Anne-Marie Willis

Notes from Willis's lecture;

Lecture in design thinking series.
Editor of "design philosophy papers" online journal.
Journal of design politics blog.

What is the relationship between design sustainability and practice. Research into sustainability issues, Looked at through an Australian context. Lectures Ravensbourne Queensland.

1. Seeing the unsustainable.
Re directive practice, redirect itself. Direct efforts towards sustainability.
EU programmes towards sustainable development. Convenient political labels. Symptomatic conditions. Underpinning structure, how do we think what we do and influence our lives. The all encompassing is hard to see. The artificial is something we become dependent on. How can we redesign to be sustained.

Unsustainable
- amplified by technology
- Normality of industrial development

Design fits in:
What is not designer? in an unsustainable situation?
In an expanded sense; most design is anonymous. Designing of the designed. Design = prefiguring and directionality.

Material form lies in what it does. The essence of a hammer is in its hammering.

Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden or life in the woods "classic account of the solitary life, describing his attempts to simplify his life and sort out his priorities by living alone in a cabin beside Walden Pond for nearly two years, is one of the most influential books ever written" (www.albris.com).
Chris Jordan creates work commenting on multiplicity.
It shows the sheer value. Is design disposable?

Remove responsibility
Materiality of your environment is inducing you to act in certain ways, a whole system. Throwing a way a plastic cup. exerting pressure on us. You can't seem to make things without destroying it. Re purposing things.

Most designers focus on the end form. Aesthetics is not necessary. But it does seem to need to come together. Designing of the design, internal logic. Appropriated by technology. What a camera does.
We are born into a world of the naturalised artificial. Comfort, cleanliness, interests, fun, where to eat = technologised form.
It is hard to illustrate what a real want is. This structuring equalises a world of unsustainable. This could be a creative challenge.

There are limits to sustainable design. Everywhere green consumers can search for it. No where, having both sustainable and unsustainable.
Architecture is where sustainable has been more successful, light, air circulation and structural issues.
Creating different kinds of design practice.
Why does design need to change its practice?
CAD generative multi solution software.
Bruce Newborn; " Everybody can be a designer now"
Designers won't be needed. This knowledge will be disembodied into the software. Designers need to become thinkers and strategists, or technicians or directors to compete with the software- a lot more intellectual input. The shift from unsustainable to sustainable.

3. Re directive practice

Designers want to approach problems and re design. Recognise the world is dull of this task to re direct it. Practice of design needs to be designed. How can I? Designing you own life is a design exercise- towards sustainment. Functionality and convenience; What are the costs of convenience?
Well developed aesthetic skills, doesn't need to be attractive. Not necessarily a dedication, just helps to put it into context. One attachment and education, what structures dispositions towards practice?
Re directing it; miscoupling it and then putting it back together.
Sustainment is the right word.
Develop ecological sustainment. Development is the end point. Sustainability was used in bad ways, sustainment is proper.
Sustainment- enlightenment, politics and scientific inquiry, freedom of justice.

Design futuring. Tony Fry.

Discussion:
Making strategic decisions, how will it affect peoples behaviour. coordinating efforts of other designers. Changing peoples mode of being. How we are and act. Conserve resources to use less. Appropriate technology movement. Designing for the pyramid.

Mobile telephony
Leap frog adapt and get new forms of technology from a developing world. Continue sustainability. by throwing money at it. Sustaining something that shouldn't be sustained. Maybe whats needed is wellbeing.

People are prepared to change their behaviours. Have a better way of life, scale down house size.
Definining whats enough or too much.

Deep confusement around sustainability and sustainment.
Sustainable consumption
-to stop/hold
-support it
-keep something longer

The way the eco system works. Nature has no waste. Just as we design poverty.
Sustainable; the ability to sustain and economically viable.
Sustainment is ongoing - biophysical processes need to sustain in order to have sustainment.

A change in thinking; Can we understand the need for limits, will we ever?
Darwin; "Only species survive by adapting themselves".

Synergies occur as a performance indicator, creating the unexpected. Enjoying designing something can make it more successful.

Understanding how the eco system works. The more complex the system the more likely it will be impossible.
Refusal of ideas that are in conflict with each other.
Generating a new form of activity in that area. Talking with the communities to work it out. Designers are often not involved in the decision making. Some people are the designers without declaring it. You speak to different occupancies to understand the way people think and their agendas. To create a sense of their activities.

How to counteract the negative design effects. Michael Bowell, a chemist who redevelops industries and creates products that do not harm. Designers are like confidants. Teach designers to think. We can miss the whole picture. The thinking should be transferred from one person to another, Misunderstand the rule of language, designers can invent new categories.

