We are a group of ICT Media Design students at the Fontys Hogeschool HBO-ICT. Here we follow the minor programme called Lifestyle. In this minor, we apply ICT to create new smart and innovative products for wellness, health and home applications. Each semester there is a central task in which we engage. This semester Fontys has a partnership with BALTAN Laboratories. The artists from BALTAN have given us a number of assignments from which we could choose. After brief research we have chosen the assignment by Maurer United Architects in which we have to explore the principles of “De Stijl” (Theo van Doesburg 1917). In this blog we describe the progress of our project and we explain our choices.

The assignment
“De Stijl” was a Dutch art movement which was founded in 1917 in Leiden. The most important members were Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, Vilmos Huszar, Bart van der Leck, Gerrit Rietveld and JJP Georges Vantongerloo Old. “De Stijl” is characterised by the use of primary colors combined with black, white and gray and straight lines. The members of “De Stijl” were searching for a pure representation of reality in order to create a universal style. The ideas were communicated via the similarly-named magazine “De Stijl”.
“De Stijl” has concentrated mainly on two-dimensional work (paintings and illustrations) and three-dimensional works (furniture and buildings). Nearly 100 years later we are in a different era, which is influenced by all sorts of media technologies. Is it possible to redesign “De Stijl” to fit our modern context?

 The assignment is to create a performance / installation / film with the theme “’De Stijl’ in three to four dimensions”.

Our interpretation of “De Stijl”
After deciding on the assignment we did some research on “De Stijl”. We wanted to create our own vision, and use that vision to form our project. The key elements that we thought formed “De Stijl” are: simplicity, universality, abstraction, reality.
 After many hours of thinking about things that really are universal for all human beings on this earth, we discovered that only the human form itself applies to that. We therefore wanted to use the human form in our project. It is possible to argue that people are very different and certainly not easy. But in a sense we are the same. This we want to emphasise with our concept, and later on the connection with simplicity and abstraction will become clear as well. (more…)