SI26

Declarations

A representation of the declarative layer of CSS that mediate our daily interaction with technology

Declarations is an ongoing trans-disciplinary artistic research project into the poetic materiality of the CSS web-standard and its echoes on design and artistic practices.

A presentation of the declarations research project, with quotes and some illustrations of how the research is looking at declarative web-languages. It is important to read the first and second part (what is CSS, and the research questions).

We will watch the video essay by Miriam Suzanne Why is CSS so weird as an starting point to untangle some questions of the research together.

So far what is CSS:

• if HTML is the structure of the house, CSS is interior design (paints, textiles, flooring, etc.), how we feel in a room? (laurel's pdf)
• as an interface, CSS is the infinitessimely thin shared boundary that mediate our relation with the web, that is very close to us, individuals, in the vaste ecosystem of the web, also called front-end. (doriane's scheme)
• as a declarative language, CSS is giving up control and designing in a device-agnostic manner for unknown canvases, similarly to a script for theater piece, that will always be re-interpeted in its context of execution (miriam video)

An evolving selection of declarations experiment, Doriane will present some of those progressively through the sessions.

Reader

A selection of references to go further.

Author	Title	Year
Nolwenn Maudet	Tactical Design	2023
J. R. CARPENTER	A Handmade Web	2015
Zach Mandeville	Basic HTML Competency Is the New Punk Folk Explosion!	2016
Laurel Schwulst	My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be?	2018
Femke Snelting	Dividing & Sharing	2008
Frank Chimero	The web's grain	2015
Olia Lialina	A Vernacular Web 1,2,3	2005, 207, 2010
John Allsopp	A Dao of Web Design	2000

Special issue: display and position

In the context this XPUB special issue, Declarations will focus on something quite specific. The idea is to take a weird angle on the learning of CSS: to be linguists at the same time than learning the language.

The special issue is structured in 3 chapters:

1. exploring the linguistic aspect of web-languages
2. investigating & documenting cultural uses of specific CSS properties
3. speculation as a tool to think about it differently

Two CSS property have been choosing in that regard: display and position. They are interesting because they show how CSS is a language, notably by the use of non-numeric value and keyword with meaning. They also both have been subject to many change in the standard: unfolding a whole cultural history of the web that lies in the words it uses.

By reading the standard it appears that this is a rather complex properties. For example for display we can ask ourselves:

• What does it mean for certain things to be block and other the be inline? what does it mean to be inline-block?
• How and why where table, flex and grid invented? Do we need more? What are the motivations and by who was it done?
• How are they implemented, what complexities or differences are often unseen in those processes?
• What does the words "block" and "line" means outside of CSS but through design history?

The subject of becoming CSS linguists will be introduced and expended in its dedicated page .

Chapt.1 Words are events, they do things, change things (Entering CSS linguistics)

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

Monday 6 January

morning:

• A presentation of the declarations research project, with quotes and some illustrations of how the research is looking at declarative web-languages. It is important to read the first and second part (what is CSS, and the research questions).
• We will watch the video essay by Miriam Suzanne Why is CSS so weird as an starting point to untangle some questions of the research together.

afternoon:

a first declarative warmup exercise Declarative companion.

Monday 13 January

morning:

• sharing moment about the Declarative companions made last time.
• presentation of the special issue.
• meeting: `display` and `position`, the two properties we are going to look at

afternoon:

• starting a media collection, to drop images of thing that echoes with the words: display, block, inline, flow, root, outer-inner, position, static, sticky, fixed, absolute, relative, inherit, initial.
• browsing exercice: go through website we know and try to pick up interesting example of all those uses, through the inspector and screenshoting

Monday 20 January

todo:

• to read for that day: Nolwenn maudet - tactical design translation

morning:

• introduction to browser extension, the tactical interest of browser extension, how do they work concretly

afternoon:

• **using CSS to reveal CSS, by styling element differently according to which property they are using**. making of the "lens" extension: when extension is activated it reveal in a graphical way the `display` and `position` properties on every website (ex: all element using `display: flex;` have a cyan outline, and we get information when hovering them)

Chapt.2 Every language has a grain (CSS Deep dive in ethymology & cultural usages)

from now on, we'll be dividing in two groups: one group focusing on `display` and `position`. groups will have moment to share back to the rest of the students their research progress.

Monday 27 January

No Class Meeting

Doriane in Berlin for a Declarations workshop