Digital Klee - Pedagogical Sketchbook: An Inquiry Into The Future Of Form

Between 2017 and 2020, researchers in the fields of art, design, computer science, psychology, sociology, digital humanities and mathematics explored the historical publication of the artist Paul Klee, which appeared in 1925 at the Bauhaus. The research work led to the project being part of a logic of patrimonialisation and transmission of knowledge based on digital technologies.

Bringing together researchers and students in arts, design, sociology, computer science, cognition, epistemology, art history, the DKEP project is part of a logic of heritage and knowledge transmission based on digital technologies.

The DKEP project aims at the digital remediation of Pedagogical Sketchbook, a major work by Paul Klee published in 1925. In it, the artist presents his conception of art based on elementary plastic elements and relationships that he articulates in a series of creative exercises for Bauhaus students. The book examines the creative process in the making with the help of graphics that schematize plastic and sensory games of balance, graphic movements in their relationship to the body and to the physical laws that govern nature.

Remediated in the digital multimedia environment, the project aims to convey the current state of the artist's graphic education. Graphic exercises from the historical edition are replayed. It is neither about restoring nor transforming the existing edition, but rather about imagining as a graphic designer how to increase input and transmit content in both directions: sensory contributions from both the digital and paper edition. How can we replay and appropriate these exercises and find them topicality in a digital device associated with the book and its readers?
Between 2017 and 2020, DKEP is looking for possible links with the history of generative graphics and interaction design, designing collaborations between graphic designers and users to lead a reflection on the editorial design process of the project.