Redesign ourselves as team work.
Jon Chris Jones, a pioneer in designing design, created a background of ideas.
Hilary Cotore, service design industry. redesigning the health.

The way in which to start to instrument change. Who responds to the change. Can people accommodate a total change? Redesigning design using design wherever you can to try and make a difference. Chip away to try and change.
If there was a generous approach. What kind of lifestyle are you sustaining?
If you sustain you should sustain everything.

Spreading a culture of wellbeing and communication.
Interior designers can completely redesign to design a better way of living.
Sell the idea of less, like Muji.
Big opportunity for designers to recreate money.

Horizon Human v2.0

27.10.08
Notes taken from the Horizon Human v2.0 documentary aired in 2006; " scientific prophets who claim we are on the verge of creating a new type of human".

Is it possible to store our minds in to a machine? Will we be able to change what we are and undo who we are? Can biology and technology be combined to create another human? Can we transform the way future human beings believe?

It is possible to download our thoughts, stored memories and interface with machines. Computers will soon equal the power of the human brain. We will be able to change who we are and create a new person. This is known as singularity.

Dr Jose Delgado investigated areas of the brain. He wanted to unlock mysterious electrical signals of the brain, by placing electro signals in the brain of a bull. A radio signal works on the mind to stop him. It was a way of trying to understand the mechanics of the mind."The bull was obeying commands in his brain that were being called forth by electrical stimulation – by the radio signals – of certain regions in which the fine wires had been painlessly implanted the day before" wrote John A. Osmundsen in 1965 (wireheading.com/matador.html). Delgado's reasoning was;'“I do believe,” he said in a recent lecture, that an understanding of the biological bases of social and antisocial behaviour and of mental activities, which for the first time in history can now be explored in a conscious brain, may be of decisive importance in the search for intelligent solutions to some of our present anxieties, frustrations and conflicts.”' He also mentions “functions traditionally related to the psyche, such as friendliness, pleasure or verbal expression, can be induced, modified and inhibited by direct electrical stimulation of the brain.” Dr Delgado seemed to be quite ethical in his approach.

"Moore's law describes an important trend in the history of computer hardware. Since the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958, the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has increased exponentially, doubling approximately every two years" from Wikipedia. Our understanding of human intelligence will be complete as a result of computer and neuron science. Computers have a billion more times capability than a human.

By unraveling the mystery of the mind scientists are finding more and more extreme methods.

One scientist is measuring a rats thoughts and the way it sees the world. It is a remote controlled rat. It is guided wirelessly. A radio signal stimulates areas, such as the wiskers. Touching his left wisker tells him to turn left and vice versa. He will obey as he understands he will receive a reward. The radio signal will stimulate the pleasurable side of his brain.

Another scientist worked with one of our closest relatives, he trained a monkey to play a computer game. The scientist recorded his thinking. Using the thoughts of another being to control another machine. A form of coding is created on screen, it is like the alphabet of his brain. Could this be our future language. It looked something like this on screen ---IIII------I-I-I-I.
This form of technology has potential to understand the human brain. I would like to investigate language and its creation. How do we actually think? In words? Do we go by feeling? If our arm is itchy, do we say to ourselves 'my arms itchy', we may say it out loud for sympathy. It is very interesting how in the programme the monkey realised after a while, that to play the game he didn't need to move his arm to play the game, but his brain solely. Does this mean that we don't need our body, just our brain on its own to take control. Can a new language be formed or an original language that we have been unconscious of. The way our brain is coded is a language and form of communication. Is there a alphabet that's not been exposed. It is fascinating that we could potentially live forever. Our mind can be preserved or replicated and take control of everything around us, without a body.

Locked in syndrome is where someone is paralysed but the brain is fully intact. In the programme Eric is subject to this syndrome. He has had an electrode attached to his brain which gets amplified through an FM transmitter, which restores to Eric the power of speech. Eric thinks a sound which transmits to a computer and the computer says it. It is an understanding to create the building blocks to language.

This is a small glimpse of the moment we can be transformed into machines. Another scientist believes we can slow down the aging process by storing the content of our mind into a machine. So when we start to loose our minds, it is preserved. Providing radical life extension.

Professor Hugo De Garis believes we are not on the road to mortality but oblivion. He specialises in building human brains. This can enable humanity to build machines with capacities a trillion times bigger than human level, by looking into the most complex neuron networks. Artilects (artificial and intellects) are our future. But the concern is that we will be dominated by this power. It is predicted that there will be a war of for and against this godly formation. Arguably the war has already begun.

