réflexion, changement, succession, au-delà, à côté, entre ou

MET
AMA
NIFE
STO
réflexion, changement, succession,
au-delà, à côté, entre
ou avec le manifeste.
✒

🕨
🎯
📣
🏆
🔦
⏳
METAMANIFESTO
réflexion, changement, succession, au-delà, à côté, entre ou avec le manifeste.
mémoire rédigé en 2013 par Mathieu Daudelin
Monotasking.
✒
Qu’est-ce qu’un manifeste ?
source
Manifeste, nom masculin.
définition
Déclaration écrite, publique et solennelle, qui expose les objectifs et les idées d’un
groupement ou d’une personnalité.
étymologie
1. Emprunt à l’italien manifesto, « manifeste ».
2. Aussi dérivable de l’adjectif manifeste ; du latin classique manifestus, « évident ».
Que l’on ne peut nier ; évident, certain.
04
Be curious.

Qu’est-ce qui constitue un manifeste ?
construction
prescription
Le manifeste se caractérise comme étant un acte prescriptif. Il a la forme rhétorique de la prescription, puisque qu’il se présente comme guide ou programme
menant à des actions. Cette construction est élaborée sous forme d’énoncé normatif formulant les valeurs, règles, modèles et dogme (opinion, conviction, point
de vue, idéologie) de leurs auteurs. Le manifeste est également performatif car il
représente l’énoncé qui constitue simultanément l’acte qu’il exprime.
communion
Le manifeste se voit aussi comme un acte de rassemblement dans la mesure où il
est l’expression écrite de ce que constitue un groupe. Il en est l’outil, l’instrument
permettant à un collectif d’exprimer leur vision.
composition
Ce type de document, sous forme de déclaration, est constitué d'un nombre
d'énoncés, formulés en une série numérotée, une liste à puces ou simplement de
phrases ou paragraphes ne suivant pas nécessairement de suite logique entre eux.
Selon cette approche, pourrait-on considérer que les dix commandements seraient
en quelque sorte le premier manifeste à avoir exister ?
indices
i, we, us, our, we have, we want, we think, we hope, we propose, we promote, we the
undersigned, …
05
Be fluid.
🕨
Quelles sont les formes de manifestes ?
typologies
En vue de rendre mémorable la représentation d'un tel dispositif littéraire, celui-ci
fait usage de méthodes permettant de présenter les intentions du ou des auteurs.
Ces méthodes se distinguent principalement sous deux typologies de manifestes :
··arguments rigoureux
··leurres poétiques
Dans le premier cas, il faut se demander si les signataires ont bel et bien appliquer les vertues de leurs propos ou encore s’ils ont considéré l’ensemble des
facteurs motivant leur initiative de façon abjective.
Le second cas provoque un questionnement similaire au niveau de l’application :
mettent-ils véritablement à profit leurs dictons ? Et de façon plus fondamentale,
croient-ils vraiment ce qu’ils disent ?
structures
Ces deux typologies permettant d'articuler les intentions à communiquer engendrent des conséquences structurelles et influencent la façon dont un manifeste
est contruit :
··aspect clos
··aspect ouvert
est-ce qu'un manifeste est une fin en soi ?
Une structure argumentaire rigoureuse présente généralement un ensemble
réaliste. Il laisse au lecteur l'impression d'un ouvrage achevé. Achevé, accompli,
terminé ; mené à terme — mais parfois temporel. Victime et dépendant de l'époque
dans lequel il fut rédigé.
La forme ouverte de l'assemblage poétique de leurres est quant à elle de nature
plutôt utopique. Donnant l'impression d'être plus libre, parfois même intentionnellement évasive, cette structure laisse davantage entrevoir un ouvrage
inachevé.
est-ce qu'un manifeste devrait être clos ou ouvert ?
Ce constat structurel se voit parfois inversé, c'est-à-dire qu'une typologie argumentaire rigoureuse n'implique pas forcément à tout coup une structure close et
vice versa. Les intentions et leurs conséquences faites par le ou les auteurs sont
issus d'actes réfléchis et orientés dans un ou des buts précis.
Ainsi, l'aspect clos d'un manifeste peut (pré)tendre à l'intemporalité si cet ouvrage
se voit renouvellé ou s'il est intentionnellement conçu pour être annexé, reformé
ou métamorphosé.
Mais que dire de la légitimité d'un ouvrage clos ou ouvert ? Comment statuer sur
la validité d'un manifeste achevé, arrêté dans le temps, propice à devenir désuet
et celui d'un manifeste inachevé, en constant changement, n'offrant pas de réelle
conclusion ?
06
🔍 selon un contexte donné, celuici peut être lecteur, observateur,
cible, public, etc.
Be responsive.
🎯
Pourquoi rédiger un manifeste ?
Pretexte
histoire
Au niveau de l'art, ce type de déclaration publique permettait à l'artiste ou au
mouvement artistique de faire valoir ses intentions, ses motifs et ses points de
vue. Ils sont donc brodés de manière à choquer les valeurs existantes afin de créer
un effet révolutionnaire.
est-il toujours envisageable de rédiger un manifeste à notre époque ?
