Process
This project was based on researching and exploring chance methodologies and applying them to a piece of design activism using research collected in locations around Detroit determined by chance.
Initial Research
For the initial research each team was given a list of people who practice various chance methodologies, and several examples of design activism. We began by researching the chance methodologies of comedy club The Second City, TV writer Larry David, and designer Joshua Davis. We also researched the design activism work of Art Spiegelman, Project M, Vitaly Komar & Alex Melamid, Art Chantry, and Knickerbocker Design.
The Second City
The Second City opened its doors in Chicago in December of 1959.
Paul Sills, son of teacher Viola Spolin, founded the theater as a place where scenes and story were
created improvisationally, using techniques that grew out of the innovative techniques Spolin
developed and taught, later known as Theater Games, with Sills as its director. The cabaret theater,
comedy style of the Second City tended towards satire and commentary of current social norms and
political figures and events.
The Second City developed an entirely unique way of creating and performing comedy. The Second
City was experimental and unconventional in its approach to both theatre and comedy. At a time
when mother-in-law jokes were more the fashion, The Second City railed against the conformist
culture with scenes that spoke to a younger generation.
With the debut of NBC's Saturday Night Live, populated by Second City Alums John Belushi, Dan
Aykroyd and Gilda Radner, the theatre became internationally known for its ever increasing roster of
comedy superstars.
Today, The Second City continues to produce the premiere comic talent in the industry. From Mike
Myers to Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert to Tina Fey – The Second City imprint is felt across every
entertainment medium.
Larry David
David, who co-created "Seinfeld," returns to HBO Sunday with a unique comedy series that's meant
to track the daily minutes of his professional and dysfunctional personal lives in Los Angeles. Funny
and wickedly weird, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" has David playing himself improvisationally in front of
fluid hand-held cameras, as he did in his 1999 comedy special from which these 10 episodes are spun.
This cinema-verite style and chatty tone are perfectly suited for the material, for you have no sense
here of anyone acting.
A peril of improv comedy is that the im and prov aren't always in sync. Although that rarely happens
here, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" does at times belabor the black cloud that hovers over David's head
from start to finish. Mostly, though, this show is a gas.
Joshua Davis
Part illustration, part computer "controlled randomization" Joel Zimmerman aka deadmau5 and
Joshua Davis, a frequent collaborator of deadmau5, worked together to create a digital interpretation
of the world around deadmau5 that Joshua best describes as a "beautiful accident."
"In my work I derive huge satisfaction from creating discrete shape and color palettes and then
writing algorithms that assemble the pieces into randomized, whole compositions. Chance is not
always pretty, but it is fun. Take a walk, or rather design, in my shoes."
-Joshua Davis
Joshua Davis is an American web designer, author and artist in new media. He uses Macromedia Flash
and Processing as tools to generate art. He is the author of Flash to the Core and was featured in the
seminal book New Masters of Flash.
An illustrator and painter with a passion for technology, Davis' work showcased a rising genre of art.
Utilizing randomization in controlled environments, Davis developed a new perspective on visual
communication and creative expression.
His website, Praystation.com, which he would use to exhibit new design work and experiments, was
one of the first to offer open source Flash files.
Praystation.com was compiled into a CD-ROM called PrayStation Hardrive, which included source
files, photos and miscellaneous items that Joshua Davis worked on during that time. The disc included
a 32-page booklet and was packaged in a plastic casing modeled after the PlayStation 2.
Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman is a New-York-based American cartoonist, editor and comics advocate, best known for
his graphic novel Maus. He started working for the The New Yorker starting in 1992, where he made
several high-pro"le and sometimes controversial covers.
Spiegelman decided to work on a "very long comic book" about his father's experiences as a Holocaust
survivor. The book, Maus, took thirteen years to complete. It depicts Nazis as cats, Jews as mice, and
ethnic Poles as pigs. The book won a Pulitzer. It has come to be viewed as a pivotal work in comics,
responsible for bringing serious scholarly attention to the medium.
Beginning in the 1990s, the couple worked for The New Yorker, which Spiegelman left to work on In the
Shadow of No Towers (2004), about his reaction to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New
York.
Spiegelman is an advocate for greater comics literacy. As editor and as a teacher at the School of Visual
Arts in New York, Spiegelman has promoted greater understanding of comics, and mentored younger
cartoonists.
Spiegelman was quoted in the Apex Treasury of Underground Comics in 1974 saying, "As an art form
the comic strip is barely in its infancy. So am I. Maybe we'll grow up together."
Maus told the story of Spiegelman's father's experiences in the death camps in World War II. On 18
August 1982, Spiegelman's father died.
In the wake of the enormously popular Cabbage Patch Kids series of dolls, Spiegelman created the
popular card series Garbage Pail Kids in 1985.
Project M
John Bielenberg, Project M Founder.
In 2003, John created Project M, an immersive program designed to inspire and educate young
designers, writers, photographers, and "lmmakers by proving that their work—especially their
"wrongest" thinking—can have signi"cant impact on communities. Project M has developed projects in
Alabama, Baltimore, Connecticut, Costa Rica, Detroit, Germany, Ghana, Iceland, Maine, Minneapolis,
and New Orleans.
"Just as the mind connects the ocean and shark attacks, so "stay out of the ocean" comes to you, you
must push past this.
Think Wrong
"In the creative process, designers are victims of their own synaptic connections; subconsciously we're
following predictable pathways to solve problems [whereas] what you would want at the beginning of a
design challenge is as many possibilities as you could imagine. 'Thinking wrong' is really about breaking
those biases and synaptic pathways to generate a lot of potential solutions before you select and
execute one."
- John Bielenberg
Project M will encourage and provide techniques for, "thinking wrong" to generate new ideas and
design directions to challenge the status-quo.
Vitaly Komar & Alex Melamid
Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid are a duo of Russian-born American conceptual artists. The two began working together in Moscow in 1967 and continued working together for 36 years, splitting in 2003.
They created an art movement called "Sots Art" which is short for Socialist Art in 1972.
The duo was constantly pushing the boundaries and going against the current ideals in Russia and had many run-ins with the Soviet authorities.
In 1975 they did a project called "Ideal Document" where they made plexiglass replicas of Soviet documents.
Komar and Melamid moved to New York in 1978.
In 1979 they created a companies called "Komar and Melamid, Inc." This company was in the business of buying souls. They even bought Andy Warhol's soul. They then smuggled the "souls" into Russia and auctioned them off.
They describe themselves as "We are not just an artist, we are a movement."
In 1997 Komar and Melamid published a book called "Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art". The book used results collected by professional polling services to create the most wanted and least wanted paintings for various countries.
Art Chantry
Art Chantry was born in 1954 in Seattle. He is most well known for his graphic designs for punk rock posters and album covers. He stresses low-tech approaches to design.
He has turned down job offers from companies such as Nike and Coca-Cola because of his disagreements over corporate culture and political reasons.
Many of his punk rock posters were political and anti-establishment because that is what the music stood for.
Chantry has also created many works for non-profits and activism causes. In 1991 he did a poster for the peace movement called "Give Peace A Dance.
In 1993 he designed a poster for Seattle's department of health and social services advocating condom use in the gay community entitled "Penis Cop".
Knickerbocker Design
Knickerbocker Design is run by Nicholas Blechman, and illustrator, designer, and art director based in New York.
Created NOZONE, an underground political magazine in 1990. Blechman published, edited and designed 10 issues of NOZONE between 1990 and 2008.
The purpose of NOZONE is to bring awareness to political issues from a non-mainstream perspective and to create a commentary for discussion and change.
