Minimalism

describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. As a specific movement in the arts it is identified with developments in post-World War II Western Art, most strongly with American visual arts in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with this movement include

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GQIvCrLOHQ

 

Donald Judd,

 

Agnes Martin,Robert Morris, and Frank Stella. It is rooted in the reductive aspects of Modernism, and is often interpreted as a reaction against Abstract expressionism and a bridge to Postmodern art practices. The terms have expanded to encompass a movement in music which features repetition and iteration, as in the compositions of Steve Reich, La Monte Young, Philip Glass, John Adams, and Terry Riley. (See also Postminimalism). The term "minimalist" is often applied colloquially to designate anything which is spare or stripped to its essentials. It has also been used to describe the plays and novels of Samuel Beckett, the films of Robert Bresson, the stories of Raymond Carver, and even the automobile designs of Colin Chapman.

 

Minimalist design

The reconstruction of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's German Pavilion in Barcelona The term minimalism is also used to describe a trend in design and architecture where in the subject is reduced to its necessary elements. Minimalist design has been highly influenced by Japanese traditional design and architecture. In addition, the work of De Stijl artists is a major source of reference for this kind of work. De Stijl expanded the ideas that could be expressed by using basic elements such as lines and planes organized in very particular manners.

Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe adopted the motto "Less is more" to describe his aesthetic tactic of arranging the numerous necessary components of a building to create an impression of extreme simplicity, by enlisting every element and detail to serve multiple visual and functional purposes (such as designing a floor to also serve as the radiator, or a massive fireplace to also house the bathroom).

Designer Buckminster Fuller adopted the engineer's goal of "Doing more with less", but his concerns were oriented towards technology and engineering rather than aesthetics. A similar sentiment was industrial designer Dieter Rams' motto, "Less but better" adapted from van der Rohe. The structure uses relatively simple elegant designs; ornamentations are quality rather than quantity. The structure's beauty is also determined by playing with lighting, using the basic geometric shapes as outlines, using only a single shape or a small number of like shapes for components for design unity, using tasteful non-fussy bright color combinations, usually natural textures and colors, and clean and fine finishes.

Using sometimes the beauty of natural patterns on stone cladding and real wood encapsulated within ordered simplified structures, and real metal producing a simplified but prestigious architecture and interior design. May use color brightness balance and contrast between surface colors to improve visual aesthetics. The structure would usually have industrial and space age style utilities (lamps, stoves, stairs, technology, etcetera), neat and straight components (like walls or stairs) that appear to be machined with machines, flat or nearly flat roofs, pleasing negative spaces, and large windows to let in lots of sunlight.

This and science fiction may have contributed to the late twentieth century futuristic architecture design, and modern home decor. Modern minimalist home architecture with its unnecessary internal walls removed may have led to the popularity of the open plan kitchen and living room style. Another modern master who exemplifies reductivist ideas is Luis Barragán.

In minimalism, the architectural designers pay special attention to the connection between perfect planes, elegant lighting, and careful consideration of the void spaces left by the removal of three-dimensional shapes from an architectural design. The more attractive looking minimalist home designs are not truly minimalist, because these use more expensive building materials and finishes, and are relatively larger. Contemporary architects working in this tradition include John Pawson, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Álvaro Siza Vieira, Tadao Ando, Alberto Campo Baeza, Yoshio Taniguchi, Peter Zumthor, Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Vincent Van Duysen, Claudio Silvestrin, Michael Gabellini, and Richard Gluckman.

 

Minimalism (Computing)

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the earliest generations of computers, programmers had to work with the confines of relatively expensive and limited resources. 16 Kilobytes of RAM was common, 64K was considered a vast amount and was the address limit of the 8-bit CPUs of the day. Storage capacities ranged from 88K floppy disks to (very expensive) 10 Megabyte hard drives. Personal computer memories have expanded by orders of magnitude over time, where system requirements remained the same for legacy software as it aged, making even the most elaborate, featureful programs of yesteryear seem minimalist in comparison with current software. Many of these programs are now considered abandonware.

Usage Developers may create user interfaces made to be as simple as possible by eliminating buttons and dialog boxes that may potentially confuse the user. Minimalism is sometimes used in its visual arts meaning, particularly in the industrial design of the hardware device or software theme. John Millar Carroll, in his book Minimalism Beyond the Nürnberg Funnel pointed out the use of minimalism resulting in little-or-no learning curve with the benefit of 'instant-use' devices such as video games, ATMs, and mall kiosks that don't require the user to read manuals. User Interface researchers have performed experiments suggesting that minimalism, as illustrated by the design principles of parsimony and transparency, bolsters efficiency and learnability. Minimalism is implicit in the Unix philosophy of "Do one thing and do it well."

 

Minimalism in technical communication

Minimalism in structured writing or topic-based authoring is based on the ideas of John Carroll. Like Robert E. Horn's work on Information Mapping, John Carroll's principles of Minimalism were based in part on cognitive studies and learning research at Harvard and Columbia University, by Jerome Bruner, Jerome Kagan, B.F. Skinner, George A. Miller, and others. Carroll argued that training materials should be constructed as short task-oriented chunks, not lengthy monolithic user manuals that explain everything in a long narrative fashion. He observed that modern users are often already familiar with much of what is described in the typical long manual. What they need is the information to solve the particular task at hand. They should be encouraged to do them with a minimum of systematic instruction. The historian of technical communication R. John Brockmann points out that task orientation had been enunciated as a principle a decade earlier at IBM by Fred Bethke and others in a report on IBM Publishing Guidelines.

Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is built on Carroll's theories of Minimalism and Horn's theories of Information Mapping. Minimalism is a large part of JoAnn Hackos' recent workshops and books on information development using structured writing and the DITA XML standard.

 

 

 

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