Avant le début du vingtième siècle, le manifeste était presque exclusivement
une déclaration ayant un objectif politique. Les intensions des artistes adoptant
une déclaration étaient, par extension, une indication de l'emploi de l'art comme
outil politique. Les thèmes typiques sont pour leurs part reliés à des besoins de
révolution, de liberté et de supériorité ouvertement déclarés des manifestants sur
le statu quo.
07
Deliver it.
📣
Quels sont les moyens de diffusion ?
Propagation
De déclaration publique s'ensuit inévitablement diverses méthodes de diffusions.
Celle-ci peuvent être regroupées sous deux catégories principales : la publication
et la performance.
La publication étant un moyen de communication efficace pour atteindre le maximum de gens, l'impression des manifestes fut une solution couramment exploitée. Malgré qu'ils n'aient jamais vraiment cessés d'être publiés, la croissance des
types de diffusions et des nouveaux médias ont eut tendance à écarter de telles
déclarations.
L'avènement de l'internet a permis de faire ressurgir de telles formes de déclarations ce qui permet aujourd'hui à de nombreux manifestes d'atteindre un public
international.
publication = imprimé et web
performance = oral et installation
08
Focus.
🏆
Quel est le défi du manifeste ?
buts
··paradigme
··paradoxe
Un outil tel le manifeste permet à l'instigateur ou aux intigateurs de mettre en
lumière leurs propos à l'aide de deux éléments diamétralement opposés : le paradigme ou le paradoxe.
Lorsqu'une conception théorique ou artistique dominante a cours à une certaine
époque donnée, que ce mouvement symbolise un modèle de pensée distinct, le
manifeste constitue la matérialisation des objectifs, opinions, observations ou
toutes autres affirmations, d'un parti concerné.
le paradoxe engendre-t-il la paradigme ?
Il peut certainement le faire. Si le manifeste porteur d'un paradoxe se voit prendre
de l'importance et de la popularité, il peut tout à fait permettre au modèle de
pensée de devenir dominant. L'inverse est tout aussi valable et qui dit populaire
dit inévitablement impopulaire. Un modèle de pensée, et dans le cas présent un
manifeste, peut sans aucun doute provoquer un mouvement allant à l'encontre de
celui-ci.
Dans cette optique, une réaction en chaîne de ce type produit (génère) en quelque
sorte un mouvement circulaire perpétuel.
De façon plus symbolique, cette connotation de circularité, cette idée de mouvement, de continuité et d'éternel retour est non sans rappeller synonyme du
serpent Ourobouros, symbole des paradoxes. « Cette phrase est fausse » variante de
« Je mens » est un enchevêtrement indémaillable des causes et des conséquences.
le manifeste est-il donc éternel ?
🔦 Never write a manifesto.
→ page 00
Enjeux
··sociaux
··culturels
··économiques
··politiques
··technologiques
09
🔍 matérialisation descriptive,
argumentaire, littéraire, etc.
Clear is better
than clean.
🔦
Que fait ressortir la comparaison de plusieurs manifestes ?
Methodes
··déconstruction
··redondances
··répétitions
··renvois
··commentaires
Les dix commandements
Jésus
Du design graphique
Abraham Moles
Ten principles of good design
Dieter Rams
First things first manifesto (1964 & 2000)
collectif
Incomplete manifesto for growth
Bruce Mau
How to work better
Fischli & Weiss
Conditional design manifesto
Luna Maurer, Edo Paulus, Jonathan Puckey & Roel Wouters
10 rules for students, teachers, and life
Sister Corita Kent
10 commandments of teaching
Bertrand Russell
Dada manifesto
Hugo Ball
The stuckist manifesto
Billy Childish & Charles Thomson
A hacker manifesto
Loyd Blankenship
The manifesto
Michæl Betancourt
10
Never write a
manifesto.
⏳
Le manifeste est-il éternel ?
Duree
··nécessité
··longévité
··persistance
Éternel parce que sans cesse renouvellé ou contredit (par un autre manifeste par
exemple) mais non parce que porteur de vérité.
Sa nécessité se voit justifiée par la volonté de ou des auteurs de partager et faire
connaître leurs idées. C'est en partie pour cela que le manifeste peut se qualifier
d'outil politique et que sa présence, son utilité, peut tendre à persister au travers
de ce nouveau siècle où l'accès et le partage de l'information est omniprésent.
*
think physically ;
generate thoughts, opinions and ideas.
Si au final le metamanifesto avait au moins ce rôle, s'il arrive à provoquer réaction chez le lecteur — lui permettre d'affirmer, de nier, d'interroger ; d'avancer des
arguments en rapport à ceux présentés — la boucle serait bouclée.
