Thursday, December 10, 2009
a privatized public?
Friday, November 13, 2009
renewed faith in public space
The work that i do as a public artist is related to this, i like to question what conversation means and what it involves in a public setting, but at times it begins to feel like my efforts are futile.
The other day however there was a woman who reaffirmed what i am doing. I was walking down 5th ave and came up to 14th st and just as i am about to cross the intersection, a woman runs up to me and asks me if i would drop her mail in the mailbox across the street. At first i was very taken aback, all i could do was stand there with a goofy smile on my face as the words that she was saying were registering in my head. Finally i took the mail from her and watched her walk away. i dropped it in the box and walked away wondering if someone was following me with a camera, this kind of stuff doesnt just happen in public anymore. This little exchange is what i think public space has lost and what through my work i would like to see begin to reappear.
I kept walking with a smile on my face. :)
Monday, October 5, 2009
public space and wifi
Monday, September 14, 2009
the essence of twitter
"The global initiative was born on January 8, 2009 with a single tweet asking cities to join together and hold their own Twestivals on February 12th to support charity: water. The response was overwhelming positive, with more than 200 cities and 1,000 volunteers all working together to bring in over $250,000 for the cause."
This to me was quite stunning, to see that this is the capacity of a tool like twitter, which upon first glance is just the friend feed on facebook, its microblogging, it seems like it has no substance. what followed after was also quite amazing.
"This time around, Twestival is localized. It still has the same international appeal, but each city is raising money for their own community causes."
This to me is whats beautiful. I am a full supporter of the phrase "Think global, act local" because what you do where you are can act as a catalyst for change anywhere else. We have a lot of problems that we are facing now, and many people wonder how exactly are we going to solve them. Are we entering the Great Depression of our time? Is there gonna be a world for our children to live in? How are cities gonna keep supporting the mass influx of people? Will NYC flood? What are we going to do come Peak Oil? There certainly isnt a lack of questions for us to ask, but in my opinion the problem becomes how do we begin to act on them. How can we begin to act locally, truly locally, in an increasingly digital and distant world.
This is when i come back to twitter. And not just twitter, but AIM, G chat, Blogging, Facebook, Digg and all the rest of the social media with which i am not familiar. What makes them successful?
Is it Brevity?
Is it the fact that we can stay anonymous?
Is it because the people are strangers?
Because they cant see my facial Expressions?
Because i can pretend to be someone that I'm not?
Because i can show people the face that i want them to see?
Because the internet makes people braver?
I believe that these tools and the myriad of things that they can accomplish are astounding, but i wonder how we can take these tools and bring them back into the analog world? Can i make a paper twitter? can my clothes have a barcode with which people can read my profile? can i carry a screen over my head that constantly tells people what im feeling? How can we begin to break down the social boundaries that are so prevalent in big cities and begin to act with the people who live next door to us, to bring about local change?
Thursday, May 7, 2009
small,local, open, connected... incited?
There are many different kinds of designers and they all happen to do various different things. There are product designers, communication designers, information designers, interaction designers, computer designers, software designers and also system designers. One of the new emerging ways of thinking of design is by thinking of systems and processes. This is the notion that no design is separate from the world around it. Posters designed by communication designers operate in multiple fields. They could be a billboard that is on the highway, a poster on a bus stop, an ad in a train or on the side of a bus, in a newspaper or magazine, a book, an ad on a website, etc. What this means is that there are countless ways in which people interact with a design and these methods of interaction need to be accounted for. But it isn’t only the interaction that needs to be thought of. What if the poster is advertising a local farmers market and inviting you to become a member. The poster then becomes the gateway for action asks you to then do something. If one were to get involved one might perhaps then need to look at farming and gardening, and thus one might need to buy or learn to use certain products that are required of gardening. One might need to buy a shovel, some gloves, a rake and perhaps even a book on how to garden. The poster is then the gateway that leads to interaction with products. This understanding of how design and the things that we have in our lives are a part of larger systems is a relatively new way of thinking and these systems need to be designed.
One of the tools that is used for this new form of design is a scenario. A scenario is a vision of the future and the acceptance of a certain outcome. A designer can follow trends and envision a certain way in which the world is operating and pick a future that is a result of these trends, after this the designer then designs for that scenario to become a reality. Given the situation that we are in right now where we are currently in an environmental crisis, we begin to look for ways in which we can begin to solve the current situation. Manzini proposes a scenario that gives us a way in which to begin to operate. Having looked at trends of new forms of “creative communities” where people have begun to empower themselves in order to change the situation that they are in, Manzini’s scenario states that this is the way people will continue to act. Examples of these creative communities are farmers markets, community gardens, park groups that organize to better their surroundings, communities that structure themselves so that children can walk to school, communities that start their own nurseries. These new ways in which people are beginning to give power to themselves and organize are the crucial support for Manzini’s scenario.
