D e c l a r a t i o

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Cascading StyleSheet Declarations ?

Css is one of the three main language-material of webpage, together with HTML and sometimes Javascript. Laurel Schwulst explains it with the metaphor of a room made of HTML, CSS & JS.

CSS tells how information take forms on websites but not only: emails, documents, apps, desktop environment, eBooks, printed book; on devices like desktop computer, smartphone, but also smartwatche, video game console and eReader.
It declares how text flows, spaces are divided, typography is materialised and different planes are layered. It takes care of color, interaction, affordance, movement, sizing, spacing, depth, animation, responsiveness and (to some extent) accessibility. Every "sentences" of the CSS language is called a declaration.

Nowadays, with more and more technology using the web standard (social network, apps, OS, emails, etc), and as more and more of our life happens on a screen, we spend lots of time in digital spaces that are mediated or shaped through a layer of CSS. Design affects our lives and our narrations around technology, as well as aesthetics and cultures. And writing CSS - creating those spaces - has become part of the job of many people: developers, designers, publishers and a lot of (non-professionnal) amateurs.

CSS as a shift from gestures to words

The fact that CSS is text-based fundamentally differentiates it from other design paradigms that imposed themselves as the normative way to publish with software. In CSS, there is no fixed canvas onto which we visually compose, no tools we can select from a toolbar, no other files to import: we no longer place elements with gesture but with words. Declarations inspect a shift in design practices from mouvements to language, from actions to declarations. What does it means that most the our digital environements is made out of text?

As CSS is made of text, designing become writing. CSS has an ambivalence as a material and a language. What does it mean that the digital environements we live in are made out of words? The research focus on how the things we do on the web are untangled between linguistics/literature on one side and design/visual on the other. Webdesign is not only interfaces and coding and development but also about writing, ethymology, dialect, poetry, reading, syntax, performance, ... A design becomes as much about its visual implications rendered by the browser as it is about the text that declares it.

CSS as written architecture

So CSS is like interior design for the media we use, but it's also written since it's a programing language. Meaning that like Laurel says, when designing with CSS we are both author (of a stylesheet as text) and architect (of a website as a space).

"My favorite aspect of websites is their duality: they're both subject and object at once. In other words, a website creator becomes both author and architect simultaneously."

— Laurel Schwultz, My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be? (2018)

CSS as an articulation of form and content

A more classic portrayal of CSS is to put it in opposition with HMTL, where HTML become the content and CSS its presentation.

“But what are we supposed to separate exactly? From the meticulous documentation of the discussions that led to the development of CSS, it seems that not much time has been spent on discussing the choice of the word pairs 'substance' versus 'form', their later equivalent 'content' and 'style', or even more outrageous, 'meaning' and 'presentation'. The ease with which the various working groups are able to put such porous concepts to use as binary oppositions, is not surprising coming out of the bureaucratic culture of the W3C.”

— Femke Snelting, Dividing and Sharing (2008).

Web design is an articulation of form and content. The interplay between what is form and what is content escapes this division forced by what these languages claim to do. Can HTML be written to create form? is an idea that has been long explored in net art. Can we write CSS that is the content?, that is to say forms shaped out of words with meaning so strong in our perceptive realm that they articulate a new story about what is at stake on a page.

CSS as a shared boundary

Another representation is the one of the shared boundary.

In computing, an interface is a shared boundary across which two or more separate components of a computer system exchange information. The exchange can be between software, computer hardware, peripheral devices, humans, and combinations of these.

— Wikipedia, interface.

CSS as a shared boundary become this infinitessimely thin perception-oriented layer of shapes & interactions that is very close to us, individuals, in the vaste ecosystem of the web, also called front-end - the end of the web that is just in front, what we are (inter)-facing.

On one side we have: HTML, "content", backend, protocols, platforms, databases, servers, internet infrasctructures, ... On the other side: cursor, focus or select, urls and anchors, visual perception, auditive perception, interactionnal instinct, the space we currently are in (bed or office), cultural sense of aesthetic, ... In a way the front-end is the thing that is to closest to us human that mediate our relationship to nearly all what's behind, it is the point of contact and we get to say what i should be like.

A traveller puts his head under the edge of the firmament

In this beautiful text, Everest talk about ghost, going through walls, playing video games, and the inspector.

but on the cover was a print of the flammarion engraving, i faced to it me so i could see it from my bed, i still remember the caption; "A traveller puts his head under the edge of the firmament".

[...] as well as another kind of invisible wall, the view source, for all that i'd been grasping at the internal structure of the games i played, attempting to get under or around their surface, and access what was caught inside.

i had been stuck moving a body to do so- but view source- it was all there, like picking up the shell and seeing the hermit crab.

i could read it, i could see how it was put together, and most importantly, i could break it into pieces, and let myself in.