11
Du design graphique
Abraham A. Moles
1
Le designer est un ingénieur environnementaliste. Ses champs d’action sont déterminés
par :
a
le ou les types d’aspects sensoriels qu’il privilégie  dans son action : vision, mobilité,
audition, manipulation, etc.
b
l’échelle à laquelle il regarde  les coquilles dans lesquelles l’homme est enfermé ;
coquille du geste, coquille du regard, coquille privée, zone du déplacement, etc.
2
Constructeur et intermédiaire du rapport de l’homme avec l’environnement artificiel, le
designer est un démiurge modeste. Il prend  en charge la trame de l’environnement de
chaque jour et la mesure de son action est la Qualité de Vie.
3
Le design graphique s’inscrit tantôt dans l’espace de circulation des êtres (design signalétique), tantôt dans l’espace spécifique mais universel de la page, élément quantifié de la
représentation des messages.
4
Le « designer graphique » est celui qui établit le modèle de présentation du message d’un
créateur à un spectateur, pour convoyer par ce modèle le maximum d’influence avec le
minimum de signes. Le cadre de la page imprimée est le champ d’action privilégié du
design graphique, mais, tout aussi bien, le volume de circulation de l’être, qui constitue
l’espace privilégié du « design signalétique ».
🏆 enjeu technologique 5
Dans la société de la copie multiple, le design des objets et des signes, se fait, ou se fera,
à l’ordinateur. La tâche du designer est désormais de programmer cet ordinateur : son
ouvrage n’est plus de Design d’un objet particulier, mais celui de la totalité de l’environnement à une échelle donnée.
6
La fonction du design signalétique est d’augmenter la lisibilité du monde. Le monde est
un labyrinthe qu’il faut débrouiller, un texte qu’il faut déchiffrer, un contexte qu’il faut
dominer, et que parcourt le regard de l’individu dans le déroulement de son projet de vie.
7
Penser c’est schématiser, et qui ne schématise pas ne pense pas. Le schéma est un modèle
simplifié et abstrait du réel ; le modèle est une réduction limitée du réel particulier, il est
différent de ce réel, mais il est essentiel à l’action sur celui-ci. Dans un monde complexe,
les modèles sont des outils de la pensée pour dominer la complexité.
8
La découverte de l’écrit et sa promotion par l’imprimé a proposé, puis imposé, une dominance abusive de la pensée en ligne sur la pensée en surface fournie par le simulacre,
l’image et le schéma. C’est le progrès technologique des modes de cristallisation de la
pensée sur la page qui met en cause la supériorité, de fait et de tradition, de la pensée
linéaire, et discursive, sur la pensée en surface synthétique et hiérarchisante, de l’image,
du schéma ou tableau.
9
L’image substitue la compréhension immédiate et hiérarchisée à l’explication linéaire et
logique, mais il peut y avoir autant de rigueur dans l’image que dans le texte : l’image
construit l’évidence avec autant de force que la séquence logique. Ces deux modes de pensée sont désormais à égalité
🔦 A égalité… aussi grand… ou plus grand ?
— People don't read anymore.
Steve Jobs
Le simulacre de la pensée en surface prend le dessus sur l'écrit. Et cette surface
est désormais incarnée par l'écran. Si l'événement le plus marquant du siècle
dernier fut la voiture – pour l'impact qu'elle eut sur l'homme et son environnement (naturel et périférique), sur la société, sur l'économie, etc. – l'événement qui
marquera le 21e siècle serait sans contredit l'écran. Son omniprésence modifiera
le mode de pensée de l'homme et influencera son évolution.
12
Il suffit de regarder de quelle manière le web dût s'adapter au fait que les gens ne
lisent plus pour comprendre quel impact cela peut avoir dans la vie de tous les
jours. Les recherches tendent à démontrer que le comportement des utilisateurs
du web, par exemple, n'est plus de lire une page web mais bien de scanner une
page web. L'accès à l'information est devenu à ce point efficace que si l'utilisateur
ne trouve pas ce qu'il cherche dans les première secondes, il ira regarder ailleurs
pour trouver. Le web design, au travers des avancées technologiques effrénées,
travaille à adapter le contenu informatif afin d'améliorer le potentiel d'efficacité
de présentation. Sous ce principe de scan, l'information est maintenant distribuée
par étapes croissantes partant de la plus petite (ou courte) information vers la
plus grande (ou développée). Il en va du choix de l'utilisateur de consulter ou pas
l'information complète et approfondie.
Cette réalité étant présente sur le web, peut-on affirmer qu'elle se retrouve aussi
ailleurs dans le quotidien ? Quel impact cela a sur le designer graphique et sur
son métier ?
et le problème du designer graphique est de saisir les règles
de la conviction par la pensée en surface pour les conjoindre avec celles de la pensée en
ligne.
10
Comprendre le monde, c’est être capable d’agir sur lui à partir de la force de l’intelligible.
L’image apporte désormais un mode d’action sur le monde quotidien de la technique
aussi grand
🔦 L'image l'emporte désormais sur le mode de l'écrit.