Between1978-1995 Theodore Kaczynski set off a series of bombs "to attract attention to the erosion of human freedom necessitated by modern technologies requiring large-scale organization" (from his unabomber manifesto in the new york times) but as a result killing 3 people and injuring 23 people. His drive was to derail a future in which humans will be transformed by technology. He was suspected of being insane because he took part in some pshcological experiments with drugs at University. However in the future he could be seen as a hero. The one man stand against technology.

There are quite dark research agencies such as DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). They have created projects that are risky. It is an agency formed from the drive to keep America in the lead. But not all of the research has been good. It was said that they created a gay bomb, where people would have substances implanted to create a overly high libido to the extent where the they rape anyone around them. And change your sexual orientation.

Professor Seth Lloyd toys with fundamental laws of nature. He has a unique vision that could spark a revolution. The idea that unlocking computer and powering it with atoms. So you are able to talk to individual atoms. It exploits a bizarre property of the atomic universe; Quantum mechanics. It will help to create multitasking. Atoms in a computer will be more powerful than humans.

Technology is developing ways of modifying human beings.
The three great scientific obstacles and challenges are the origin of the universe, origin of life and how the brain works.

Beliefs:
Approach the future with caution.
To improve the human being and society.
Technology is too powerful to stop.
It is the ultimate signs of humanity is to embrace and discover ourselves and whats around us.
In science there is no going back.
The greater moral dilemma;
-Humanity will be destroyed by technology.
-Tragedy if we do not try to build these Gods.

Bottom drawers

An exhibition about everyday treasures.

Rosario arranged for us to meet with Carl Clerkin, he kindly introduced us to his latest exhibition. It was set in an old house in Ealing Broadway.

Upper galleries; designs that capture the essence and stories that took place in the house.

There were some beautiful aspects of the house I wanted to document.
The lower gallery exhibits photography of people and their surroundings at home, they were relatives and friends of the curator. Below is an installation of all the objects found in the house. There was a brilliant 20 minute film, where about four people were interviewed regarding the way they hoard. It was called possessive. Each person was quite different. It was interesting to have an understanding as to why they hoard.

It was great to hear the curators side of the story. I thought it was a refreshing exhibition. I was a little disappointed when reading his gallery guide, as it had many errors. He admitted that it was last minute. It's a shame as it lets show down some what.

http://www.youngealing.co.uk/pm-gallery/sept-08/bottom-drawers-release.pdf

Pecha Kucha

17.10.08
First presentation

I choose Designer Saviour and Inevitable Airbag as my two projects to investigate. I put a sufficient presentation together. Unfortunately there were a lot of technical difficulties despite my preparation being 100% perfect. I kept my projects quite broad so I didn't find my territory from the feedback. I suggested pursuing Designer Saviour, But it is a difficult and controversial area to tap into. The project went more successfully than the inevitable airbag. I'm not so excited about that project because there are many design attempts, and I won't retrieve much substance from it.

"Pecha Kucha Night is a presentation format in which (mostly creative) work can be easily and informally shown.....a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. The format has spread virally to many cities across the world".

Prepare and present your two projects with 15 slides (7 slides per project). The presentation will be on a 20 second timer per slide. The 15th slide will explain your intended direction for week 4-6.

Below is my presentation;
1.

2.
3. Film

4. Film
5. Film
6. Film
7.8.

9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.

15.
Outcome
The above is various thoughts and ideas I had throughout this process. I would like to take film further. How people are perceived on camera and how different it is to interviewing them face to face.

Design Cafe week 1

Coffee and tea


Breakfast
Tea break
Lunch

busking busking busking

21.10.08
Professor John Wood gave a talk in the Ian Gulland theatre in Goldsmiths. Wood set up the Design course, it was originally meant to be called BA total design. The design course is steered towards micro utopia design. I intend to read his latest publication; "The Design of Micro-Utopias; thinking beyond the possible".
The following information on his background is extracted from the Goldsmtihs website;
"I studied Fine Art in the late 1960s and joined Goldsmiths as Deputy Head of the Fine Art Department in 1978. After ten years I wrote, and ran, a very thoughtful, broad, and ethically oriented BA(Hons) degree in design for what subsequently became known as the Design Department. Ten years later I wrote, launched and ran the current MA Design Futures programme. I currently supervise five doctoral students and have been involved in the completion of five others.

In the early seventies I invented and marketed several energy conservation systems, created some of the first animated holograms, developed electronic toys and invented an authoring software application (IDEAbase). As a solo and collaborating artist my work has been shown in 21 countries including the Australian Biennale (1988). My site-specific installations include a full size fake peep show built in Soho, London (1986). As a performer I recorded four albums and still, on occasion, play in public as a founder member of the cult band 'Deaf School'".

