The world of compulsive hoarders

In 1947, Homer and Langley Collyer were found dead inside their New York City mansion, buried under more than 100 tons of junk. As a result, the term "Collyer Brothers" is now widely used to denote compulsive hoarding. This essay investigates the oft-made claim that Homer Collyer was a maritime lawyer and discovers he actually was a property lawyer.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5396/is_200710/ai_n21299538/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1

The documentary interviewed a British man who liked to hoard rubbish. He would go out at night, collect rubbish he was interested in from dustbins. He would also keep his own excrement. This would become a health issue, as he kept some in his kitchen. This was packaged in bottles and bags, one of the health inspectors commented on how he believes the hoarder cared about it considering the way he packaged the stuff.

Whats the difference between a collector and a hoarder?
Collector; has a motive, stores the stuff in an organised manner.
Hoarder; obsessed, extreme, not necessarily happy and proud.

When hoarding its a nightmare to find anything. I want to make a drawer where you can never find anything in the drawer, this often happens when your in a hurry.

For hoarders "things replace people".

task

What i want to achieve from this year?

What skills i would like to acquire?

What I would like to have created by end of year?

List some rules

Second mentor session

Objects
-how do you order them
-each form of personal ordering varies from person to person
-different forms of ordering, different properties to order in several ways

Who will the end user be?

Behaviours
OCD, autism, different behaviours.
Procratination

different types of objects

Some kind of object designed for someone by end of term.

Clarify why there are objects in order.
Photograph peoples rooms and annotate it.
Why do people feel they need to categorize anything?

Take an area specifically such as books. Move away from ordering.

Become more flexible in the way you think. Reverse ideas.
Relationships with objects and behaviours. Peoples behaviours around objects.

Brain storm
-Objects
-space
-

Sean Hall

Meanings
-How we create order and disorder
-Taxonomies

Order out of nothing

500 gnomes- abnormal- catches the eye
1 gnome - normal not interesting

A new species- where to categorize them

Order things in kinds- haircuts

Look into- types, kinds, categories.

The way in which we perform ordering on the world.

Disorder- when we can't see a link.

Bottom drawer is in order as it belongs to someone?

How does design come out of it?

I like design for items that catch attention and seem clever.

Putting disorder within order.

E.g. Every garden gnome is the same colour except one, which catches your attention.

Create a pattern, have it observed with disorder.
E.g a chair with a plastic leg is unusual.
-How little elements of disorder on an item grabs attention.
-the unexpected
-not point of order that makes it interesting
Create orderly things and implement disorder on it.
Fooled by order?

Sameness of look

Put images together order and disorder. Throw a spanner in the works.

Look at images repeated in google.

things to do

book- list

Peter Marigold
-islamic patterns
-honey bees
-google storage systems

Matt
-preface of the order of things

Rosario
- book

Modelling week Monday

words

-where disorganisation happens
-sameness
-doesn't want to be thrown away
-trapped
-regulation
-storage systems
-private space
-Behaviours
-Anti design
-stuff
-the mind
-peoples behaviours around objects
-archiving


Peter Marigold tutorial:

Items falling down back of drawer, imagining what object is holding the drawer back from closing properly.

Ways of regulating mess.

Private space;
-Someones mind
-revealing someones behaviour

-Google storage systems

Geometry
-Islamic patterns- building imperfection in designs
-Honey bees- if a bee lets a shape of honey go wrong the bee is killed.

Modelling week Peter Marigold

Peter Marigold;

rejection of ostentatious and wasteful ornamentation reveals a new direction that is refreshingly free of pretence.

explore ideas rather than ‘come up’ with ideas.

During this time I have learned to think more with my head than with doodles in my sketchbook.

The world that I live in is chaotic and densely populated by junk, both collected things and simple rubbish. It’s not a perfect place but it is consistent. Like wise, English homes are usually consistent in their shared irregularities – pokey architectural spaces, weird under-hangs, and unusable corners. I was interested in how a piece of furniture might adapt to and therefore reflect our acceptance of living with these innate problems.

altering behavioural patterns

I began chopping up the geometry of simple fruit boxes, learning how the ratios between top, bottom and sliced side worked best in terms of versatility of the overall dimensions and physical behaviour. I then progressed to larger units that also incorporated crate making materials and elements – such as cheap shuttering plywood and cut out handles. I was interested in how the dual identities of the units – as shelves, and as boxes – could suggest a feeling of temporary existence (as well as adapting to the different spaces, the units can be used as packing crates when moving house).

why should we (people who make things) be attempting to imitate such processes at the initial stages of product development?
(Quotes from design museum interview with Peter Marigold)
Presentation

"British design has the ability to carry design baggage and not start from scratch"

"The nature of design, what happens when things go wrong"

"Order is chaos"

"The world is order, part of humanity"

"Breaking a drawer back down into its raw material"

"Imagining that inside objects there are other objects"

"Finding unexpected order"

"Chopping up geometry to see what happens"

"Turning a table into a leaf- turning things inside out"

Eternally Yours Time In Design

by Ed Van Hinte

Notes

"Try to make products last longer"

"Because of what we are, it is quite complicated to organize ourselves in such a way that one planet is is sufficient to support us for generations to come"

Making a product last long nowadays is difficult because of technology, launching a better alternative to the previous model happens very often.

