In flux

Caroline Robinson Smith

Abstract

To incite immersive design experiences requires a reciprocity between designer and participants, between designer and machine or between design structures and dynamic potentiality drawn from the properties of a particular space. Site-specificity locates my practice as I, the designer, must give away authorship to third parties, create interrelationships and avoid fixed processes of familiarity. With a commitment to openness and movement, my design practice is both improvisational and orchestrated without a singular underlying structure to bind it. An exchange is required for a project’s separate moving parts—those being a facilitator, creative participants or environment—to become attuned to each other’s positions and construct grounded footing. If the designer is mediating or facilitating this endeavor, it is not their role to predicate a direct path for the project but to aid its process by giving it gravitational pull. What denotes as gravity under this system, however, may shift as the project’s direction meanders, and a varying measure of structure is required to anchor it’s participants with a productive common ground to build upon as a group. The relationship of elements that permeate my design processes behaves more like a gradient than a hierarchy. Up close, each pixel of a gradient exists as its own individual color. While discrete, they are part of a larger system, becoming visible within a complex matrix of relations. From a distance, all the individual colors in a gradient are still apparent and visible but they still all relate to one another, living together in a state of fluidity, transition and response. These colors are separate from each other yet attuned and are defined in relationship to the other colors within their environment.