The next important part of Manzini’s scenario is that of “Collaborative Networks.” These networks are the results of the internet age in which we live where new forms of information sharing have become possible. The examples are Wikipedia and social networking sites such as Facebook, Meetup, Couchsurfing, etc. These new forms of communication and connectivity have allowed for new forms of organizing and Manzini’s scenario is that these new ways of organizing will support “creative communities” and create a world that is “small, local, open, and connected.” What this means is that everything will operate on a local scale with information flowing globally. People will have the networked communication of the entire world but will use that in order to create local creative solutions. In Manzini’s proposal small is not small and local is not local. This basically means that small and local are now referred to as nodes in a network where they operate in their node but are actually global and large. Given this scenario and all the supporting infrastructure and examples that exist, Manzini’s final solution was that designers need to begin to design systems that empower people to act. He believes that these creative networked societies will continue to exist and that designers need to design ways for people to adopt these practices. Meaning design a way for a community to start a community garden, design a system that allows for any citizen to become an advocate of his park, design a system that allows for traditional office spaces to disappear and allow for people to work from home. Manzini has given designers the goal of designing systems, and once these systems are in place people will adopt them.
My own views of this are that it is nothing special and nothing new. This has been the direction that design has been going for a while. Designers have already been aware of the new networked societies and creative communities and have been designing means for them. This is visible on the networked scale in the emergence of new forms of architecture such as the Strata Building at MIT that was designed by Frank Gehry. In the Strata building there is a constant connection to the internet through wi-fi and an understanding that people are becoming more nomadic and moving from place to place. The building was designed so that any place can become an ad-hoc classroom, lunch space, socializing venue or meeting location. This was because of the trend in wired society and networks. This is also visible in the Googleplex where workers can work from anywhere even on the bus that brings them to the office space. The office space is also not a traditional office space anymore but rather one that is multipurpose with spaces for play and recreation intermixed with office environments. Shortly the trends have been there and the design has begun to appear, all Manzini has done was create this vision of a future and given a call to designers to adopt this as the actual solution and group together these creative communities and collaborative networks. The question that I have is where does this faith in people come from? I understand that the examples already exist but I also understand that people are very picky in what they adopt, and what they choose to do. What is there to ensure that the people will adopt these systems? Is he basically stating that we need to design systems so well that people will want to adopt these new behaviors and change their lives? How does he propose we incite people to adopt these systems or is that supposed to be an afterthought once the systems are already there?
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Reasons to be Cheerful
These questions have many approaches. It is the mindset of many that there is a need for government action, that people need to wait and pressure the government to do something about it. This in my opinion has stemmed from the way the climate crisis is presented to the world. Many people feel that they are almost helpless to do anything about it, that the most that they can do is buy some energy saving light bulbs and save some money on electricity, or buy a hybrid car or take a bus. However for the most part this is a lot of what the information campaigns have argued for. The belief that the general population needs to take baby steps into the climate crisis, work their way slowly upwards till they can begin to make massive sacrifices for the kind of change that really needs to happen. This is because the crisis is presented to be large, foreign, dreadful and unmanageable. As Hobson puts it in his article "Reasons to be Cheerful" "the environment becomes a thing ‘out there’ to feel guilty and responsible about."
How then can we begin to understand that the environment is not something 'out there' but something that is here, small, simple, manageable and comprehensible. Would not that seemingly be the answer? Do we need to find a villain, someone to blame or hate? Do we adopt the philosophies of deep ecologists and begin to live an eco-centric life placing natures needs above our owns, instituting population control worldwide and changing our lives? Do we follow Earth First and start a massive sabotage campaign destroying cars and trucks, oil drills and tractors? Do we begin to understand that we are the villains? How can we begin to understand that the environment is 'in here' when "climate change scenarios and their ameliorative pathways are often framed and experienced as a lack, a sacrifice, a going without that no one really wants to endure. It is also hard for us, whether poor or rich, to imagine the potentially profound changes ahead without feeling overwhelmed and despondent at the potential breakdown of our ways of life" (Hobson P. 6).
And how in the world are we supposed to be cheerful about this? According to Hobson "‘being cheerful’ is a fundamental prerequisite to conducting research into pathways to a healthy and sustainable future." His argument is precisely that we need to be cheerful and that we should be. This is more than just the understanding that we can each do our own little bit and help the world. Some policies try to emphasize imagining that 1000 people did what you did. And yes it does put our little energy saving light bulbs into context and makes us feel that we have some sort of impact but that isn't why we need to be cheerful. It seems we need to be cheerful because we can start from 'where we are.' Hobson states "recent research argues that seemingly ‘ethical’ or ‘green’ consumption practices (e.g. buying Fair Trade goods) do not originate from or exist within a sphere of thought and action set apart from the other, more mundane practices of the everyday. Rather, they are extensions of already existing ‘ordinarily ethical’ modes of being, which are the basis from which a myriad of conscious daily decisions are made. What this means is that people already have an inherent want to live a mindful lifestyle. That we are not putting in our energy saving bulbs because we are making ourselves think about the environment and the impact of regular light bulbs but rather we do it without thinking about it, because it is not something that is foreign to us. I believe that as a people we all have an inherent love of nature, this is visible through the ways in which we create gardens, and lobby for parks, the pets that we own, the trees that we plant. It is visible by the price of real estate on a tree lined block vs a block without trees. It is visible through the advertisements of cars driving through gorgeous scenery, through the houses that overlook the seaside and our wants and needs of them. I agree that 'green' thought is not something that arises from a different part of us but it is rather in us. This means that beginning to understand those problems that we are so scared of is not by targeting through massive numbers, and it is not necessarily through governmental policy but rather it is something that we already know and feel. It is a matter of perspective, we already love nature, we already want nature, we already domesticate the environment and the world around us, it is in us.