Below are some notes from his lecture;

What is the designers ultimate task?
Find synergies - synergy them.

Alan Smith and the invisible hand
"..every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good", plus.maths.org/issue14/features/smith/ by Helen Joyce.

Sustainability = loose an win
Multiple synergies

Designers are brought in to cultivate desire. Bill Gates famously said "Have anything, anytime, anywhere".
Follow ethical responsibilities need to know.

Re-design the economic life style:
Meta design;
-How to design language systems and ideas
-Tasks are too complex for individual designers
-Intervenes creatively at the level of language
-Team process
-Fractal forms

Design Shamanism
Self reflective awareness
Forbidden planet
Use painting for film making
Fiddling with the iconography of the digital - circuiting
Design gadgets that are interactive
- making music -people can busk from
- make noises - effected by singing

The machine for saying sorry
A circuit printed onto ceramic platinum plaster- can try to play times.
Voice synthesizer
Create a user interfere that will enable you to make words by moving it around.
But at the time Wood felt he was creating products that weren't really needed.
Sun
Rations the amount of sun light

Shaping the destiny of art and design.
Joanna Kirk a graduated from the fine art course at Goldsmiths, presented on Hartbeat with Tony Hart.
Gillian Wearing also graduated from Goldsmiths.

A clock existing in two places. Talking mirror; would speak to you according to where you stood. Close encounters badge. Blue movie series.

Animated holograms
Mick Roberts and Colin Day
Godbold and Wood

A gadget that has a circular spring.

Clocks are designed to be ignorant. the better they are, the more ignorant. The clock knows nothing. We are dependant. Make clocks more symbiotic and synergistic.
Heraclitus: fragment 50. Links between them.

If you only believe in the negative then you reduce the solutions.

Another publication: The journal of writing in a creative practice.Is the universe polymorphicly perverse?
Drawn in a psychological level.

Sustainability- nothing is sustainable. It's rigid. A lot of work to be redeemed. Misleading terms.

Dali quotes.

Paul Klee; "Taking the line for a walk" Steering in a formal direction. Logic of steering can be like reversing a lorry. Psychology discourse.

Hermetic/ mercurial tradition.
Greedy opportunism.
Entrepreneur- compensatory holding term language.
-creative adaptive interdisciplinary.

Goddur

16.10.08
Gudmundur Oddur Magnusson
"From fine art towards design; vernacularism and the art of Alchemy" Goddur's quote on his facebook photo album.

A lecture was arranged last minute for the Design department to attend. It was brilliant. Goddur was in England on business, his Circus project showing at the Frieze Art Fair.

Firstly, he talked about his background. He did a fine art degree in Vancouver. At the age of 30, he became a graphic designer. He is now a Professor at the Icelandic academy of arts. He always has something to do with fine art.

Goddur would like to teach an understanding, this lecture was a performance about creative thinking. So he constructed a chart that teaches how to create the best idea. Being aware of this map helps to deal with students problems. It's a difference between mad and a territory.
"Honesty contrasting the work to the shiny design world" Goddur.

Below are the following notes I took from his lecture;

If all these levels meet, you are making good. Making value out of things that have no value. Spirit in the matter that creates value; the concept.

No one who creates master pieces are aware of it. Using drugs helps to think deeply, but ruins things as it takes you over the verge.

Religious- spirituality can be beautiful. Flying without substances. Being crazy without being crazy. The chart helps to keep things clear. Freud tried to do things scientifically.

A publication: The Hero with a thousand faces.

History of ideas are not linear, there is an inner and outer light.

Use of icons instead of analysing . More interesting to be spiritual rather than conceptual, binary opposites.

Matt Jones

20.10.08
Anything essential is invisible
Matt Jones is the co founder of Dopplr, a web company to do with optimising your travel. Previous to this company he studied to be an architect, which he packed in due to recession. Since, Matt has worked for the BBC and Nokia.

Below are some notes;

"Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle", making the invisible visible.

It was built from the following concepts;
-Personal sensors
-Direct reporting
-Sensors in you environment
-Bureaucratic sources
-Attention Data
-Objects that report to the network
All about sharing.

Tom Cootes talks of "instrumenting your life"
Last.fm- builds up a profile from your itunes.

Physical generation of digital assets. Physical generation of stuff. Creating media about health. The qualified self site; tools for knowing and understanding your body. The phone is a sensory platform. This item has potential to notice things out of your spectrum, which can report to your network.