→ voir point précédent.
que le mode de l’écrit. Le designer a pour rôle d’en tirer les conséquences.
11
Dans leurs mécanismes psychologiques, il n’y a pas de distinction fondamentale entre
publicité et éducation : elles font l’une et l’autre usage d’une stratégie de conviction
pour convoyer soit par l’image, soit par l’écrit, (message scriptovisuel) des valeurs et des
comportements. Le processus éducatif du livre s’affranchit de la dictature de la pensée
linéaire au moment où l’ingénieur en communication peut, sans accroître le coût du
message, la conjuguer avec la pensée en surface que propose l’image et le schéma, aidés
par l’ordinateur.
12
Avec la montée de la complexité du monde artificiel dans l’environnement quotidien, un
domaine nouveau s’ouvre au design graphique : c’est le champ démesurément croissant
des instructions qui accompagneront les objets
🔦 Avec l’évolution technologique et le développement rapide d’appareils et outils
performants, l’accent devrait plutôt être mis sur l’intuition.
— the only intuitive interface is the
nipple ; everything else is learned.
Un aspect important du design se situe au niveau de l’interaction de l’objet – qu’elle soit physique ou virtuelle – avec l’usager. Au-devant de la complexité
artificielle de plus en plus présente dans l’environnement quotidien de l’être
humain devrait se trouver la compréhension des objets, leur transparence et leur
simplicité. Nul besoin d’un nouveau domaine orienté sur les instructions relatives
à un produit si la réflexion et la conception d’un objet s’orientent avec une communication et une intention claire et limpide. (cf. good design makes a product
understandable → page 00)
Le design doit être sensible au fait que l’information, l’utilisation ; la compréhension, est une donnée acquise et qu’elle ne représente pas un facteur primordial
dans la réalisation d’objet ou de design dits « simples » ou « intuitifs ».
pour assurer un usage et un maintien en
état de ceux-ci qui soit au niveau de leur rôles social, en l’absence des « services » que le
cadre social est désormais incapable de fournir.
→ Bulletin de Micropsychologie, no. 16, 1991
Autre référence inconnue
Date de rédaction inconnue
13
Ten principles of good design
Dieter Rams
Good design :
🏆 enjeu technologique Is innovative — The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But
innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never
be an end in itself.
Makes a product useful — A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes
the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract
from it.
🏆 enjeux sociaux & culturels Is aesthetic — The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because
products are used every day and have an effect on people and their well-being. Only wellexecuted objects can be beautiful.
🏆 enjeu culturel Makes a product understandable — It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can
make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user's intuition. At
best, it is self-explanatory.
🏆 enjeu social Is unobtrusive — Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative
objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to
leave room for the user's self-expression.
🏆 enjeux sociaux & culturels Is honest — It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it
really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be
kept.
🏆 enjeu culturel Is long-lasting — It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated.
Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years — even in today's throwaway society.
🏆 enjeux politiques, sociaux & economiques Is thorough down to the last detail — Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance.
🔦 contradiction → Bruce Mau « capture accidents » & « love your experiments »
and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the consumer.
Care
Is environmentally friendly — Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.
Is as little design as possible — Less, but better — because it concentrates on the essential
aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to
simplicity.
14
First Things First 1964
A manifesto
We, the undersigned,  are graphic designers, photographers and students who have
been brought up in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have
persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable means of
using our talents. We have  been bombarded with publications devoted to this belief,
applauding the work of those who have flogged their skill and imagination to sell such
things as: cat food, stomach powders, detergent, hair restorer, striped toothpaste, aftershave lotion, beforeshave lotion, slimming diets, fattening diets, deodorants, fizzy water,
cigarettes, roll-ons, pull-ons and slip-ons.
By far the greatest effort of those working in the advertising industry are wasted on
these trivial purposes, which contribute little or nothing to our national prosperity.
In common with an increasing numer of the general public, we have  reached a
saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than
sheer noise. We think  that there are other things more worth using our skill  and
experience on. There are signs for streets and buildings, books and periodicals, catalogues, instructional manuals, industrial photography, educational aids, films, television
features, scientific and industrial publications and all the other media through which we
promote  our trade  , our education  , our culture  and our greater awareness  of the world.
We do not advocate the abolition of high pressure consumer advertising: this is not
feasible. Nor do we want  to take any of the fun out of life. But we are  proposing
a reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication. We hope  that our society will tire of gimmick merchants, status salesmen and
hidden persuaders, and that the prior call on our skills will be for worthwhile purposes.
With this in mind we propose  to share our experience and opinions  , and to make
them available to colleagues, students and others who may be interested.
Ken Briggs
Robert Chapman
Anthony Clift
Ivan Dodd
Robin Fior
Ken Garland
Brian Grimbly
Gerald Jones
Sam Lambert
Caroline Rawlence
Geoffrey White
15
Ray Carpenter
Gerry Cinamon
Harriet Crowder
Germano Facetti
Anthony Froshaug
John Garner
Bernard Higton
Ivor Kamlish
Ian McLaren
William Slack
Edward Wright
First Things First Manifesto 2000
This manifesto was first published in 1999 in Emigre 51.
