Ultravision It's rare that a new visual medium turns up out of the blue. We're so firmly entrenched in these days of techno-overkill that one disc/cd/plug-in seems pretty much like any other to the uninitiated. Enter the Chameleon: the latest advertising unit from a British manufacturer, SMF Displays. The technology is so simple, take one look at it and you'll think it's magic. Three complex images morph seamlessly into one another, but take a closer look and you'll see that it's all an illusion. I advocate preserving the mystery, so don't open the box.

Select a bunch of 2-D designers, with various aesthetic and ideological preferences, and offer them this new medium to play with. Issue a brief verging on the ambiguous, because we don't want 20 identical solutions, and remind the lucky participants that this is also an opportunity to advertise themselves to a world-wide public. The stage has been set, for Ultravision.

Of course, none of the designers actually had a unit to play with, although they did get a peek. Instead they were asked to explore this time-and process-based medium by way of their imaginations. Each designer was asked to produce three images to run in sequence, one being visible for four seconds and taking another four seconds to merge with the next. The process of converting the designers' contributions into artwork for the unit is done by SMF Displays, so the designers were asked to make something for a process-based medium, effectively, in the dark. Ironically, some created virtual/digital simulations of this analogue process by way of mini-movies made in Macromind Director on the Apple Macintosh, or, as Peter Miles from Fuel put it, '...we watched it on TV'.

With such a sight-unseen situation, there were no second chances. But designers are used to giving up their work to a process, and sitting tight for proofs or the final edit. Usually though, their knowledge of a medium, built up through trial and error, allows them to second guess the results; they know what's possible and probable. With Ultravision, it's back to school, and one big gamble. I suspect that Alex Rich had his tongue firmly in his check when he created what he describes as 'a new visual standard – RGB'. His solid sheets of red, green and blue, are intended to act as a 'test card' for the Chameleon. 'This is unknown and untested, so trust your technicians', is his advice. Likewise for me. Being asked to comment on a show before seeing the finished units in operation was like visiting a gallery blind-folded. So, I decided to level the playing field and instead of looking at the designers' artwork, which after all, isn't what you, the audience, are seeing, I asked the contributors to describe their work in words, i.e. to transform their images into yet another medium.

Funnily enough, certain themes and comments popped up again and again. What am I saying? Why wouldn't a group of people working in the same field, in a shared creative community, display similar attitudes, obsessions, fears and humour? That being the case, Ultravision represents an insight into the zeitgeist. Gulp. Listening to their descriptions I realised that I was hearing definitions, some very personal takes on some thorny old issues, like, what it means to be British or live in Britain at the extreme-tail-end of the twentieth-century. The concept of innovation, the mystery of technology, the changing visual language of graphic design and the pitfalls of self-promotion, they all cropped up. Integrity, violence, mass- destruction and toilet humour, also figured....

Angus Hyland of Pentagram certainly had something to say. 'Cool Britannia. Big deal,' said Hyland. Fair enough. And your reasons? 'I hate New Labour's forced rebranding of Britain. We're an inherently conservative society and that breeds the antithesis which is anarchy. In that situation innovation is a natural progression. He adds, '...maybe I'm a screaming reactionary.' With his liking for rebel rousers and urban- scapes (he's superimposed lyrics by The Kinks onto 'scuzzy' snapshots of west London), Hyland is definitely a small-c-conservative.

Peter Anderson of Interfield has taken an overtly political stance with his contribution; 'The British Council advertises Britain, so this is a perfect time to talk about Northern Ireland, which is a part of Britain.' To stem the tide of negativity, Anderson has collated dates of positive events from during his own life and the social and geographic history of his birth place. 'Numbers aren't literal like language,' he explains, '...they can trigger off multiple meanings, so these dates may be intensely personal to the viewer while also being specific to the history of Northern Ireland.' Anderson's act of 'drawing with numerical information' is therefore totally subjective, and needs no translation. Perfect for an exhibition which tours world-wide.

Britain, the British and the English language are all commented upon. There's Bump's dissolving Union Jack, Michael Horsham's altered red buses (from Malta) and Anthony Burrill's mock airport signage, which bellows loudly and with great authority, 'Sit down'.

Jonathan Barnbrook puts our national self-obsession into perspective, though, when he says, 'The British Council is providing designers with a chance to say something, and you won't find the same attitudes or approaches anywhere else in the cultural life of Britain. My contribution is about the end of the world. 'He goes on to explain that it's also an attempt at 'anti-advertising', and, consequently, a comment on American cultural and economic domination and European compliance. All in all, he rather neatly subverts the entire purpose of the Chameleon unit and the notion of a promotional exhibition (for starters he runs his text backwards). He can subvert precisely because he understands the mechanisms of advertising and promotion in the first place. Which is why designers are so well placed to hold a mirror up to society, and to criticise those mechanisms. Very clever.