Consumption world

No limits

" We have the capacity to achieve great things in art and technology, as well as to cause extreme suffering and tragedies n each other on a daily basis".

"In addition one part of our human condition is addicted to acquiring and collecting for more things around us than we have time to handle"

"Most of what we own, we have difficulty in remembering it exists at all: 'oh yeah I have one of those too!'"

"The less money we have the more we are forced to use it to fulfill our basic needs, like food and shelter, and the more indeed we care about what we possess".

"Consumption can be regarded as an addiction"

 "Clothes are acquired to keep up with fashion, or to feel warm, or just for the thrill of buying"

"By and large we put as much money into products as we can afford, just to be OK until we're dead" (Objects ordered how you would like when your dead, would you care? would you turn in your grave?)

"Marti Guixe, champion of immaterial design""job is to process diamonds as accessible non-luxurious, non-glamourous objects". "Diamonds represent an extremely high concentration of money". (www.guixe.com and www.verylustre.com)

"A posession hierarchy of value"

"Brand new things, products used everyday, objects which one has a special bond, and of course at least one car".

"We don't necessarily feel a bond with things that are used a lot, like household equipment and frustrated when something is wrong with them, or when they're gone".

"Vivian is a new product that has the potential to be kept in use for a longer time" " Vivian should remain at least acceptable despite scratches, discolourations, a few broken parts and possible repairs".

"Design is mostly a one shot deal, meant to present an identity and to immediately convince observers of an idea, or to seduce them to buy, or both".

email

My project is to do with order, I want to identify an area within this
topic to create a contextual report from. I am currently unsure about what
this is. I have been reading books such as "sorting things out,
classification and its consequences" by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh
Star. "Eternally yours time in design" by Ed Van Hinte. "Joseph Cornell
vision of spiritual order" by Lindsay Blair. These books have been
inspiring and influencial. I have also been reading "The order of things"
by Michel Foucault, but found it very mundane and didn't get much from it.
I am interested in our ordering of objects. Rationalising our lives by
categorising everything, us as humans can be unrational. How order feels
like we have control in our lives. I am interested in how objects
correspond to the user/owner and technologies impact on our behavior. It
is all quite unclear still and confusing. I think order is a strong area
to study, I am just unsure about which element to start with.

I have some key words;
Categorising, Labels, Objects, Person, Space, Home, Profession, Material,
Storage, Sorting, Hoarding, Cluttering, OCD, Rigidity, Perception,
Archiving, Structure, patterns,Infrastructure, technology, visibility,
standards, disorder, privacy, habits,the self.

OCD

"A mental order characterized by intrusive repetitive thoughts resulting in compulsive behaviors and mental acts".

Joseph Cornell' vision of spiritual order

notes

"He kept a record of everything he thought, saw or felt in his dossiers, those files that he meticulously stored, clasified and returned to throughout his career".

"Cornell identified the creative mind as his ultimate subject".

"It is clear that one reason his art remained so self-concerned was because he sought always to recreate the remembered qualities of this childhood".

"Andre Breton, in his first Surrealist manifesto of 1924, wrote that Surrealism was psychic automism in its pure state, by which one purposes to express- verbally, by means of  the written word, or in any other manner- the actual functioning of though, in the absense of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aestheric or moral concern".

"Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought".

"As can be seen from his celebrated definition, the emphasis is on process, and a process that resembles the free association of psychoanalysis rather than anything to do with creativity or craft"

"The function of art is very much to reveal to the creator the actual workings of the mental and creative processes. From here it is easy to see why collage was so much a favoured form for the Surrealists"

"Cornell's work was part of a continuing struggle to come to terms with consciousness", He "completely validated his researches into the self"

'Nothing, after all, could be more selfconscious than an obsessive habit of noting, hoarding and storing the history of one's own mind"

Cornell once said according to David Mann who exhibited his work; "You don't know how terrible it is to be locked into boxes all your life, you have

 no idea what a terrible thing it is".

"His largest dossier, yet one that has received little notice, displays the neurosis that threatened to envelop him as he strove to create a system of classification that would make some order out of the relentless tide of associations that flood

ed his mind".

"He had wanted to invent, recreate a miniature universe- this we see most acutely in his Soap Bubble Sets"

"either timelessness exists or all times do"

"It was his spirit that essentially, he tried to recover in his boxes".

"The artists urge towards self-revelation is everywhere apparent".

"His work is always a dialogue with- as well as a projection of -the self".

"He ordered and catalogued his responses in an elaborate system of dossiers,a system he maintained throughout his life"

"He noted in his diary 'the prospect of cluttered cellar- / creative filing / creative arranging / as poetics / as technique / as joyous creation'".

"We can see that his decision to work wth dossiers" "- was an attempt to control, categorize and label the wealth of material that flooded in".

the order of things, Michel Foucaut

notes

"these proper names would form useful landmarks and avoid ambiguous designations"

Order is a matter of convenience

the limits of the world

the writing of things

'that is why nature and the word can intertwine with one another to infinity, forming, for those who can read it, on vast single text".