We, the undersigned,  are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators
who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising
have persistently been presented to us  as the most lucrative, effective and desirable
use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief ; the market
rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it.
Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog
biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles.
🔦 Il s'agit ici d'un point de vue parmi tant d’autres…
Seulement, est-ce que le métier de designer graphique repose uniquement sur
cette réalité ?
Commercial work has
always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large
measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design.
The profession’s time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are
inessential at best.
🔦 Qu’est-ce qui défini des choses essentielles ? Comment font-ils pour différentier
les choses qui sont essentielles des choses qui ne le sont pas ? Comment prétendre
une telle affirmation ?
Cela implique forcément qu’il y a pour eux des priorités beaucoup plus importantes. Mais comment juger ce qui est prioritaire ? Et surtout, prioritaire pour
qui ? Ils semblent affirmer au nom de tous ce qui est essentiel dans ce milieu alors
qu’ils utilisent la forme d’un manifeste (cf. communion → page 00) pour élaborer
leur opinion.
*
be honest ;
as a human and as a worker, for your sake
and the sake of others.
Many of us  have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development
are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with
commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think,
feel, respond and interact. To some extent we  are all helping draft a reductive and
immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.
There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills.
🔦 Assurément, puisque nous sommes des bâtisseurs d’outils.
— We shape out tools and thereafter are
tools shape us.
Curieusement, cette afirmation apparu la même année où fut diffusée la première
version de First Things First en 1964. Elle provient d’un livre (Understanding
media : the extensions of man) rédigé par Marshall McLuhan, philosophe, sociologue, théoricien de la communication ; un personnage immensément important
dans la sphère des études contemporaines sur les médias.
L’homme créer des outils, propose des solutions face aux choses qui l’entourent.
Ces outils façonnent son environnement et change le regard qu’il porte sur le
monde.
Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention  . Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns,
16
🔦 Qu’est-ce que veut dire « social marketing campains » ? N’est-ce pas justement ce
qui a trait à la publicité, au marketing et à l’identité de produit dont ils affirment
étant, au mieux, inessentiels ?
books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools,
television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects
urgently require our expertise  and help.
We propose  a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic
forms of communication – a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the
exploration and production of a new kind of meaning.
🔦 Mais quelle est exactement leur proposition ? Une nouvelle signification, mais
encore… ? Rien ne semble démontrer qu’ils ont fait usage de cet apparat dans leur
métier. Les propos doivent être compréhensibles au même titre que le design se
doit de l’être.
→ Dieter Rams « good design makes a product understandable »
*
clarify it ;
make your point understandable as you
should with your « profession ».
expand. Consumerism is running uncontested ;
The scope of debate is shrinking ; it must
🔦 Il s'agit plutôt de l’accès à l’information qui est incontestée. Le besoin de se
nourrir et de livrer de l’information est omniprésent. La communication repose à
présent sur cette réalité.
*
share it ;
freedom is in the message – find the best
way to express yourself about what is
important to you and say it.
it must be challenged by other perspective
expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design.
In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills  to be put to
worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message
has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew
Il est à ce moment légitime de se demander s'ils ont véritablement bien fait de
renouveller ce manifeste en regard au fait que rien ne semble avoir changé ni
dans leur travail, ni dans l'impact qu'à eu ce manifeste dans le milieu du design
graphique.
their manifesto in expectation that no
more decades will pass before it is taken to heart.
Jonathan Barnbrook
Hans Bockting
Sian Cook
William Drenttel
Vince Frost
Jessica Helfand
Tibor Kalman
Zuzana Licko
Armand Mevis
Lucienne Roberts
Teal Triggs
17
Nick Bell
Irma Boom
Linda van Deursen
Gert Dumbar
Ken Garland
Steven Heller
Jeffery Keedy
Ellen Lupton
J. Abbott Miller
Erik Spiekermann
Rudy VanderLans
Andrew Blauvelt
Max Bruinsma
Chris Dixon
Simon Esterson
Milton Glaser
Andrew Howard
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Katherine McCoy
Rick Poynor
Jan van Toorn
Bob Wilkinson
Incomplete Manifesto for Growth
Bruce Mau Design
Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to
you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience
events and the willingness to be changed by them.
Forget about good.
🔦 Si cela est ainsi, doit-on ne pas prendre en considération de manifeste de Dieter
Rams ? Est-ce que cela remet en question sa validité ?
→ Dieter Rams : Ten principles of good design
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree  on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our
research  . As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.
Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will  only ever go to where we’ve already
been. If process drives outcome
🔦 similitude → Conditional design « process »
to be there.
we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want
Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors.
🔦 contradiction → Dieter Rams « is thorough down to the last detail »
🔦 similitude → Fischli & Weiss « # 7 »
fun of failure every day.
