A group of thinkers and tool crafters imagine how to investigate the ambiguous materiality of CSS.
Declarations is an ongoing artistic research project into the poetic materiality of the CSS web-standard and its visual-political-cultural echoes on design-artistic practices and our daily lives. Declarations is a love letter to the crafts of designing with language.
A group of thinkers and tool crafters imagine how to investigate the ambiguous materiality of CSS.
Those sessions where done with: Doriane Timmermans, Einar Anderson, Gijs de Hei, Natalia Pageau, Ludi Loiseaux, Simon Browne, Vinciane Daheron
In the first phase of Declarations, a group of developpers (OSP relatives) are sollicitated for their expertise as crafters of tools and collaborative processes on research and design.
Tools shapes practices, practices shapes tools. practices.tools
— OSP, first used in the LGRU-reader.
Together we develop different companion tools or browser-extensions for exploring CSS poetic materiality and cultural dynamics. Those tools are formulated as companions tools, because they don't have a precise something to solve, they act as companions we can use in different situations. The idea of browser extension was inspired from the discovery of the text Design tactique by Nolwenn Maudet. In this text, she mentions tactical design as design approaches that takes for terrain things that are already designed (in this case websites), approaches that are based on another layer of design, either to be critical of it, or to counter it, or to study it.
She says about Tactical design that "it can only be deployed in answer of something pre-existing" and that "require the ability to seize opportunities". She reminds us that "In the early days of the Web, the CSS language didn't exist; graphic choices in content display were determined directly by the browser, in other words on the reader's side." and that "In the history of media, the web represents a radical transfer of power to the end user."
— Nolwenn Maudet, Design tactique.
Three initial research tracks came out of conversation sessions and early experiments. For each of those tracks a particular tool (browser extension or social protocol) was imagined and prototyped.
Scrap, how to document CSS usages, like a bag to collect objects during a walk? can we cut CSS from website like a scrapbook? can we collect and curate a library of designed elemen where the styles (CSS) are the content (What we read)? This lead to an extension and public server that document the can collect and curate the CSS on indivual object on website: buttons, searchbar, typography; in development stage.
Fiction, how could we rewrite CSS from below, as user-hacker on already made website, questionning our agency as individuals and collectivities on the web through story telling, commenting, critiquing, improving accessibilities, transforming websites into a poetic medium. we quickly realized that the challenge is more about the social aspect of forking from the mainstream web rather than about code and programming: it is a bit like a co-housing situation but on the web in the sense that reponsability are shared over a common space.
Language analysis, how to make visible the power dynamics behind the CSS declarations that it uses. tools that can situate/contextualize our browsing of the layers of CSS. Can we analyse the CSS used on website from a language point of vue: what selector are used the most, what can the classname reveal, can it tell about the context in which is was written (by a corporations or amateur, 10 years ago vs now), when where the property used on a page implemented in the standard? by who? This lead to an extension that inform you on the CSS words used on every website; in early development stage.
Additionnaly A guestbook was put in place where every artists or collaborators can sign. In the guestbook you don't sign by picking up what you write but by shaping the writing itlself through CSS. The same overly simple HTML structure become a playground of expression, a collections how of everyone write CSS differently, of our favorite properties of the languages, of our cultural situation, of expressions that matter to us.