvelt began to theorise the emerging trends in design that showed a progression towards a Relational sensibility, extending the definition from Fine Art and into Graphic & Industrial Design. He defines Relational Design as Contextually Sensitive; i.e design that responds to its environment and audience. He goes as far to say that this emerging relationally-based era is “the third major phase of design history.” A Post-Post-Modernism, or Altermodernism if you will. He summarises these three phases: Methodology Syntax > Semantics > Pragmatics Ideaology Form > Content > Context Period Modern > Postmodern > Post-Postmodern

“RELATIONAL DESIGN IS PREOCCUPIED WITH DESIGN’S EFFECTS, EXTENDING BEYOND THE FORM OF THE OBJECT AND ITS ATTENDANT MEANINGS AND CULTURAL SYMBOLISM. IT IS CONCERNED WITH PERFORMANCE OR USE, NOT AS THE NATURAL RESULT OF SOME INTENDED FUNCTIONALITY BUT RATHER IN THE REALM OF BEHAVIOUR AND UNCONTROLLABLE CONSEQUENCES.” ⁵

5 ► Andrew Blauvelt, Relational Design (2008) Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis.

DISTINC TIONS OF PRODUC TION AND CONSUMP TION  BECOME BLURRED

As the user’s role in the design’s function comes to the forefront, the definition of production and consumption become intwined. The design becomes generative, evolving in terms of a feed back loop: the output is fed back in as input, further stimulating the resulting output. This helps stimulate the desired “uncontrollable consequences”; as the inherent quality of a Feedback Loop is to induce chaotic behaviour into seemingly simple systems.6

6 ► James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science, The amazing science of the Unpredictable, page 61 (1987) Vintage, New York.

IT IS GENER足 ATIVE IN THE FORM OF A FEEDBACK LOOP, NOT SIMPLY ADDITIVE

A Generative work evolves over time, usually by the influence of the audience or the environment. This does not immediately classify it as Relational. For example, the designer could create a piece that generatively accumulates a predetermined response via an additive, time based system. This would be Interactive design by my definition, as the piece responds in a designed way. The narrative of the piece could be described as linear. If the piece evolved in an unexpected way at the hands of the audience, then this could be described as Relational. As the designer has allowed the input of the audience to affect the outcome. This resulting feedback loop will quickly introduce a non-linear narrativeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;thus unpredictabilityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;into the system.

CONTENT IS DEFINED AND CREATED THROUGH  AUDIENCE  ENGAGE MENT

I describe Relational design as a generative space beyond interactivity in terms of design. Relational design goes beyond the scope of a designed outcome; the designer creates a system that is not only open to—but defined by—the audience’s participation and engagement. The design is not preoccupied with the object, but by its effects extending beyond it.7

7 ► Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice: The Reader, page 33 (2009) Sternberg Press, New York

CONTENT IS CREATED COLLEC足 TIVELY

To be defined as Relational the design must extend beyond the ‘Private Space’. For the design to be properly experienced and understood, more than one person needs to be engaging with it. It can not exist in a private space meaning that an inherent part of the design must be formulated by the actions of its audience collectively. So the meaning, or output of a relational design, only exists through the collaboration of the audience.

“IN RELATIONAL ART, THE AUDIENCE IS ENVISAGED AS A COMMUNITY.8 RATHER THAN THE ARTWORK BEING AN ENCOUNTER BETWEEN A VIEWER AND AN OBJECT, RELATIONAL ART PRODUCES INTERSUBJECTIVE ENCOUNTERS.”9

8 ► Claire Bishop, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (2004) October Magazine, MIT

9 ► Relational Aesthetics (2012) <wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_art> accessed on 17.03.12

CONTENT IS CONTEXT SPECIFIC

The Temporality, audience, cultural environment, space, and time of the event when the design is in action can be summarised as the Context. Because of this focus on contextual experience, and collective understanding, the ‘final output’ cannot be truly expressed after the ‘event’ as its existence was defined by those involved.