Take the long view and allow yourself the
Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
Capture accidents.
The wrong answer
🔦 contradiction → Dieter Rams « is thorough down to the last detail »
is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong
answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
🔦 similitude → Fischli & Weiss « # 4 »
Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study.
Everyone will benefit.
Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His
advice: begin anywhere.
Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes
sense. Let anyone lead.
Harvest ideas.
Edit applications.
🔦 similitude → Abraham Moles « # 7 »
Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life.
Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas
to applications.
18
🏆 enjeu social Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success.
🔦 A défaut de se répéter, il souligne néanmoins ici une réalité du marché du
travail et par conséquent du milieu du design graphique, mais avant tout une
décevante réalité du système de l'éducation et ce, au niveau mondial.
— If you’re not prepared to be wrong,
you’ll never come up with anything
original.
— Very many people go through their
whole lives having no real sense of
what their talents may be, or if they
have any to speak of.
Qui de mieux pour l'expliquer que Sir Ken Robinson — auteur, conférencier,
conseiller international sur l'éducation dans le domaine des arts pour des organismes gouvernementaux, à buts non-lucratifs, éducatifs et artistiques — lors de
deux conférences, l'une en 2006 et l'autre en 2010, à propos du système éducatif
et de la créativité.
🔦 Scholl kills creativity
→ http://goo.gl/hius
🔦 Bring on the learning revolution
→ http://goo.gl/d2JZ
Resist it. Allow
failure
🔦 similitude → Fischli & Weiss « # 7 »
and migration to be part of your practice.
Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present
themselves.
Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine
learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
🏆 enjeu social Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas
of others.
Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and
you’re separated from the rest of the world.
Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work
on what it stands for.
Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work
you produce today will create your future.
Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
19
Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your
own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you.
And the view is so much better.
🏆 enjeu technologique Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.
Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room
for what he called our “noodle.”
Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking
demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
🏆 enjeu technologique Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually
some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able
to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between
“creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’
🏆 enjeu economique Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain
this discipline, and how many have failed.
🏆 enjeux sociaux & culturels Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and
complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold  their world onto our own. Neither
party will ever be the same.
🏆 enjeu culturel Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a
totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer
graphic–simulated environment.
Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think  it belongs to Andy Grove.
Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the
separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and
his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused
imitation is as a technique.
Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else… but not words.
Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
🏆 enjeu technologique Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t
find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment
made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
🏆 enjeu social Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend  it to, in the interstitial
20
spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a
science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties,
chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was
hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control
the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are
manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job  is to jump the fences and cross
the fields.
Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh  . Since I’ve become  aware of this, I use  it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing
ourselves.
Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely
novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory
is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes
us  aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is
new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth
itself.
🏆 enjeu social 21
Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t  be
free agents if we’re not free.
How to work better
Fischli & Weiss
1
Do one thing at a time
2
Know the problem
3
Learn to listen
4
Learn to ask questions
5
Distinguish sense from nonsense
6
Accept change as inevitable
7
Admit mistakes
8
Say it simple
9
Be calm
10
Smile
22
Conditional Design Manifesto
Luna Maurer, Edo Paulus,
Jonathan Puckey & Roel Wouters
A manifesto for artists and designers.
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
🔦 similitude → Fischli & Weiss « # 6 »
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.
🔦 similitude → Bruce Mau « process is more important than outcome »
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.
Logic
Logic is our tool  .
Logic is our method  for accentuating the ungraspable.
A clear and logical
🔦 similitude → Fischli & Weiss « # 5 »
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.
🔦 similitude → Dieter Rams « is thorough down to the last detail »
🔦 contradiction → Bruce Mau « drift » & « begin anywhere » + Fischli & Weiss « # 5 »
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.
23
Input should come from our external and complex environment: nature, society and its
human interactions.
10 Rules for Students, Teachers, and Life
Sister Corita Kent
Immaculate Heart College Art Department rules
Rule 1
Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.
Rule 2
General duties of a student: pull everything out of your teacher. Pull everything out of
your fellow students.
Rule 3
General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students.
Rule 4
Consider everything an experiment.
Rule 5
Be self disciplined. This means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow
them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self disciplined is to follow in a
better way.
Rule 6
Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail. There’s only make.
Rule 7
The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of
the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.
Rule 8
Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.
Rule 9
Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.
Rule 10
“We’re breaking all of the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that (?) By leaving plenty of room for x quantities.” —John cage
Helpful hints: Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often.
Save everything it might come in handy later. There should be new rules next week.
24
Dada Manifesto
Hugo Ball
Dada is a new tendency in art. One can tell this from the fact that until now nobody
knew anything about it, and tomorrow everyone in Zurich will be talking about it. Dada
comes from the dictionary. It is terribly simple. In French it means "hobby horse". In German it means "good-bye", "Get off my back", "Be seeing you sometime". In Romanian: "Yes,
indeed, you are right, that's it. But of course, yes, definitely, right". And so forth.