— Everest Pipkin, Soft Coruptor (2021)

What if designing a front-end was to build a breakable-firmanent that anyone can pass their head through?

CSS as a theather scrips

In her video, Miriam says that "designing for the web is inherently problematic". From the start of the internet, websites have been thought as something that could be accessed through a multiplicity of interfaces: on a desktop computer, on a phone, a smart watch, and devices from the past or yet to be imagined. Moreover than the obvious change in screen formats, they have different web-browsers, colors, fonts; and have to deal with constraints like available bandwidth, user customizations and alternative accessibility interface like screen readers. So how can we design for a space or context that will always be different?

And what he's (Tim Berner Lee) noticing here, is that if we're going to allow multiple devices with different graphic abilities to display the same web, then we have to give up control of fonts and colors and display properties. So right grom the beginning, there's a problem with design on the web. It's problematic to design in a way that's going to be device agnostic (for "a multitude of unknown canvases"). [...] that's why CSS is a declarative language. That means that rather than describing, as we might in JavaScript, the steps to take to recreate a specific outcome, I instead describe the intent of my outcome. What am I going for? What am I pushing towards? And I'm trying to give the browser as much meaningful information as possible, subtext and implications, ... CSS is more linguistical than logical. [...] As a playwrighter, this stands out to me as something that I do in another field. So, when I write a script, I know that the actors are going to say the line that I wrote, but when I write stage directions, I can say how I think the set should look and how I think the characters should look, but all of them are suggestions because they will be performed with different actors, in different stages, with different constraint and for a different audience. Like theater, CSS is contextual: we can make suggestion but we can't insist on the final design. And have to embrace the fluidity as a feature, rather than a limitation.

— Miriam Suzanne, Why Is CSS So Weird? (2020)

Declarativeness opens a new door because unlike imperative programming descriptive language allows for a fluidity of interpretations. We can use the plasticity of declarative linguistic, the fluidity of meaning behind words (like block flex grid static fixed), to adapt to its context of execution, addressing all the multiple canvases at once, knowing that we can't decide the final result with certainty.

CSS as edgeless surface of unknown proportions

Unlike the printed design industry, the web had to let go the idea of a fixed image and make fluidity part of its fundamental thinking. This change of level of control that designer are used too when doing print has caused so much confusion. We often learn than designing is about controlling every details to find balance. On the web, it's fundamental to unlearn that, as the more control you want to get, the more your design loose it's naturally fluid nature and become a fragile tower of exceptions.

CSS uses the flexibility of natural language to design for both devices from the past or yet to be imagined: CSS suggest how things should be, but is always ready to "break gracefully" depending on the specificity of the context that is performing it. To webdesign is actually to use the malleability and ambiguity of language to dialogue with a multitude of technology at once. We are suggesting fluid forms taking advantage of the multiplicity of performing context.

I believe every material has a grain, including the web. But this assumption flies in the face of our expectations for technology. Too often, the internet is cast as a wide-open, infinitely malleable material.

[...] The painting, to me, is like designing for the printed page. Hockney's assemblage more closely resembles designing for a screen. Do you see it? It is control versus discovery, uniformity versus multiplicity.

With the painting, we have fixed, uniform edges that can be planned for with a high degree of certainty and control. We revere and celebrate this painting because of that exquisite control.

With the joiner, we have a different kind of beauty. It is an edgeless surface of unknown proportions, comprised of small, individual, and variable elements from multiple vantages assembled into a readable whole that documents a moment.

— Frank Chimero, The Web's Grain (2015)

CSS as a folkloric craft

The research decides to focus on CSS from an observation: seeing an ensemble of spread, alternative gestures that revolve around CSS, in ways that deviate from the standardized web and design industry, and where its role seems to escape from a purely technical position. Those diagonal CSS-based practices gather internet artists, alternative designers, hacking developers, and makers of handmade websites.

I fell in love with folk and punk for the same reason -- they showed cool things people do, and had been doing for a while, and then gave clear instructions on how I could do them too. [...] if you want to tell people about your favorite bands and find other music fans, then you might make a zine. And in the act of making zines, you were led to learn about traditional printing, type design, layout techniques, and more. [...] How does something become a folk tradition? [...] I want our personalities to come through not just in the words or links we share, but in the URLS we use and the code we write.

— Zach Mandeville, Basic HTML Competency Is the New Punk Folk Explosion!

I love how in this quote by Zach there is a relationship between the rigidity of standardized tools (like the xerox machine), and punk culture, instead of being anti-nomics they depend on each other. Folk/Punk could be about in fact, the re-appropriation of a standard into something else, something that isn't said in the manual but alive through people's usages.