COMMUNI足 CATION IS OPEN, NOT TOP DOWN

By introducing this audience defined aesthetic into the work, you immediately remove the ‘top down’ method of communication. Bourriaud explains this in terms of “resisting social formatting.”10 If we look at design in terms of conversation, we are used to seeing designs that tell us to do something, they create a conversation that is imparted from one to the many, nearly always with the goal of ending in a sale.11 This didactic approach is inherent in all ‘fixed’ designs. By allowing the audience to actively contribute and shape the outcome of the design, you shift the dynamic of this conversation away from the ‘one to many’ and towards the ‘many to many’. Here the conversation is open ended and unscripted, allowing the work to evolve and the relationships to form between the audience members and the piece itself through the process of promoting debate and asking questions.

10 ► Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (2002) Les Presses du Réel, France. 11 ► Monika Parrinder & Colin Davies of Limited Language, Anything that cannot be marketed will inevitably vanish:on communication as a series of relations (2006) <www.limitedlanguage.org/articles/ relational.php> accessed on 17.03.12

RELATIONAL DESIGN SHOULD BE SEEN AS A METHOD OF APPROACH

The advent of Relational practice came partly out of the digital and information age, however it is certainly not limited to a digital realm. Quite the opposite: most of the artists that Bourriaud originally discusses in Relational Aesthetics from the mid nighties worked almost exclusively with physical interactions in a spatial environment as a counter-response to increasingly digitised social structures. However today, it is the space in-between digital and physical that offers the most opportunities. Digital social structures have become an integral part of modern life, but their manifestation in our real-world environment is so far stifled to form of the occasional QR tag, however the proliferation of smart phones and ability to access the internet from any location is quickly changing this.

CRITICAL RESPONSE

“ISN’T ALL GRAPHIC DESIGN RELATIONAL?” I would argue that it is not; however it is a question of definition, and the vantage point from which it is formed. There are many definitions of the term relational, and depending on the one you use, you can shift the work that could potentially be grouped by it. One quotation continues to reoccur when Relational Design is criticised, Marcel Duchamps definition of the creative act: “The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”11 From this you can partly argue that, if you take the viewers ‘viewing’ as a critical part of the act of creation, then yes, anything could be relational. However, this is addressing the act in phenomenological terms, as Minimalism intended, whereas Relational art approaches it in terms of use. “One is not in front of an object anymore but included in the process of its construction.”12 There are four key protagonists in this debate: Nicolas Bourriaud describes a relational piece as anything that exists within the sphere of inter-human relations. A piece of work that exists at a specific time and place between a group of people interacting with each other. His definition aims to show that any kind of interaction between two people in the context of an artwork can be described as relational art, where each individual member of the audience’s experience of the piece is created by the other members of the audience.13 The important phrase to consider in Bourriaud’s definition is the concept of ‘inter-human relations’ as this is what takes the artwork out of the private space of contemplation, and offers it up to the audience as a whole, allowing them to formulate meaning collectively — pushing the act of engaging with a work into a collaborative space. Bourriaud has explained this shift in terms of the gallery space: not looking at them as spaces to be walked through but instead as durations to be experienced.

12 ► Marcel Duchamp, The Creative Act, page 77 (1959) Robert Lebel, New York

13 ► Bennett Simpson, Public Relations: An Interview with Nicolas Bourriaud (2001) ArtForum, New York.

14 ► Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (2002) Les Presses du Réel, France.

15 ► Limited Language, Modernism 2.0 (2009) Eye Blog < http://blog.eyemagazine. com/?p=150> accessed on 17.03.12

