FinalProject

This project is going to be more research based, my own research, research about how people work on groups for collaborative design is supposed to be work in groups on which the aim is supposed to create something perfect and better in any way one person could. So what i am going to do is based on my own rules i am going to develop this rules in my own artwork, and then in a group of people which i am going to choose. This is going to be divided into many timelapses, one will be mine doing all three on my own, and the other two is going to be with the groups. The groups are going to do the exercise twice or i am going to do a comparison, of their reactions as well , when i help the m to understand better the rules and when i don't to do a comparison of the outcomes, and in the end a comparison of both of their outcomes with mine, which i am the creator.In the end of this final brief i am going to hand over the final pieces and the timeless are going to be uploaded on hotglue.

Conditional Design in Albania

After I created a few rules for three different pieces of conditional design (which was based on the classwork we did), I decided to apply them to four different Albanians, all four with different characters and not very art based futures. The reason I did this is because I wanted my final brief to be more research based and to experiment a bit more with people and how they behave in groups. Although all four have different personalities, their behaviour was based on the environment the project took place as well.
 

Dior Angjeli, the nephew of a very famous politician in Albania called Anastas Angjeli. He is studying for politics in University of New York Tirana, which describes his personality very well, meaning a very serious and formal kind of person. To be honest, with not a very artistic future.

Sonila Marku, a bright young lady studying for business and administration, a future which is related to having an ability to talk to people, to be a leader as well in order to be successful and to sort out difficult situations. Saying this, I was curious to see her ability to work in this kind of group which I organised. I expected the same thing from Dior whose field has a lot more to do with communication and leadership.

Steve Imami is studying for Multimedia.Unlike the other three Steve shares a passion for art so I was expecting a more artistic view from Steve in this project.

Kristi is studying finance, which is more related to numbers than anything else. She has never done anything related to art in her life and it is safe to say that this was her fist.

After describing all four, it's pretty curious to see the outcome of this project but before we go to that, I would like to describe the environment as well. The reason why I chose to work in this place is because it's one of the most frequented and typical things young people do in Albania, which is coffee shops. They like to sit down, get a drink and chat for hours as these people I selected do almost every day. How about this time spent chit chatting for two hours these four different personalities would work on an artistic project in one of the busiest coffee shops in the capital city of Tirana.

,The entire point of all this besides all the research and experimentation with people, is the exploration of philosophy of collaborative design. The idea is that a work in group is supposed to create something more perfect in any way that just one person can do. What I did is recording two timeless videos for every piece of work done in groups. In the first one, I just hand them over the brief and let them work with it in any way they understand it and see how they work together to figure it out and the outcome as well. In the second video, the creator, which is me, I gave them more clear instructions about the work and then compare the two in the end. After the group finished every piece of work, I did the same thing as them. In the end, I compare the two projects, the group mixed with different kinds of personalities and mine to give a more clear idea of the work and rules.

The point of the work

This exercise being the first one, was based on the very first exercise that we did in class which was to make the perfect circle, in this case, the perfect square. The point was that without any rulers just by hand, they would take turns to draw the perfect square on top of the first one. Each one had a different colour and 60 seconds for turn in approximately 5 minutes overall.

First try (Without my help)

In this video i let them develop the exercise the way they understand it from how i have written the rules.In the end we end up with this.

Second try (with my help)

This time with my help, i tell them to experiment a bit more, to not be afraid to make it a bit bigger for it does not say anywhere to not do so, and use as much of the 60 seconds as they can. To hurry up and to colour it in a way which actually makes it easier to colour and gives the square a better shape,and clearly you can see the difference between the two.

As i have explained above about the idea of this experiment was to see the idea of collaborative design as well, which in groups you're supposed to achieve something more perfect than one person can. So what i do is i do my own exercises on my own as well to see the difference from that point of view, and to see as well how the creator of the rules develops the work.For the ones that i did on my own i only use two colours.