"because things hide and manifest their own enigma like a language and because words offer themselves to men as things to be deciphered". (page 39; language). 

"It must therefore be studied itself as a thing in nature"

"language is not what it is because it has meaning; its representative content, which was to have such importance".

Bernd and Hilla Becher

"Their work embodies an ethical model of discipline and painstaking persistence, made unforgettable in the controlled beauty of the images they give us", Charles. B. Wright, Pennsylvania coal mine tipples dia center for arts.

"The minehead constructions for hauling the coal to the surface called tipples, are made from simple materials, adapted to the particular topography, the location of the coal beds and the conditions to removal of the coal". 

Fantastic images, the tipples alter in shape and size. I made some sketches of the constructions. I am curious that each construction was different in shape and form but were all built to do the same thing. The combination of pieces that form the tipple looks random but obviously serves its purpose. They are intriguing as I can't believe some of them can perform sufficiently.

Becher on Becher by Kahn

"Idris Kahn's super imposed photographs, trade on a rigourous methodology of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Khan's photographs superimpose each photograph from one of the Becher's series onto one another to form a single photograph". http://www.gravestmor.com/wp/archives/2006/06/25/becher-on-becher-by-kahn/

Different forms of order; wikipedia

* "Order is a decoration. Order of the thistle. Order of Garter (above).An object, such as a medal, that is awarded to honor the recipient ostentatiously. Modern orders are usually open to all citizens of a particular country, regardless of status, sex, race or creed. Once awarded, an order may be revoked if the individual dies, commits a crime, or renounces citizenship. Rarely, a dissident becomes awarded, and due to personal beliefs refuses to accept it. Honor".

* "Chivalric orders are orders of knights that were created by European monarchs in imitation of the military orders of the Crusades. After the crusades, the memory of these crusading military orders became idealised and romanticised, resulting in the late medieval notion of chivalry, and is reflected in the Arthurian romances of the time".

*"A "fraternal organization" or "fraternity," is a brotherhood, though the term usually connotes a distinct or formal organization".

There is a lot of categories concerning this type of ordering. I will look into at a later stage, this is related to what I have already been looking at.

The aspect of order that i am most interested in is ordering items, not dictating order.

*"Metamodeling, or meta-modeling, is the analysis, construction and development of the frames, rules, constraints, models and theories applicable and useful for modeling a predefined class of problems".

*"Data synchronization is the process of establishing consistency among data on remote sources and the continuous harmonization of the data over time".

* "In computing, a canonical order is the order of elements that obeys a certain set of rules or specifications".

* "A classical order is one of the ancient styles of building design in the classical tradition, distinguished by their proportions and their characteristic profiles and details, but most quickly recognizable by the type of column and capital employed".

This encourages me to think about Bernd and Hilla Becher who photographed buildings that appear mundane, are slightly different and ordering them. Except that the design is not considered.
"Predominantly instrumental in character, who's shapers are the result of calculation and who's processes of development are optically evident. They are generally buildings where anonymity is accepted to be the style. Their peculiarities originate not inspite of, but because of the lack of design"
Anonyme Skulpturen, Becher.

*"In urban planning, the notion of "public order" refers to a city containing relatively empty (and orderly) spaces which allow for flexibility in redesigning the city's layout; such perceptions played an important role in the establishments of suburbs. According to this point of view, the traditional notion of a "downtown" is often seen as disorderly".

It is interesting that because there is an unused space it has a necessity to be filled, I don't see why, is it our greed that encourages us?

"It has been suggested that cultural affinity is a means to find protection from the perceived disorder of the rest of the city".

*" David Bohm proposed a cosmological order radically different from generally accepted conventions, which he expressed as a distinction between the implicate and explicate order, described in the book Wholeness and the Implicate Order:

In the enfolded [or implicate] order, space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order. These ordinary notions in fact appear in what is called the "explicate" or "unfolded" order, which is a special and distinguished form contained within the general totality of all the implicate orders (Bohm, 1980, p. xv)".

I intend to evaluate these items further..

sorting things out

Sorting things out; classification and its consequences. Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star.

Quotes that I find interesting.

“Materials that constrain and enable biological researchers. Rats, petri dishes, taxidermy, planaria, drosophila, and test tubes take center stage in this narrative”.

“Many classifications appear as nothing more than lists of numbers with labels attached, buried in software menus, user’s manuals , or other references”.

“In the built world we inhabit, thousands and thousands of standards are used everywhere, from setting up the plumbing in a house, to assembling a car engine to transferring a file from one computer to another”.

“There are standards for paper size, the distance between lines in lined paper, envelope size, the glue on the envelope, the size of stamps, their glue, the ink in a pen, the sharpness of its bib, the composition of the paper and so forth”.

INFRASTRUCTURE
“Embeddedness; Infrastructure is sunk into, inside of, other structures, social arrangements and technologies”

“Transparency; Infrastructure is transparent to use in the sense that it does not have to be reinvented each time or assembled for each task, but invisibly supports those tasks”.

