Subversive Opportunism

Essay/Contribution for ARCHITEKTŪROS [leidinių] FONDAS, Vilnius, Lithuania

SLIPPING THROUGH TEMPLATES. LIMITATION AS A TOOL OF CONTROL - A DESIGN OBSERVATION

Function over form: the template is a perfect tool to maintain the steady stream of capitalist information culture. By filling in the blanks of a predetermined layout, we are able to design and communicate fast—very fast. But although the template as an input device (1) feels quite natural to us, its character is yet to have been truly understood. When communication is restricted by pre-given limitations, is some of its force or substance lost? Is the template a space of values that ensure standards? Are the spheres of common understanding and public discussions quite defined by templates? How are our identities shaped by the templates we create?

This essay is a starting point for exploring the restrictions of contemporary information culture through the use of templates. Of course, it is easy to say that this attempt should also develop strategies of how to overcome instant-design set-ups by affirmative strategies. Is it possible to step over the constraints of our communication culture while speaking the same template-lingo? Or to design content in a manner that is blind and deaf to the limitations?

Topics:

- World of Templates
While Gilles Deleuze wrote “Postscript on the Societies of Control” (May 1990) Bill Gates was coding "Microsoft Office" (release: 19.11.1990). A comparison of ideologies.

- Control & Communication
Henri Lefebvre's argument about the capitalistic determination of spaces revisited: Society produces templates, and templates shape the society that produced them. Examples.

- Resistance
Ideas about the meme as political weapon (Richard Dawkins, Metahaven, Ethan Zuckerman, Hakim Bey, Olia Lialina) and the introduction of the Fitback term, taken from the Slippery Design essay.

- Human Templates
The "Humanize" effect moves notes off-beat, out of the grid (Easy Beat Software) The post-digital answer to this is Fiverr.com: A hired ghostwriter on the idea of templates...

Link to the essay

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