This is the answer to our question, that the environment is not something 'out there' but it is rather something that we keep in our minds, that influences our decisions and our actions. The reason that we need to be cheerful is because we do care and love nature, and the ways in which to begin to live in a world that loves us back is precisely by starting 'where people are.' It is not about the energy saving light bulbs, or the hybrid cars, or the Kyoto Protocol and Obama Stimulus plan. It is about the simple fact that we all inherently care and thats what we need to start marketing, that is what people need to realize.
Monday, April 6, 2009
deep ecology and its problems
The environment is a complicated issue. There are many beliefs about how we should be handling the crisis that is upon us, and there are many different views on how significant the crisis really is and whether or not a crisis even exists or not. The study of the environment is dubbed ecology and inherent to ecology are many issues of conservation, however deep chasms exist in ecology, and it becomes clear that many of these chasms have been around for long periods of time prior to many of our lifetimes. Some view the environment as a resource, some view the environment as a creation of god, and some view the environment as a member of their own community whose needs they need to put before their own.
One good area to dive into in beginning to understand some of the viewpoints that exist is that of Deep Ecology as outlined and explained by Norwegian Philosopher Arne Naess in his writing of “The Deep Ecological Movement: Some Philosophical Aspects.” Naess describes Deep Ecology as “the ecology movement that questions deeper.”(p. 250) And what this basically means is that there is no reason for definitions, as Naess says “there is no reason why supporters of movements should adhere exactly to the same definition, or to any definition, for that matter.”(p. 242) What I find interesting in the way Naess frames Deep Ecology is that he specifies that it is not a philosophy but it is a movement. Movement means that this is not something that is grounded in the realm of theory but rather it is action, it is doing. Deep Ecology seems more a frame of mind or a way of living than it is a belief and there is no way to define a way to live. Deep Ecologists are people that as Naess puts it share similar ideals and many people who think that they aren’t Deep Ecologists may in fact be Deep Ecologists. What Naess argued and started his paper with is the idea that anyone “even those who completely subsume ecological policies under the narrow ends of human health and well being cannot attain their modest aims, at least not fully, without being joined by the supporters of deep ecology.”(p. 241) Because as Naess puts it sooner or later we will all be doing work so deep ecology becomes the premise from which conservation work will stem. This is Naess offering a middle ground, a place where both sides can converge in order to ultimately forward the goals of ecology and conservation. Naess establishes eight points that all deep ecologists agree to unanimously and one of these it that “humans have no right to reduce” the “richness and diversity” of non-human life “except to satisfy vital needs.”(p. 243) what Naess is saying here is that we are not the conquerors of this planet, the earth and life that surround us do not belong to us, we merely inhabit it like we rent our apartments. And so Naess says that when the non vital needs of humans come into conflict with the vital needs of non-humans than humans need to pull away and leave. But Naess makes no effort to define what constitutes a vital need. Are vital needs of humans the same worldwide? If so then what does he mean when he says that “differences in climate and related factors, together with differences in structures of societies as they now exist, need to be taken into consideration.”(p. 246) What are these structures and what exactly does he mean by this? Is Naess implying that not all humans are equal? Are these structures social in context? Are they biological? Naess provides no explanation to what exactly is meant by this rather he says that the goals of non-industrial or 3rd and 4th world countries “should not be seen as promoting lifestyles similar to those in rich countries.” And that we need to protect non-industrial countries from “invasion by industrial societies.” (p. 247) What exactly classifies invasion and how is it that these countries should work in order to attain their vital needs. Naess classifies many prohibitions but no solutions nor workable models. And given that we need to classify people by structures of society and that vital needs differ worldwide, who determines what is a vital need to every person in this world and while these needs are being determined what are we supposed to do in the meantime? Naess Presents many interesting and provoking arguments but he gives us nothing that we can grasp in our hands, there is nothing to understand, and he seems to eliminate the middle ground that he calls for in the beginning with every argument that he proposes.
However the most problematic part of Naess’ deep ecology model is something very different than anything that I have touched on thus far. Deep ecology’s most crucial premise I feel is one that Aldo Leopold proposed where the person is not a conqueror but rather a citizen of this planet on equal footing with everything that exists apart from us. This is primarily the belief that we view the world in a very anthropocentric manner and deep ecology seems to be screaming out with every fiber of its being that this needs to cease to exist. Where then does Naess get the justification to use the term “Non-human” to describe nature. It seems to me that the problem with Naess’ argument is one where the very language that he employs seems to undermine his entire belief system and the entire movement he is fighting for.