The ANTIDESIGN

A conversation is a simple concept to grasp, but as applied to design it harder to define it's limitations. Design, like language, is just a medium through which we can communicate. Arguably, design is a language in itself. When we look at designs, there is already an assumption that there is supposed to be an audience or in some cases a client. This would be the design communicating it's piece, to the audience, to the client, but a conversation goes more than one way. What is the audience giving back to the design?


One of my favorite performance artists, Yoko Ono, portrays in a more obvious way the conversation between the audience and the artist in almost all of her groundbreaking pieces. In 'Cut Piece', she sat in her best clothes and invited the audience to come and cut pieces of clothing from her. In another famous gallery piece where she met her husband, John Lennon, she invited the audience to hammer a nail into the wall.

Artwork like these are inspirational, in that they cross the imaginary boundary between the artist and the world around them. It brings to mind the timeless question of whether the artist is still the artist when they aren't doing the actual creation. Ono's invitations have become classics, and have consistently been revisited over the years.

Another amazing piece that Yoko Ono shared was called 'Play it by Trust' and featured a game of chess played with all white pieces on an all white chessboard. At this point, her models are set up in galleries, but this game was intended to be played. Not only a conversation between artist and the world, these pieces make the audience converse with each other.