The symmetrical shape

The rules of the exercise are pretty simple but a bit more complex and creative lets say than the first one with the square. as you can see on top of the page the rule is to draw that 'U' looking shape until most of the page was drawn. The rule is that one point of the shape has to touch the first one but the other one can not but you have to keep it as symmetrical as you can while doing so, and , you can not connect the 'U' shape with one that has the same colour, and most importantly they have to have the same size as the initial one which is drawn in this case by Sonila Marku.

On the first try of the second game you can clearly see that they broke quite a few rules while doing it. Many of the 'U' shapes are not even symmetrical and most of them have different sizes than the initial one. Some of the 'U' shapes even connect completely with the other ones and sometimes with the same colour as well.

On the second try i explain them the rules more thoroughly, and now that they follow the rules something more clear and in order is made, you can clearly tell that there is structure in this design,that four different people by following a few rules and communicating with each other were able to play the game and end up with something pleasing to the eye in the end, rather than the first one.Id like to call this a field of flowers.

This was done to show the difference on how this game ends up looking done by one person and being the creator as well. So what is clear to see is that the 'U' shape for one is more symmetrically done than the other two, you can see that there is more order but more or less is looks similar to the second try of the group where i helped.But to my eye the one i did looks a bit less creative than the one done by the group, probably because it only has one style, and only two different colours but that was the point of the entire project, the work of four compared to the work of one.

The rules of this exercise are to make a geometrical shape without using rulers or anything else, and the next shape simply has to be made from the initial one by using the entire side of that shape. But this exercise was not really intended to follow the rules but i wanted to see if this group of people could find loopholes and other ways to not break the rules but manipulate them so they can create something unexpected. And so we begin with the first try where i don't help at all and see what they come up with..

So as you can tell they simply follow the rules, they do experiment a little bit with size though the shapes are not very well made and some not even geometrical.

In this second try i explain and show to the group some of the loop holes that they can play around with which can make the work a bit more artistic in one kind of way. you can clearly see the difference between the two but the only problem is that after this a few rules were broken by one or two participants, which in this case were Dior Angjeli and Kristi Konomi. The one that played best with the new ideas was Stiv Imami which was no surprise for he clearly has a more clear idea of art.

In this case since i was the creator and probably the only person doing an art course i had a better idea on my head how i could manipulate the rules to my own need. But the problem of playing one of these games on your own is that there is no unexpected ending for you know and you are the only one who leads the way how you want it to.

So what i wanted to do with this Final Project was to gain a better understanding for Conditional Design for myself and to show it and represent it through these videos and pictures for other people as well. How this project was developed was through experimentation with the group of people and with the exercises that i myself created, three different ones but with different intentions and ideas to gain different point of views, other ways to look at it.
Starting with the first one, the first one was made with the intention to see on how each participant would fix each others work for they had to make the perfect square by drawing around the first one to give it a more geometrical shape.I wanted to see how they would cooperate with each other for i was expecting a bit of an awkward situation between the four for they had to sort of correct each others work in a way, after all this was the kind of cooperation that they had to do in this one, this is what makes this exercise special.
The second exercise was a bit more complex, having to draw the 'U' as symmetrical as possible and following the rules , which was clearly not done well at the first try and they were not cooperating very well for some were doing it right and some were not. At the second try i could clearly see more cooperation between the four, helping each other on where and how to do the next step, planning together to take the same steps so the image would take a better looking shape, more pleasing to the eye, and in the end , they decided to call it 'the field of flowers'.
The Last exercise was about geometric shapes, i preferred this last one most of all for they learned how to manipulate the rules and create something more artistic in one kind of way without breaking the rules. You could see them work together and figuring different ways to play around to work out something different which was not done before. They were exploring, putting their imagination to good use, which is what i was looking for in the first place.
As for the ones that were done by one person, by the creator, they were better done on the aspect that it followed the rules but, they were plain, you can tell from the video the direction that it is going through, thats the best part of the group work, that it was unexpected because four different personality based people were working on it.
i have to say that i enjoyed this project a lot for it was exactly like playing a game, and that was reason that i chose that kind of environment to do the work, to do something different for once in an environment where everybody is used to only doing chitchat and smoke and get a drink.
A lot what learned from this experimental work, information was achieved which is clear, and hopefully the way it is presented is just as good.
The end.
Ergi Mancellari