“Links with conventions of practice. Infrastructure both shapes and is shaped by the conventions of a community of practice; for example; the ways that cycles of day-night work are affected by affect electrical power night rates and needs”.

“Built on an installed basis”

“Becomes visible upon breakdown. The normally invisible quality of working infrastructure becomes visible when it breaks: the server is down, the bridge washes out, there is a power blackout. Even when there are backup mechanisms or procedures, their existence further highlights the now visible infrastructure”.



notes

Ubiquity

"classifications schemes and standards literally saturate our environment".

"In the built world we live in thousands and thousands of standards are used everywhere"

"Becoming irate"; "Becker had succeeded in unearthing a little of the hidden classificatory apparatus behind the scenes of the airline. He notes that the interaction after this speeded up and went particularly smoothly". I familiarise with speeding up a piece of technology that is standardised. When I used to put credit on my phone I would have to follow a sequence of questions and say yes or no, or press a number, i would press it as quickly as possible just as the question is about to be asked, sometimes it worked and other times it didn't. I am curious about how we can manipulate technology the way it is programmed. It is interesting how we quicken up, because often when you buy a state of the art piece of equipment we are startled and excited by how clever it is, it feels so powerful, that we can't understand how to use it. But once we understand it and get into the habit of using it, its like second nature to us. So we become cleverer than the item, once we have sussed its limits. Often my impatience encourages me to mess around with the item and explore its limitations.

"We also need concepts for understanding movements, textures, and shifts that will grasp patterns within the ubiquitous larger phenomenon".

"Other's are everywhere, structuring social order"

Materiality and texture

"built into and embedded in every feature of the built environment"

"physical entities, such as paper forms, plugs, or software instructions encoded in silicon, and conventional arrangements such as speed and rhythm, dimension, and how specifications are implemented".

The indeterminacy of the past

"Multiple voices and silences are represented in any scheme that attempts to sort out the world"

Practical politics

"Investigating categories and standards as technologies". 

"Arriving at categories and standards , and, along the way, deciding what will be visible or invisible within the system".

"even when everyone agrees on how classifications or standards should be established, there are often practical difficulties about how to craft them. For example, a classification system with 20,000 bins n every form is practically unusable for data entry purposes. The constraints of technological record keeping come into play at every turn".

Infrastructure and method: convergence.

Standards, categories, technologies, and phenomenology are increasingly converging in larger-scale information infrastructure"

"we are concerned with what they do pragmatically speaking as scaffolding in the conduct of modern life".

Resistance

"Donald MacKenzie's (1990) wonderful study of  "missile accuracy" furnishes the best example of this approach. In a concluding chapter of his book, he discusses he possibility of "uninventing the bomb" by which he means changing society and technology in such a way that the atomic bomb becomes an impossibility". 

"Standards and classifications, however dry and formal on the surfaces, are suffused with traces of political and social work. Whether we wish to uninvent any particular aspect of complex information structure is properly a political and a public issue"

"Others are almost accidental- systems that become so complex that no one person and no organisation can predict or administer good policy".

 

conversing with Isolda

Concluded with possible ways to take my project.

Hiding away stuff- objects representing temporary situations. We have the skill to forget and move on. Except the object is still the same, but we can perceive it in a different way.

An objects life span; the order is how we have established its life to be. Is the objects life over because its old? out of fashion? broken? deteriorating? 

Broken, break object on purpose and see what it reveals? The object doesn't need to be 3d it could be a graphic piece, guessing what could be inside. It could be metaphorical, relate to exposure and how an open wound feels like exposure.

Do we like to have order in our lives to have control?

Since we were born we have lived through an established type of order.

Labels in ordering? Everything around us has a name. Different meanings for particular words.

Dance; breaking free from order, to feel visible and feel important boosting confidence. Break the mould. ( I am afraid of my 

What can bring freedom of order?

A tool for control. There are christmas songs everywhere that we are forced to listen to.

What are the aspects of freedom dance? - tactile - patterns- language established within dance.

Creating a path of destruction

Experiments

*A room that once stepped into changes the structure of the music and causes disorder. It could be a good thing or a bad thing. (create many objects, sites or situations where something is in order but changes once something is implemented).

*A space that controls the way you behave. It moves you around in the space.

*Create a space for different people to live in for a certain amount of time, and catalogue what they do in the space. Order it? work in it? Looking at peoples behavior within a space. Spacial order.

*OCD, is it a fashion?

*Joseph Cornell; perhaps order brings uncanny things?

"He kept a record of everything he though, saw or felt in his dossiers, those files that he meticulously stored, classified and returned throughout his career".

Spend a week recording everything?

*Document the order of my room, I don't  always like being in the same order, so i often change it around. Such as the positioning of my bed.

*Catalogue visuals within order.

old post it list

I am reflecting on a list i found in my diary put together for post it note day. I think they were more like wonderment. I thought it could help me in my progress but in fact I have identified that what i am working on now is much more intelligent. The below in bold is some things that might have some relation to my project.

1- Designing for abandoned children in Bulgaria

2- Mobile phone era

3- Language and communication constant change

4- Influences - moulded by society and family

5- Body changes - how we can alter ourselves and manipulation

6- Intimidation

7- Music and technology

8- Different eating habits

9- Addictions

10- Using existing material to transform into another object

11- Programming; romanticism, politics.