An International word. Just a word, and the word a movement. Very easy to understand. Quite terribly simple. To make of it an artistic tendency must mean that one is
anticipating complications. Dada psychology, dada Germany cum indigestion and fog
paroxysm, dada literature, dada bourgeoisie, and yourselves, honoured poets, who are
always writing with words but never writing the word itself, who are always writing
around the actual point. Dada world war without end, dada revolution without beginning, dada, you friends and also-poets, esteemed sirs, manufacturers, and evangelists.
Dada Tzara, dada Huelsenbeck, dada m'dada, dada m'dada dada mhm, dada dera dada,
dada Hue, dada Tza.
How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous?
By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till
one loses consciousness. How can one get rid of everything that smacks of journalism,
worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanised, enervated? By
saying dada. Dada is the world soul, dada is the pawnshop. Dada is the world's best
lily-milk soap. Dada Mr Rubiner, dada Mr Korrodi. Dada Mr Anastasius Lilienstein. In
plain language: the hospitality of the Swiss is something to be profoundly appreciated.
And in questions of aesthetics the key is quality.
I shall be reading poems that are meant to dispense with conventional language, no less,
and to have done with it. Dada Johann Fuchsgang Goethe. Dada Stendhal. Dada Dalai
Lama, Buddha, Bible, and Nietzsche. Dada m'dada. Dada mhm dada da. It's a question
of connections, and of loosening them up a bit to start with. I don't want words that
other people have invented. All the words are other people's inventions. I want my own
stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my
own. If this pulsation is seven yards long, I want words for it that are seven yards long.
Mr Schulz's words are only two and a half centimetres long.
It will serve to show how articulated language comes into being. I let the vowels fool
around. I let the vowels quite simply occur, as a cat meows . . . Words emerge, shoulders
of words, legs, arms, hands of words. Au, oi, uh. One shouldn't let too many words out. A
line of poetry is a chance to get rid of all the filth that clings to this accursed language,
as if put there by stockbrokers' hands, hands worn smooth by coins. I want the word
where it ends and begins. Dada is the heart of words.
Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find
it? Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The
word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence,
your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The
word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance.
→ Read at the first public by Dada soiree, Zurich, July 14, 1916.
25
The stuckists manifesto
Billy Childish & Charles Thomson
"Your paintings are stuck,
you are stuck!
Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!"
Tracey Emin
Against conceptualism, hedonism and the cult of the ego-artist.
1. Stuckism is the quest for authenticity. By removing the mask of cleverness and admitting where we are, the Stuckist allows him/herself uncensored expression.
2. Painting is the medium of self-discovery. It engages the person fully with a process of
action, emotion, thought and vision, revealing all of these with intimate and unforgiving
breadth and detail.
3. Stuckism proposes a model of art which is holistic. It is a meeting of the conscious
and unconscious, thought and emotion, spiritual and material, private and public.
Modernism is a school of fragmentation — one aspect of art is isolated and exaggerated
to detriment of the whole. This is a fundamental distortion of the human experience and
perpetrates an egocentric lie.
4. Artists who don’t paint aren’t artists.
5. Art that has to be in a gallery to be art isn’t art.
6. The Stuckist paints pictures because painting pictures is what matters.
7. The Stuckist is not mesmerised by the glittering prizes, but is wholeheartedly engaged
in the process of painting. Success to the Stuckist is to get out of bed in the morning and
paint.
8. It is the Stuckist’s duty to explore his/her neurosis and innocence through the making
of paintings and displaying them in public, thereby enriching society by giving shared
form to individual experience and an individual form to shared experience.
9. The Stuckist is not a career artist but rather an amateur (amare, Latin, to love) who
takes risks on the canvas rather than hiding behind ready-made objects (e.g. a dead
sheep). The amateur, far from being second to the professional, is at the forefront of
experimentation, unencumbered by the need to be seen as infallible. Leaps of human
endeavour are made by the intrepid individual, because he/she does not have to protect
their status. Unlike the professional, the Stuckist is not afraid to fail.
10. Painting is mysterious. It creates worlds within worlds, giving access to the unseen
psychological realities that we inhabit. The results are radically different from the
materials employed. An existing object (e.g. a dead sheep) blocks access to the inner world
and can only remain part of the physical world it inhabits, be it moorland or gallery.
Ready-made art is a polemic of materialism.
11. Post Modernism, in its adolescent attempt to ape the clever and witty in modern
art, has shown itself to be lost in a cul-de-sac of idiocy. What was once a searching
and provocative process (as Dadaism) has given way to trite cleverness for commercial
exploitation. The Stuckist calls for an art that is alive with all aspects of human experience; dares to communicate its ideas in primeval pigment; and possibly experiences itself
as not at all clever!
12. Against the jingoism of Brit Art and the ego-artist. Stuckism is an international
non-movement.
13. Stuckism is anti ‘ism’. Stuckism doesn’t become an ‘ism’ because Stuckism is not
Stuckism, it is stuck!
14. Brit Art, in being sponsored by Saachis, main stream conservatism and the Labour
government, makes a mockery of its claim to be subversive or avant-garde.
