3D Interface Inspired by Constructivist Art Principles

Concepts of form and space from the realm of art have in the past provided inspiration for designers seeking to explore new models for interface design. This paper is a conceptual evaluation that investigates issues encountered when the Constructivist art of Laslar Lissitzky, and his series of “Proun” paintings, are used to inspire and inform design decisions for a web browser history interface. Apart from producing some interesting interface features, this study illustrates the interesting relationship art has to interface and why some interfaces are more artistically appealing than others. This paper is part of a larger study that will result in a fully working web browser history interface. The “Proun” series of paintings by Lissitzky in the 1920s have provided inspiration for many students of spatial form preceding the development of modernism. The pure abstract forms of Suprematism and De Stijl were rebuilt on the canvas in accordance to personal visions that were forming the Constructivist theories of the time. In a manner similar to that of Cubism, familiar shapes were re-combined to form unfamiliar constructions. The compositions of these Proun paintings were quite distinctive in the way that space, form and motion were used. The paintings were only two dimensional but invoked a strong sense of three dimensional (3D) composition and movement. When one looks at a Proun painting, one could easily envisage the composition as some sort of modern day, computer rendered interactive structure. This was the perception that provided this study’s departure point. In order to provide a vehicle in which to test these design approaches, web history representation has been chosen. This choice allows the researcher to limit the amount of data to work with, as dealing with large amounts of data at this stage will impede progress, without helping to solve the central design criteria. Web history data also offers some unique visual representation ideally suited to this study. The art of Laslar Lissitzky, in particular the “Proun” series, provide an exciting model to apply to an interface, and present several some interesting questions. • Can an environment based on abstract shapes provide successful cognitive mapping and orientation? • Can abstract shapes maintain their cognitive associations as navigational and functional items? • Do abstract shapes have any advantages over real-world literal metaphors? To realise the significance of these questions, it is relevant to examine key aspects of Lissitzky’s art and theory. Laslar Lissitzky’s Art & Space El Lissitzky was a pivotal Russian artist working in the 1920s. With a series of paintings he called “Prouns”, he formed a bridge between the art and theory of the Suprematists, to that of the Constructivists. The term Proun is a Russian acronym for “Project for the Affirmation of the New”. His works and writings provide an opportunity to reexamine some of the principles about three dimensional space on a two dimensional (2D) surface. Lissitzky created the Proun as an “interchange station between painting and architecture”. He saw himself not so much as painting, but rather as constructing. “I have treated canvas and wooden board as a building site, which placed the fewest restrictions on my contructional ideas. ” (Lissitzky-Küppers, 1980). Lissitzky’s Prouns and his associated theory makes a significant contribution to how we see space and form within a 2D canvas. Lissitzky created self contained environments, that were both artistic and architectural, freely playing with perspective and projection, while still communicating form, scale, depth, and an impression of deliberate construction. His awareness of 3D spatial interaction is evidenced by such comments as: “We saw that the surface of the Proun ceases to be a picture and turns into a structure round which we must circle, looking at it from all sides, peering down from above, investigating from below . Circling round it, we screw ourselves into the space . we stand between them and push them apart. ”. Lissitzky, professionally trained as an engineer, then an architect, consciously manipulates the architectural laws and concepts of environment. He skilfully uses many compositional techniques to invoke the sense of structures in space: perspective and orthographic projections, overlapping shapes, angled planes, sweeping curves, directional lines, and the careful alignment, or non-alignment, of strategically placed shapes. Baljeu (1966) describes Proun elements as: “They free themselves, so to speak, from the surface on which they are painted, in two directions: forwards out of the picture and backwards into the picture” and “invalidates the idea that the picture must have a vertical axis. the impression that a Proun constellation is weightless. ” Redefining object representation Using the geometric tools from Supremetism, Lissitzky applied his architectural training and personal theories to give new meanings, and consequently, new functions to the shapes in his paintings. Once the painting space is explored, the functions are revealed. Some objects indicate scale, some give stability, others are visual anchors or directional indicators, leading the eye from one point to another. Athough some of his works revealed their realworld origins with such titles as “Town” and “Bridge”, other paintings paid no such reference to the physical world. Instead, Lissitzky saw the environment as being created within the picture frame, and existing within its own right and within its own rules. “Proun is the creation of form (control of space) by means of the economic construction of material to which new value is assigned. ” (Lissitzky-Küppers, 1980). Lissitzky saw the elements of his paintings as “signs”. “A sign is a form through which we express phenomena”(Lissitzky-Küppers, 1980). He describes two types of sign: the first uses meanings that are agreed upon by all, as in the symbols used in a map. “. with these signs we have expressed what was already there in the world, what had already been built. ” The second form of sign, however, is more complex. “A sign is designed, much later it is given its name, and later still its meaning becomes clear. ” As the viewer learns the visual language, so they will understand the work. At the time this was an innovative concept. Lissitzky was asking the viewer to read spatial meaning to these otherwise abstract shapes. “Space until now has been projected on to a surface by a conditional system of planes (i.e. perspective). We began to move on the surface of the plane towards an unconditional distance. We multiplied the axes of projection in this rotation, we moved between them and separated them. ” (LissitzkyKüppers, 1980). Lissitzky refers to the basic geometric building blocks, from which everything is constructed as “Plastic Elements”. His descriptions for these shapes includes how the depiction of them alters their representation. A cube viewed faceon is a square, whereas when viewed from an angle, it is a six-sided cube, of 3 dimensions, hanging in space, and dynamic. Lissitzky aligned much of his spatial theory to that of science. In this, he believed that modern art had reached a comparable state to that of science. “Every form is the frozen instantaneous picture of a process. Thus a work is a stopping-place on the road of becoming and not the fixed goal. We acknowledge works which contain a system within themselves, a system which has not been evolved before the work started but has evolved in the course of it. ” (Lissitzky-Küppers 1980). In this way, Lissitzky shows how his spatial thinking process can be seen as one of a designer, rather than an artist. He describes what is effectively a design process, using fundamental building blocks in order to solve the essential criteria, and over time solving the larger design problem. Computer Data visualisation and Prouns The associations Lissitzky presents between environment, viewer perception and interaction can be seen as synonymous with similar issues of virtual environment interaction. Lissitzky’s work demonstrates that environmental controllers such as landmarks and direction indicators need not be representative of real-world known objects, rather, they can be defined within the environment itself. This could imply that a virtual environment constructed of abstract objects may be as successfully navigable as one constructed from worldly objects. Furthermore, Lissitzky suggests that the interface learning stage can be stimulating and rewarding, and does not necessarily need to follow expected paradigms. Lissitzky also suggests alternative pathways through a virtual environment; his roads through his virtual towns are not always straight, they may be curved, spiralled or angled. Other studies – Visual Representation & Spatial Memory The Data Mountain project by Robertson et al (1998) placed 2D thumbnail imagery onto a 3D perspective plane, in an attempt to leverage extra functionality for storage and retrieval from a browser’s favourites list. The project was intended to establish whether 3D spatial cognition worked the same way in a 3D virtual environments as it does in the real world. Users were able to place documents at arbitrary positions on an inclined plane in a 3D virtual desktop virtual using a simple 2D interaction technique. Their results showed that the Data Mountain had “statistically reliable advantages” (Czerwinski et al 1999) over the standard folder-list favourites mechanism used by mainstream Web browsers . It was also confirmed that thumbnail images, mouse-over text and spatial location memory each played a significant role. Data Mountain also described several interesting observations from a user satisfaction point of view, that are directly related to the 3D plane metaphor. Their uses reported a favourable reaction to the informal, manual method of arranging files spatially, in their own personal manner. The users als