12- Global warming

13- Cycling in London

14- Drama

15- Design art debate

16- Articulation

17- Greed

18- Designing without focusing on end product

19- Constantly proving ourselves- being graded

20- Valuing products is a matter of boasting confidence and ego.

21- Designers position these days, what the job encompasses.

22- Negativity in London

23- Speed

24- Excitement over celebrities

25- Creating different kinds of design practice

26- Further an old degree project

ORDER

Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. This is commonly called alphabetisation, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet. Collating lists of words or names into alphabetical order is the basis of most office filing systems, library catalogs and reference books.

Collation differs from classification in that classification is concerned with arranging information into logical categories, while collation is concerned with the ordering of those categories.

Advantages of sorted lists include:

• one can easily find the first n elements (e.g. the 5 smallest countries) and the last n elements (e.g. the 3 largest countries)
• one can easily find the elements in a given range (e.g. countries with an area between .. and .. square km)
• one can easily search for an element, and conclude whether it is in the list, e.g. with the binary search algorithm or interpolation search either automatically, or, roughly and perhaps unconsciously, manually.

A collation algorithm, e.g. the "Unicode collation algorithm", differs from a sorting algorithm: the first is a process to define the order, which corresponds to the process of just comparing two values, while a sorting algorithm is a procedure to put a list of items in this order.

Collation defines a total preorder on the set of possible items, typically by defining a total order on a sortkey. Note however that in the case of e.g. numerical sorting of strings representing numbers, the strings are only partially preordered, because e.g. 2e3 and 2000 have the same ranking, and 2 and 2.0 also. The numbers represented by the strings are totally ordered.

Gabrielle Roth

5rhythms

"Begin to practice staying open to how you feel, whatever it is"

" People maybe experimenting with being loud, big, bold, timid, intimate, self-contained"

How we order ourselves within a space

The five rhythms:

1. Flowing

2. Staccato

3. Chaos

4. Lyrical

5. Stillness

"Each rhythm is a teacher and you can expect to meet different and sometimes unknown aspects of yourself as you dance unfolds"

"A series of healing maps for the body, heart, mind, soul, and spirit that provide a lifetime of self discovery and a path to awakening".

"Like the body, they are alive and designed to catalyze the dancers movement expression in the moment. You are different everytime you walk into the room, so is the group and so is the teacher"

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xYMdlKWaEEY

For people "Trapped in self-consciousness" worried about their weight for example.

"Drown out that voice by the beat"

5rhythms not only "work out the body but the soul"

"Chaos is art, nature of life itself, inhale and exhale collide" "connect to individual pattern"

"To get to know ourselves in a field of energy".

People in order

People in order by Lenker Clayton and James Price

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GUHLa1qSy24

First mentor session

Group discussion

I am in a group of four students with my mentor Alex.  I explained the point my project was at. Ordering randomness. 

Alex suggested the book "sorting things out" Order classification systems.

Come away from randomness

Therapy OCD - traits

Look further into OCD

Things being regularly ordered.

Peoples perception of random.

Peoples ordering practice- screwing up paper.

Perceptions of random.

Perfection.

Organise a research process for self- pulling out observations and insights.

Find an area; utopian idea of perfection.

Expanding more.

The Bodlien Library needs expanding, there is an obvious ordering problem.

Archiving; 

Institutional forms of ordering.

Personal ordering- hoarding

How different things are ordered.

Into order and out of order.

Implementing a system within order.

Books are an obvious thing to order. What else can be ordered?

Measuring, to what extent is it beneficial?

Alex's advice

Sharpen up analytical skills. Be critical of area. Be inquisitive. What else could it be. Think about what something is. Make an analytical move so it changes. Go out and find more information. Get involved.

Peoples ordering practices

-what kind of conditions related to OCD.

Disorder is more interesting than random.

Institutional practices.

Take in different types of ordering.

-what could I order?

(myself could be uninteresting)

A disorderly process of things becoming disorderly.

Bernd and Hilla Becher two German photographers, implemented photographic ordering systems on buildings.

Technologies of orderings

classification systems

Gene material

Objective; Much firmer idea of what I'm interested in. Say exactly what the project is about, it will be grounded.

Mapping my project

Putting randomness in order

When reflecting on information I have subjected  myself to I can start to see links.

Mapping your creativity putting it into order, measuring your stages.

Taking pictures of my desk as my idea of a diary. Is cataloguing the randomness I am creating in my own space.

The exhibition we saw with Rosario in Ealing Broadway. Catogorising objects to convey information.

Bruce Mau

A selection of beliefs, strategies and motivations that I relate to.

1. Allow events to change you.You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good.Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome.When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep.The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
6. Capture accidents.The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
7. Drift.Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
8. Begin anywhere.John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
11. Harvest ideas.Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
17. ____________________.Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
19. Work the metaphor.Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
20. Be careful to take risks.Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
22.Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
27. Read only left-hand pages.

Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."
28. Make new words.Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
29. Think with your mind.Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
32. Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge.Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

contextual report

(See the best example and copy on line up to the style)

The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects; Marshall McLuhan. 

This book is a good example of a contextual report.  Work out what the report is. What you are interested in. Interested Sean Hall in it. Interested in it. Only people who deliver it can make it interesting or boring.

Think of a good title. 

-like a film.

-Title- main interface between you and the audience.

-title has to draw you in

- what it is vaguely about

Key concepts or words that motivate your projects- three, words to motivate it. 

The more forms to give to your concepts the better. 

Can general and then narrrow down.

Presentation

Graphics have to be good, Has to be good for a design degrees. An object thats designed. 

Make 2 copies. Exactly the same.

6000 words. 

What form? website

Can take on other forms; needs a copied print out. 

January hand in.

A visual chapter?

Stick words on a wall and move it about. Ask self what is it about?

visuals; sketches, images, etc.. different kinds of illustrations.

Conclusions; 

-theoretical

-practical- this is what is going to design

-speculative- here is a possible way to design

Should have a connection. Can be suggestive.

Knowing about what is already out there.

Hand in a mock upi

-helpful- give a little

  - three- 6 concepts formsof what project

  - 300 word description

Referencing is a good enough for someone to be able to findit easier. How many references? More six books. 

Family substancial looking bibliography, impression management.

Looks good, weight of history is behind this book. For external examiners to be impressed by. 

It is hard to criticise what your tutor doesn't know about. More specific area of our territory. Identity - time. Big research tool.

Working class cultures in terms of food culture.

Poetry is always specific, not general about love. About two people and their qualities.

Magic; anthropological. Metaphor of design where one thing escapes from another.

In the mean time; write a title, 3 words specific description. 

The evolution of objects; Patrovski, evolution of the fork.

Jayne Wallace

"Jayne is a practice-based researcher, with a craft and design background, w

hose work explores the potential of digital jewellery within personal

 experience and human relationships. She is currently a research associate in Culture Lab at Newcastle University

 and produces work as part of Patrick Olivier’s team.
Jayne invokes the intensely intimate human-relational context of jewellery to meaningfully interrogate a

nd address salient qualities of our experience of digital technologies. Key themes in this pursuit are: the notion of

 personal emotional significance, the relatio

nship between enchantment and the uncanny, and the interconnected qualities of beauty and enchantment. 

Her work seeks to unpick

 collective assumptions of digital technologies, as these affect the pace and texture of our experiences with all things digital, by employing creative

 methods stemming from design and art practice to produce digital artefacts that rethink current assumptions as to the nature of the digital and embody counter

 characteristics."

http://www.creatorproject.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=72&Itemid=58

She gave a talk today about her practice. I found it very interesting but I think there was a little confusion for the audience as to where these items are placed.

Notes from lecture:

Digital arts, technology and jewellery. Newcastle University culture lab. Bringing scientists and artists together. Giving a texture, what objects can be. Define what it could be without resting on our current assumptions of them. In Wallace's MA she was interested in communication, relationships and difficulties. How we communicate with technology everyday. Traces that we leave behind. The consequences of what we do. The object that we leave behind. 

Wallace designed items such as an eyelash made of steal and silver which was too heavy to wear. Creating a space through the piece. 

The influence of technology. Some people have worn pieces of technology to see how do you feel if when wearing them. 

A film to watch; Fritz Lang, Metropolis, 1925. It is still very influential.

All about the dominance of technology. Wearable computer research; Steve Mann, Sutherland, 1966. Wearing computers on objects, see how it affects you. Wear things in spite of bulk to explore how life would be by wearing the piece.

Isao Shimosa. 

Digital jewellery;

-Philips design

-IBM

-IDEO- techno jewellery; breaking down mobile phone into objects such as a ring.

I like the idea of gesturing in the body to create forms items. Such as the mobile phone gesture that actually acts as a mobile phone with finger rings attached.

Talking pedometer

Fingerbeatz

Tokima

Samsung digital keyboard

Nicole Gratiot Staber; For two.

Holding someones hand with an object.

Heather Martin; Kiss communicator. Blow into the form which will send to other ball. Create a kind of signal system and meaning.

Treasure;

Personal treasure

-are not aesthetically pleasing

-All about stories that came into her mind

-Make objects that ask questions, start a conversation through objects.

Anthony Dunne- Bill Gaver et al

Cultural domestic probes.

Probes/ stimuli

Wallace made objects that encourage the consumer to tell her something about themselves.

-A throwaway camera

-A pot with clay in

-An award that is blank; as a way of asking what they would like to achieve.

-Where jewellery is worn

-Encourage a story about losing something

-A blank set of top trumps

About experimenting and playing with an object

Participants have the object for a month.

Results;

-One lady pushed her daughters lock of hair into clay. 

-Described a story with a pastry cutter

- Objects finding the person instead of the person finding the object.

As a result of the particular lady she designed an item called sometimes that echoed aspects of these stories.

The jewellery she designed would connect you to a particular space. There is a bleeding of fantasy with reality.

Another item Wallace produced was for a woman that doesn't wear jewellery unless it is meaningful to her. Velvet and porcelain are the closest to the feeling of flesh.