But Barnbrook isn't the only designer subverting the visual codes of design and advertising. Ross Hunter, of Glasgow's Graven Images, presents a poster, the usual purpose of which is to be seen. But his poster is covered with a camouflage pattern constructed from the regions and islands of Scotland. This 'pattern of invisibility' is a comment on the 'fatigue' produced by 'energy expended in the democratic process' of striving for Scotland's parliamentary devolution from Britain.

Revealing the Chameleon unit for what it is i.e. a simple mechanical device and not a digital box of tricks, may be construed as negative advertising. But not by those who equate its low-tech 'clunkiness' with notions of invention and eccentricity, which, we're told, play a major part in the Great British psyche.

Recently, we've seen design's dependence on mega-processing power being challenged. Rejecting slick computer-generated effects in favour of a more down-to-earth, hand-made aesthetic seems to be the next big attitude in graphic design, so the simplicity of the Chameleon unit has hit a cord. Bump were overjoyed by the fact that their three images used only 36K of computer memory, about the same amount as this essay, but to animate them via computer, rather than with the Chameleon, would have used hundreds of times that amount. Perhaps this rejection of the need for excessive 'power' (which of course comes at a price) signifies a move towards a more democratic and humane working methodology in design.

Taking on the role of mad inventor, David Revell is using Ultravision as an opportunity to launch his own range of deeply-kitsch objects, some tableware and lighting which quote such uniquely British experiences as a greasy-cafe, cake doilies and municipal carpet gardening. 'It's not at all odd for a graphic designer to be making products,' he adds in justification,'after all, we have to be inventive and solve problems every day.

'Being inventive with the unit, i.e. playing with its formal constraints and advantages, has produced a 'how to manual' for exploiting the Chameleon which combines the language of print graphics with time-based media. You could make a three-frame movie, simulate optical illusions or utilise 'the merge' to create in-between images, creating six images rather than three.

Mike Heath and Rebecca Brown decided to, '...put faith in our theory and boldly go where no-one's gone before, ' by designing a sequence of partial images which only make sense 'on the merge', when two images are partially on show. Heath adds, '...this gizmo invites you to be wilfully eccentric!' Designers North decided to fight against the linearity of the unit with compositions of diagonal lines, while Simon Earith at Blue Source merges a photograph into line- and colour-illustration versions of the same image.

Using what are essentially static images to replicate movement or time-passing is another trick which the Chameleon can play. Miles Murray Sorrell Fuel divided each screen into quarters to show four scenarios photographed on the street. Miles describes the scenes as, '...quiet, simple moments extracted from London. The sequence shows very subtle movements. Because you only focus on one figure at a time it's difficult to perceive the movement, so you can't tell if the picture has changed.'Miles also commented that, '...light shining through a printed image is always very seductive.

'Se˜naid Mackay utilises that quality of light by presenting three photographs of the same space, a friend's bathroom, at different times of the day. I wasn't worried about the aesthetics of the image. It was a totally pragmatic choice. The bathroom had the best light and I just wanted to show the subtle changes during the day.

'After all that thoughtful subtlety, I've got to mention Multistorey's absurdist application of the Chameleon. Photographed behind a sheet of glass by their friends Barnaby and Scott, Harry and Rhonda of Multistorey appear to have literally crammed themselves inside the unit. Speech bubbles and a dollop of juvenile humour complete the caper. A piece of unashamed self-promotion? Yes, but it's totally sending up the idea of 'making an exhibition of yourself', and totally funny.

And there's more. Giving designers space to say something is an admirable exercise. That they've got something to say is obvious. That they say it in their own sweet way, not with well constructed verbal arguments, means that it's up to the viewer to decipher what is being presented. Designers do, after all, have a rare set of communication skills to employ, which most of the rest of us perceive to be as mysterious as the Chameleon unit itself, seen from a distance, of course. I'd suggest that designers are pushing the boundaries of creativity. 'Art is dead, long live design', is the rallying call I've heard from a few participants in Ultravision.

The key to design's significance as a creative practice is economic independence. Able to work commercially and simultaneously pursue their own personal projects, designers are redefining the terms 'artist' and 'artistic practice'. No more starving in a garrett. Working on a commercial buys you the time to work independently, so, there is no sell- out anymore, just a desire to combine 'my own work' with projects which put innovation before profit. As video-makers OS2 explain: 'If you're not having fun doing commercial work there's no point to any of it. We've turned down a number of briefs from major corporate clients who just wanted 'somethinglike your showreel', but they didn't know what. That sort of job would have turned out so stale, a complete disaster.' Aesthetically, the move towards low-tech, non-slick solutions perfectly complements the less worldly attitudes exhibited by these millennial designers.

I didn't set out to discuss all the contributions, space wouldn't allow. And although I've mentioned some exhibits which illustrate a few observations I've had, Ultravision extends way beyond my point of view. The idea is, after all, that you go and see for yourself.

For information on Ultravision contact Alison Moloney