"In today's highly commercialized web of multinational corporations, proprietary applications, read-only devices, search algorithms, Content Management Systems, WYSIWYG editors, and digital publishers it becomes an increasingly radical act to hand-code and self-publish experimental web art and writing projects."

— J.R. Carpenter, A Handmade Web (2015)

CSS as a Standard

The edges of CSS as a language are blurry. CSS is a standard maintained by the W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium). History -- notably the "the browser wars" - showed that there are divergences about which logic should dictate its evolution. Preferences of default styling, properties considered superfluous and thus removed, or unofficial ones forced in the standard. Knowing whether it makes sense to use a properties has became its own science, culminating in the well-named website Can I use. As with every standard, it would be naive to ignore the power dynamics that are at play here.

• What are the power dynamics, as well cultural positioning, at play in the CSS standard? Who are the actors of this political ecosystem and what are their motivations?
• How to learn from the historical divergences of opinions on the CSS standard, and to see how artistic gestures could enter in dialogue with its evolution.

Tactical design

Now, in the era of instagram, twitter and tiktok platforms are homogenised and customisation are blocked off by corporations in place of their smooth brand identity. It's no longuer your "corner of the cyberspace" that you decorate like your room, but a service you use: an app. Even if you want to make your own website, design systems has been solved for you by experts: use squarespace or wix. They relie on similar hegemonist framework that inevitably produces seamless normative interfaces sold as design optimisation. The buying proposition of Figma by Adobe for the unthinkable sum of 20 billion dollars is only a hint at how owning the means of webstandards is a source of power. Technical decisions lead to cultural impact, we can only imagine how the choices of what words makes it to the CSS standard could have redefined our attention and perception, even outside of the space of the screen.

User-customisation for web pages used to be part of collective spaces on the web (geocities, myspace, tumblr and handmade webpages and webrings) and is now homogenised and blocked off by corporations in the era of instagram, twitter and tiktok. An interesting approach persists: browser extensions that insert themselves in between the imposed design and its reception, allowing live modifications. But what does it say on a politcal level to fork from the mainstream usages, creating our own alternative bubble?

A historical example of CSS storytelling through writing is CSS-Zen garden. “Hundreds of designers have made their mark -- and sometimes their reputations -- by creating Zen Garden layouts, and tens of thousands all over the world have learned to love CSS because of it.” Later came initiatives such as Stylus, a browser extension that lets you add CSS to the web page you choose. Similar to CSS-zen garden, but the alterations are only visible to the user. On userstyles.world, you can download hundreds of alternative stylesheets for a large number of mainstream websites. Each of these styles are personal fictions of a web that exists only for oneself (and a few friends).

Nolwenn Maudet talk about tactical design as design that “can only be deployed in the face of something existing” and that “requires the ability to seize the opportunity”. Browser-extensions are tactical in essence, they make uses of the open nature of the web to reclaim agency over its design. In order to be tactical we need to be curious and analyze properly the terrain, as it was made by someone else. She gives examples of parasite softwares that resist to specific oppressif systems on the web: turkopticon, consent-o-matic, amazon killer, add blocker, unhook, demetricator.

[Tactical design is design that] can only be deployed in the face of something existing [and that] requires the ability to seize the opportunity. [...] If we cannot compete on equal terms with platforms that exist in the digital world, then trickery and tactic become all the more tempting modes of action [...] All the more so as designers are generally far removed from the decision-making circles that can have a direct effect on these platforms, in the technology companies themselves or in the regulatory bodies"

— Nolwenn Maudet, Tactical Design (2023)

CSS as a descriptive and prescriptive language

if we look at CSS not as "coding", as "design" or a a "tool" but as a language: meaning a language that evolve through practice, a language that people speaks in usage with more or less respect to the actual dictionnary and grammer.

"Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it."

— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

Declarations want to dive into what could be Declarative art, a form of digital artistic practices of its own that (could) already exists in the margins, distinctively from Algorithmic art. But also outside of digital art: what else is declarative? make-up, performance scripting?

• is there CSS dialect and how have they influenced the evolution of the language?
• is our usage redefining the standard, very slowly, even though we aren't part of the regulating bodies?
• How designing with language has changed design practices?
• Similarly to the choice of words we decide to use to tell a story, how can declarative design speak about our intentions, and encodes narrations into the things we make?
• How is declarativeness used to dialogue with other technology than the web
• How do we make uses of declarativeness in our daily lives
• Outside of web-language specific context, is there something such as Declarative art/practices. How can we think about declarativeness?