Old versus new, its not about cutting edge technology.

Capture once, only on chance to do it. Much about mediacy, which feels more natural and human.

Blossom; Objects and work inspired by different people. Absorbed ability to transcend spaces that are nourishing. Franked stamps and memory metal that is formed as an object. This item sends signals from somewhere in the world to understand what is going on in that country the item moves in different ways.

Making technology for different generations; Inter generation project. At allows you to feel the presence of different objects. Stroking the object can make it tremble. Bespoke electronics.

Creating little playgrounds on objects to investigate how people can respond. Person hood is the recognition of who you are. Make something to preserve person hood. 

Make objects that can be appropriated to the person. A porcelien hand mirror, whoever looks into can see something different. The mirror has a different kind of purpose or role.

Creating narratives to try to make sense of things. Preservation of person hood- dementure care; the lockets have things that can create the forgotton. 

Giving people objects to manipulate to answer a question.

Unpicking the digital. Making things that don't have deterministic functions. Have a kind of span that we need to be patient with, ubiquity and boundlessness. Putting boundaries in can create meaningless objects. Relationships within an intimate story.

-qualities particular to jewellery

-process that reflect private idiosyncrasies or personal significance.

-craft practice

-Enchantment- uncanny

Something starts to behave or do something which we don't know how or why.

Q&A

Q: A new type of jewellery? Doesn't jewellery do it as a non digital form?

A: Its about expanding means of jewellery (any object with the digital?) It's not about replacing its about extending a different kind of material in another kind of way. Tactility and relationships with the objects. 

Experiences of the uncanny; getting to grips with something unfamiliar. Sonic phenomena; voices, sound, recording processes.

There is a book mentioned by a tutor to do with ventiulicism about the disembodied person, a rich area for exploration.

A: There is a huge gap within the digital world. Design possibility. You can make things that are different. We have assumptions of what it is and so there are limitations. Creating a conversation within a space. Seeing the digital world in a materialistic way. Digital has changed all of us in the way that we work. Make something that fits in with existing meanings. Open enough for it to grow. Exploration to see if it can happen, employing sensority. 

Can objects such as jewellery help medicine.

How craft can communicate through many disciplines. Right kind of feel and aesthetic. 

Motes are tony computers that get added to circuit boards, like WIFI but you have more control. 

Overall, it was a very interesting lecture despite the confusing aspects of what Wallace is trying to get at with all the research. As a result I have highlighted elements that interested me in connection to my project. 

I have often thought about the way we perceive and think about objects.  I am interested in altering the way we perceive objects to create advantages. Such as encouraging a cultural shift.

Below is Jayne Wallace's website;

http://www.digitaljewellery.com/

fellow students work experience

http://www.edsonwilliams.com/

http://www.ellentruijen.nl/

Food design

http://www.proefrotterdam.nl/proef_english/proef_en.html

http://www.strawdesign.com/

http://www.jasonbruges.com/

http://www.thegreenhaus.co.uk/

Lisa Gornick

10.11.08

This week we are involved in a joint project. The task is to design a new super hero. We are in groups, we have particular tasks to meet within this project. I think I will benefit in realising how much work you can get out of one day.

I went to a viewing of Lisa Gornicks latest film; Tick Tock Lullaby. I thoroughly enjoyed the film. Gornicks inspiration were her short dialogues and diary of her current concerns. She is very interested in discussion and wanted to portray this in her film. The film was shot on a small handy cam and the cast worked for free.

Gornicks previous film; Do I love you? has won a number of awards from international LGBT festivals.

Gornick works as an actress, she prefered film to theatre so she went to film school and started producing films.

I am interested in discussion and how we talk about things. I like how the film was like a snippit of REAL LIFE. There was a slight restriction on keeping it constructive as a story. But it felt much like real life, where it is almost like a stream of consciousness. People don't or can't be as constructive as they would like in life concerning personal life. I am intrigued how film changes the way you look at things. Gornicks perception of the story is probably not exactly the same as she sees on film.

I enjoyed the writing and drawing in the film, it is very simple and clear. It is quite personal.

Kirsty Minns

Gave us a lecture about her career since graduating from the course.

When it was a four year course, Kirsty worked for Fashion magazines; Pop and Dazes & Confused. Then she worked for The Jam.

Her final project was designed against perfection. Deviation from the norm in objects. Normality in humans and objects.

After graduation she went to New York, where she worked for Boym partners (http://www.boym.com/) . It is a varied office where she worked on their cutlery project involving mismatching cutlery.

Then returned and worked for London Tag.

Kirsty applied for a position as studio assistant at Established and sons, but she ended up being offered a temporary position instead. She worked on graphics for a while which involved mucking in on everything. The company was quite small at the time. As it has grown she has become a stronger part of the team. She works in product development. It is the dream job. She works with all the designers the company collaborate with to make the product viable. From structure, components, form, prototyping, developing materials. She works in solid works often. She had little experience of it, but bigged it up a bit. Currently she has to develop ten different projects at once.


Use skills and experience that shes acquired to start on own projects. Now collaborating with James Cuddy to work on a project.