Andrew Blauvelt’s definition looks predominantly at ‘Relationships’ people have with a piece of design and its context. His definition does not necessarily involve Bourriaud’s ‘inter-human sphere’. He cites examples where the design has been created with knowledge of the user, and the context the design will be placed. The design thus, is a direct response to those relationships that the designer knows to exist.14 The problem with Blauvelt’s definition is that one can easily argue that any piece of ‘good’ design is Relational if it takes into account the needs of its user and the context that it will be used it. I think that by ignoring the inter-human element, the fundamental point of Relational Design is lost. Monika Parrinder and Colin Davies take Bourriaud’s definition and apply it more specifically to communication design (as opposed to Fine Art and Industrial Design). They define it in terms of open-ended relationships that the designer may instigate with the audience but not in a way that is resolved before hand. This concept of resolving a design by engagement of the audience is key to differentiating relational design from a piece of interactive design (which is resolved by the designer prior to its engagement with the audience.)15 I define Relational Design in terms of the audience’s level of engagement with the design and others using it, and how these factors effect the end product of the design. For me a piece of Relational design must fit a certain criteria: 1 The design only functions as a direct result of the audiences engagement. 2 The audiences engagement is not prescribed by the designer, its instead envisaged as an open ended dialogue. 3 The actions of the audience form the process that defines the output of the design. I think these three points encompass the roles a piece of design must satisfy for it to be classed as relational.

“WHAT TYPES OF RELATIONSHIPS ARE PRODUCED, AND WHAT VALUE DO THEY HOLD?” Claire Bishop, asks “if relational art produces human relations, then the next logical question to ask is what types of relations are being produced, for whom, and why?”16 This is a very important point, which Bishop highlights in her critique of Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics. It is by being aware of, and answering these questions that a piece of Relational art or design can have any real credibility.17 In response, Bourriaud provides a nice expression of this sentiment when he says that when creating a piece of relational work, it is important to not let it become Nokia Art18 — art that connects people for the sake of connecting them. I believe that my criteria takes this into account, by using the audiences relationship with a piece, and by taking their actions as forming process that creates the piece, you build purpose into the relationship, eliminating this risk of creating connections for the sake of creating relationships.

16 ► Claire Bishop, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (2004) October Magazine, MIT. 17 ► Claire Bishop, Participation (Whitechapel Doucments of Contemporary Art) (2006) MIT Press. 18 ► Bennett Simpson, Public Relations: An Interview with Nicolas Bourriaud (2001) ArtForum, New York.

KEY PROTAGONISTS

19 ► These biographies were taken from page 27 of Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice: The Reader (2009) Sternberg Press, New York; and from Frieze Foundation < http:// www.friezefoundation.org/biography/ profile/claire_bishop/> accessed on 17.03.12

Monika Parrinder, graphic designer and a lecturer on visual communication at the RCA and London College of Communication, where she has been teaching Critical and Historical studies since 1997. Colin Davies, co-founder (with Monika Parrinder) of the Limited Language Website; which uses the web as a platform for generating writing about visual communication. The project uses a blog format to develop a dynamic relationship to language — promoting cutting, pasting, recycling and sampling as a means of arriving at new ideas about writing and visual communication. Nicolas Bourriaud, French curator and art critic. He co-founded, and from 1999 to 2006 was co-direcotor of, the Palais de Tokyo, Paris together with Jérome Sans. He published Esthétique Relationnelle in 1998 where his central premis is that artistic practice in the 1990s can be understood in terms of a paradigm shift in which artistic practise is “focused upon the sphere of inter-human relations…and the invention of models of sociability.” Andrew Blauvelt, head of the Design Studio at the Walker Art Center in Minneapollis, US. Claire Bishop, art historian and critic. She is a lecturer in Art History at University of Warwick. She is the author of Installation Art: A Critical History (Tate, 2005), Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (October no.110, 2004), and the edited anthology Documents of Contemporary Art: Participation (Whitechapel/MIT, 2006).19

QUESTIONS TO BE EXPLORED THROUGH EXPERIMENTATION: What role does the designer play? How do you design something that is, by its nature, uncontrollable? Does the designer help direct the path the experience takes by interacting with it to shape it towards a specific purpose? Or, do they design it in a way that anticipates the actions of those using it, to create a specific reaction in the audience? Or, does the designer set up the experience and watch it go? What are the relations that its possible to create? What value do these relations have? How do you avoid Nokia Art? Who are these relations being produced for? We have created technologies that allow us to amplify our voices to a global audience, but how have we enhanced our ability to listen thoughtfully?

Timothy Holloway 2012