Through conversations we started to think about Drag as a somehow related to CSS, as an act of changing shapes through performativity and protocols.
Through conversations we started to think about Drag as a somehow related to CSS, as an act of changing shapes through performativity and protocols. It is about expression of the self, and there is some sort of declarativeness to it. Later the discussion unveiled another forum thread of Melonland stating: "Web design is fashion design ?? Your thoughts on self expression online?". This pictures CSS as having a transforming power: you start with one stage of styling (default user agent stylesheet, or already designed document), and through the writing of CSS you transform into something else.
Description of the activity
The activity done during the summercamp proposes to explore the materiality, performativity and declarativeness of the CSS web-styling language by means of responding to prompts related to the CSS web-standard by doing our hair, make-up and nails all together while writing CSS and discussing together.
Welcome to the Declarative Beauty Salon! In this booth, we explore in an open-ended way the syntactic materiality, performativity, and declarativeness of the CSS web-styling language. Upon arrival to your appointment, you are prompted with a question related to the CSS web-standard. With all materials available to you, computer at-hand and lips ready for gossip, we invite you to answer the prompts by doing your make-up, nails, hair and discussing with others. By all means, feel free to throw the CSS web-standard out the window as this is a space for experiment, de-standardization and play. It is encouraged to break all the "rules" and swim against the mono-cultural currents of the World Wide Web Consortium. Make-up, hair care, and CSS professionals will be on premises to support you. Don't forget to make an appointment!
small dedicated website: https://declarativebeautysalon.neocities.org/
Possible Prompts (i'd like to think more about the questions! so far here every questions look good though)
- What is your favourite CSS property? What does it look like as a nails? Makeup? A hairstyle?
- What and/or where is your home (page)?
- What website annoyed you recently?
- Handmade websites: what does it mean to handmake something?
- What is your stylesheet right now?
- Is web-design like fashion design?
- Where is the sky of a website?
- What are your default browser styles (when you don't want to make an effort or big statement)? When you don't feel you're expressing yourself in term of fashion, are you under useragentstylesheet?
- What is Normcore as fashion aesthetic? and what is default (zero-CSS) browser aesthetic? is it a style?
- What -core trend fits you most? Cottage-Core? Hardcore? Femcore? Eco-core? Normcore? Core-Core?
- How important are global consortium standards for accessibility? How much do they achieve?
- Does website can be a park?
...and so on, we are open to share other web-design gossips!