Kirsty's advice:
Be competitive, market yourself, design industry is very small so network, network, network!! Be prepared to work your way up. Based on relationships with people. Be active, be aware of what is happening in society. Attention to detail, people always notice the worst instead of the good. Make self useful and muck in. However long you stay acquire lots and lots of experience.

In production development you learn so much, by working with designers and manufacturers. You will have a lot to offer other companies. Materials and different designers. It is an unusual and exceptional experience.

Goldsmiths sets you up to turn your hand to challenges and risks.

Keep freelancing going. Build up relationships with manufacturers.

I would like to visit the Duke Street St James studio holding the exhibition about the design art debate.

Future systems design agency

Territories

05.11.08

After an unsuccessful tutorial it was followed by a presentation this week, I returned to the drawing board and opted for the Take a chance brief. The below is the presentation which took place yesterday.
I was curious about the artificial because of the way we live our lives questioning its sincerity. Realising how we are becoming artificial and how we organise nature within the urban environment.
The artificial is such a broad spectrum, I re approached it by choosing another brief.
Take a chance, The process of randomness interested me because it could be a great way of encouraging my making skills and to use various mediums. It is also a great area for encouraging creativity. By brainstorming randomness I discovered plenty relations, such as religion, artificial, probability, science etc.

John Cage was a composer and fluxus artist. Fluxus artist encourages "a do it yourself aesthetic and valued simplicity over complexity". Fluxus prefered to work in whatever materials were at hand . So this made me think of my flippant and impatient attitude towards, for example, fixing something instead of using a screw driver i might use a blunt knife. Or when I need a ruler, use anything straight at hand.

John Cages philosophy was about " the multiplicity of simultaneous visual and audible events all going together in ones experience and producing enjoyment".

Marcel Duchamp was influenced my fluxus artists;
"Part of the reason that Duchamp's objects were fascinating while Picasso's voice is fading is that the Duchamp pieces are truly between media, sculpture and something else, whilst Picasso is readily classifiable as a painted ornament".


Randomness in material caught my attention. Such as wear and tear, in some way glamorising or bringing to light things we take for granted.
Randomly on purpose, There is an argument as to how people use or perceive the word random. The top item you may say is random or weird, Cause why would you bother doing that? Something not seen before or often. Whereas chewing gum is common sadly, maybe the shape is random , but there is nothing nice about it. Doodling or writing into furniture is also common and done with intention, boredom or a desire. This lead me to think about how its quite nice for documenting memories.
I thought about how accidents, such as is someone was to stain a new carpet with wine would it matter if it happened again ad again. I am often spilling drinks on my parents rug in the living room. What if I designed a tea table that invites mugs to stain the table or any other form of random affect. It creates a history, forms a bespoke piece that's would personally be comforting, as it would remind me of certain things that happened over time. "The lived in look". Instead of an untouchable table from Harrods or an Ikea piece. A stained table would hold more value for me personally, memories of social situations. So random accidents could be positive such as making them into art, or using that formation to apply to a piece of design.


I am curious about random marks . But I think the most interesting are random shapes and patterns that are natural, such as freckles and moles. I read that "the density of freckles that appear on the skin is controlled by genes and exposure to light, whereas the exact location of individual freckles seem to be random". Changing subjects slightly I discussed with a psychology student how randomness could be a form of therapy. For example, for someone with OCD, an encouragement of imperfection.


Continuing with the idea of natural randomness, I wonder whether for the most part nature can be random and the man-made is just intentional. I think randomness in nature is positive. These items are unpredictable in their pattern and shape and also quite therapeutic to look at. Nature is quite fascinating to watch, it creates a sensation nothing else can live up to.
My motive would be to encourage nature and oppose our artificial future as it impacts and destroys the beauty of nature. So I would like to create natural design, to fit within a natural environment.
Dreams; Changing direction completely, dreams would also be an interesting avenue. I have had dreams where I remember things such as to go to the Tate Modern for a meeting overnight. Or how to fix a tyre.. properly.
Repetitive dreams; I don't understand why I have had the same type of dream through my life. I have created places in my mind that don't exist. I would like to make these dreams physical. But because this has been a last minute idea, it isn't researched and investigated as well as I would have liked. However random dreams could be another territory. How do you make a dream physical? I have also dreamed about people I haven't spoken to and know their character in my dream but not in real life. Sporadic thoughts could be a good design tool.

Feedback

"Randomness juxtaposed with something like order, balance, pattern, rules"
"Don't use the word random to describe something"
"A definition will come through activities, explaining what relativity it has to design"
"Refine the general definition of random"
"A clearer definition"
"How it can be harnessed and played within randomization"
"Identify what randomness is to you"


"Carry on..."
Continue to use your drawing.

Task: A week on Tuesday at your mentoring session.
Design and make a map of your territory. A well conceived map to be seen in your show. Condensing everything into one format. It will need most of the aspects of a map, such as a key. Doesn't have to be 3d 2d whatever, use a map as a metaphorical word. Narrow it down to what it is.

On reflection I would like to start drawing and brainstorming again, to confirm my territory to feel submerged and confident with where my project lies.