in a creative profession, the fabled "happy accident" is an ideal way to stumble across something unexpectedly desirable. What if there were a way to create a design process which encourages these findings of controlled serendipity?
While by definition it is seems a paradox to control something that is otherwise unexpected, facilitating a design process that is open to mutations has terrific possibilities. It is important that any designer not work in a purely linear fashion, but is always going back and reworking past notions, as well as constantly exploring new ideas as they arrive, instead of continuing to blindly develop their original direction.
Our digital recycling project should prove how somewhat unexpected outcomes arrive in the design process when switching between media, and alternating between digital and analog. Often times when switching from the computer and going back to sketching or hand modeling, you are brought back into tune with textures and materialism. Textures are often glossed over on the computer screen, but being aware that the roughness of a certain paper or striations in a basswood model are really improving the character of the project is something that could be defined as controlled serendipity.
On the digital side, algorithms such as Galapogos are a recent development in design software, which is an "evolutionary solver" for formal design explorations. The software emulates evolutionary processes defined by user controlled fitness parameters, and cross breeds models over x-number of generations to eventually come to a 'genetically' determined ideal model. The algorithm intermittently introduces random mutations into the gene pool to allow for "happy accidents." While this sort of controlled serendipity definitely kills the romanticism of the "happy accident" found within a crumpled piece of paper, I'm sure it still has its applications to certain design processes.
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