Dan Hill- Cityofsound.com
Decibels- portraying sound in an environment that's invisible by making it visible.
Bjorn- stanford Aldwind.

Instrumental world. Find the essential thing and edit, edit, edit, less is more. But the companies philosophy is to try and find a visual language. Stamen.com- Stamen design. Blow up every idea. Sean Allen (stamen) made a visualisation of the date set in material stitching form.

ARVP design engineers and architecture. About scales not weight. Creating data toys.

The more actively in service, the more personalised you are with the brand. The logo changes shades of colours.

Service design; putting a tiny delight for the user to act around. Magical---.com.

Start to expose tomtom's. what will we loose from ourselves.

Technology into the future how far is too far? What technology do we push into the world?

How do we use what is pushed out? Technological ideas take seven years to create (Nokia).
It's a case of re-rooting around songs. Material is sourced two years before the idea.

Ethnography

Foxcon; China. Rain design cities.

Dopplr is funded by investors.

Ideology of the iconic

RIBA; printing and wax models.
Rapid prototyping is collapsing. Live prototyping. Changing behaviors, try something out to realise the fine balance.

Avni Patel

23.10.08
.... A Goldsmiths BA design graduate returned after ten years to talk about her work since graduating. Avni specialises in graphic design.When it was a four year course, Avni worked with Drive communications in New York on a years placement (www.drivecom.com) where she redesigned the companies logo. When she returned to college her degree project was about mapping cultural identity. Whilst in her final year she planned to do another internship when she would graduate. She scrubbed up her portfolio and had several attempts with pentagram, which she finally got a placement with. Avni mentioned how she wanted to further herself in her study, so she did a communication art and design MA at the RCA. Whilst studying there she had the opportunity to get involved in live briefs which were competition based.

After graduating she worked for David Adjaye associates (www.adjaye.com) of which she produced publications (www.hannahcollins.net). Then went on to South bank centre, which had a small team of designers with a heavy work load. New publications were brought out each week.

Now Avni is working at Thames and Hudson, whilst doing her own freelance work.

Avni's advice;
To show strong diversity through your portfolio. Show tactile and original pieces in the interview. Plenty of photographs are great. Show strong concepts, portray your process and the way you work through the portfolio. Have samples of work.

Have a good idea of who you would be comfortable working with regarding the size of the company. Big companies can afford for you to be creative.

Software skills are taken for granted, you are expected to know how to use them.

Your CV is a summary of your work. If its not well designed and/or the typeset isn't good it doesn't get looked at. It should bring a breath of fresh air. Dear Sir/ Madam doesn't get seen. Phone calls are often positive. Swat up about the company before interview. Not necessary to re-design your CV for every application. Always have questions about their work, especially for interview.

Avni believes we don't need more design companies. What is lacking in the industry is a strong in house team. Considering the current climate it is necessary to be a 'jack of all trades', be multidisciplinary and adaptable. Volunteer for everything. You shouldn't need to know everything, but play around with it. There is an argument for whether Quark or In design is to be used in the industry.

Thinking through drawing

Following the Pecha Kucha presentation's on two projects; Designer Saviour and Inevitable airbag. Monday 20th October was spent with drawing tasks. In order to find our territory for our final major project. I hesitated to start with, concerned with the acknowledgment of my subject for this year. However after being allowed a moment of brainstorming (writing) I realised that a lot of my interests will, overtime, become self contained in the project. I will subconsciously take the experiments and work in a particular direction. The area I am dabbling in is the artificial, I have been drawing from 10 (key) words that help to identify ideas and experiments. I would like to bring ethics into the project. Other areas of interest are communication and language, Social etiquette and our future.  I found a link with the two projects I did last week and think there is some relation to what I am currently investigating.

21.10.08

I am concerned that the studio is very distracting and hard to completely immerse myself within the project. But I am trying to settle comfortably and try to overcome it, because it is better to be amongst everyone. However I will do some work on Saturday to make sure I am completely immersed and understand where i'm at. Making sure i'm comfortable and if not rectify that.
22.10.08


For the rest of the week I have been drawing. I have decided not to worry about how it looks; as long as I can understand it and get ideas from it. It has been ten times as hard to think through drawing. It is a comforting feeling that most of my year struggle with this as well and often write to create ideas. So we can all battle through this together. I am slowly getting through this, I will perform much better tomorrow. I have bought a scroll of paper as a way of trying to process ideas easier. I wanted to document everything down on this paper, such as lecture notes, so i document all of my thoughts in one, but it is quite difficult, anyway, we shall see.
23.10.08