15. The ego-artist’s constant striving for public recognition results in a constant fear of
failure. The Stuckist risks failure wilfully and mindfully by daring to transmute his/her
ideas through the realms of painting. Whereas the ego-artist’s fear of failure inevitably brings about an underlying self-loathing, the failures that the Stuckist encounters
engage him/her in a deepening process which leads to the understanding of the futility
of all striving. The Stuckist doesn’t strive — which is to avoid who and where you are —
the Stuckist engages with the moment.
26
16. The Stuckist gives up the laborious task of playing games of novelty, shock and gimmick. The Stuckist neither looks backwards nor forwards but is engaged with the study
of the human condition. The Stuckists champion process over cleverness, realism over
abstraction, content over void, humour over wittiness and painting over smugness.
17. If it is the conceptualist’s wish to always be clever, then it is the Stuckist’s duty to
always be wrong.
18. The Stuckist is opposed to the sterility of the white wall gallery system and calls for
exhibitions to be held in homes and musty museums, with access to sofas, tables, chairs
and cups of tea. The surroundings in which art is experienced (rather than viewed)
should not be artificial and vacuous.
19. Crimes of education: instead of promoting the advancement of personal expression
through appropriate art processes and thereby enriching society, the art school system
has become a slick bureaucracy, whose primary motivation is financial. The Stuckists
call for an open policy of admission to all art schools based on the individual’s work
regardless of his/her academic record, or so-called lack of it.
We further call for the policy of entrapping rich and untalented students from at home
and abroad to be halted forthwith.
We also demand that all college buildings be available for adult education and recreational use of the indigenous population of the respective catchment area. If a school or
college is unable to offer benefits to the community it is guesting in, then it has no right
to be tolerated.
20. Stuckism embraces all that it denounces. We only denounce that which stops at the
starting point — Stuckism starts at the stopping point!
04.08.99
The following have been proposed to the Bureau of Inquiry for possible inclusion as
Honorary Stuckists:
Katsushika Hokusai
Utagawa Hiroshige
Vincent van Gogh
Edvard Munch
Karl Schmidt-Rotluff
Max Beckman
Kurt Schwitters
→ First published by The Hangman Bureau of Enquiry
11 Boundary Road, Chatham, Kent ME46TS
27
\/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/
+++The Mentor+++
Written on January 8, 1986
The following was written shortly after my arrest…
Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. “Teenager Arrested in Computer
Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering”…
Damn kids. They're all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look
behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces
shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am  a hacker, enter my world…
Mine is a world that begins with school… I'm smarter  than most of the other kids,
this crap they teach us  bores me  …
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.
I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened  to teachers explain for the fifteenth
time how to reduce a fraction. I understand  it. “No, Ms. Smith, I didn't  show my
work  . I did  it in my head…”
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.
I made  a discovery today. I found  a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does
what I want  it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed  it up. Not because
it doesn't like me  …
Or feels threatened by me…
Or thinks I'm a smart ass…
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here…
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.
And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through the phone line like
heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the dayto-day incompetencies is sought… a board is found.
“This is it… this is where I belong  …”
I know  everyone here… even if I've never  met them, never talked to them, may
never hear from them again… I know you all…
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike…
You bet your ass we're all  alike… we've been  spoon-fed baby food at school when
we hungered  for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed
and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that
had something to teach found us  willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water
in the desert.
This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud.
We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap
if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us  criminals. We explore  …
and you call us criminals. We seek  after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We
exist  without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us
criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to
make us  believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime  is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me  for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't
stop us all  … after all, we're all alike.
→ File: archives/7/p7_0x03_Hacker's Manifesto_by_The Mentor.txt
==Phrack Inc.==
Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3 of 10
28
The ______ manifesto
Michael Betancourt
Today, ______ itself is obsolete. In documenting art
on the basis of ______: we are human and true
for the sake of ______, ______, and
______. At the crossroads of the lights, alert,
attentively awaiting ______.
If you find it futile and don't want to waste your time on a
______ that means nothing, consider that here we
cast ______ on fertile ground. Here we have a right
to do some prospecting, for we have ______.
We are ghosts drunk on energy, we dig into ______.
We are a ______ as tropically abundant as
______, which is the art of making
______ established as ______ on a
canvas before our eyes, yet today the striving for
______ in a work of art seems ______
to art. Art is a ______ concept, exalted as
______, inexplicable as life, indefinable and
______. The work of art comes into being through
the ______ of the elements.
The medium is as ______ as the artist. Essential only
is the forming, and because the medium is ______,
any ______ whatsoever will ______.
______ is the name for such art.
______ stands for freedom. ______
changes meaning with the change in the insight of those who view
it. Every artist must be allowed to mold a picture out of
______. The ______ of natural
elements is ______ to a work of art. Instead, it is the
artist who ______ to produce ______,
in order to make a better art.
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→ written by Michael Betancourt, 1996
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