Narration in Supermarket

"Hmmmm... Shall I get Funsize apples or Pink Ladies....? Um.... I think I'll get pink ladies..... NO BRAEBURNS!!!!"

Possible Storyboard

1. Woman in Supermarket, maybe with a toddler, buys some apples. (Nandita Jain/david shrigley style)
2. She is overwhelmed by choice (run wrake style)
3.The apples have south african accents. (David Shrigley), a short bit of seeing where the apples came from...
4. She remembers a day when she picked apples with her grandma, it's quite charming but the grandma is a bit dysfunctional or suffering from dementia. (Brandi Strickland with David Shrigley Humour)
5. She has a day dram about growing her own apples (Brandi Strickland with David Shrigley Humour)

Overchoice Supermarket Breakdown

This is supposed to be about when overchoice can be paralysing. i.e. in the supermarket when you have 5 different kinds of orange juice to choose from. 

The idea of over choice is put forward by Renata Salecl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bqMY82xzWo

Sourcemap

Sourcemap is a website where you can see where different parts of consumer goods come from. Some of it is quite shocking. For example, look at all the different places that things are transported from to make a bottle of Tropicana Orange Juice. Think of all the polluting miles of airplane travel!

http://sourcemap.com/view/1011

This is my response.

Supermarket Alienation

So I thought it might be a better idea to stick to one narrow element of sustainable living- food. This is some more experimentation with after effects. I'm trying to show how people get overloaded with choice in supermarket.

Ironic Humour/After Effects

Here's some experimentation with David Shrigley-style ironic humour and some Aftereffects experimentation of an abstract conference in the beautiful starry sky.

Growing your own veg

This is supposed to be a Brandi Strickland-style vision of desirable sustainability, growing vegetables with Grandma

Experimental work so far...

This is my experimental work so far. I'm thinking about what I can take from this and develop into the final film.

I would like to show a desirable sustainable future with elements of...

1. visually appealing abstract images, to create some excitement about a sustainable future
2. Some humour, like that of David Shrigley or Shana Moulton, to create an acknowledgement of some of the contradictions inherent in presenting a desirable, low carbon future. And to avoid a falsely idealistic utopian vision which could dissend into dystopia.
3. Collaboration, engagement and interaction with the public.

It will include, video footage of fellow collaborators, drawings, video footage of nature, collage

David Shrigley/Jeremy Deller

I went to the Hayward Gallery Yesterday and saw an exhibition by David Shrigley and Jeremy Deller, I really liked the sardonic homour of Shrigley's work.

Gravestone 2008

I'd like to use some of this style humour in my work, because it seems to reveal the infallibility of the artist.

Jeremy Deller's work was also great, he uses ideas from popular culture like acid house, which I think makes his work more accessible to the public. His show was called Joy in people and he seems to be very collaborative with the public too, engaged in the public sector cuts strikes etc. 

I would also like to incorporate the engagement with the public in my work. 

Andy Field- Art about Climate Change

I also read an article by Any Field “Rules for Living” about how artists shouldn’t tell people about Climate Change because their not very good at it and it’s patronizing, especially as they’re usually middle class and have disposable incomes. What is better is to present another way of living. I think this is possibly slightly patronizing too though. I think maybe a better approach is to engage with this patronizing-ness. 

http://sotablog.artscouncil.org.uk/post/17659258310/rules-for-living

The Tellus Institute

The Tellus Institute has strated a “Great Transition Initiative”, a slightly wacky idea to [network to elaborate] visions and pathways for a future of enriched lives, human solidarity and a healthy planet. Even as environmental and social crises threaten the future of humanity and the earth, we believe a Great Transition is still possible if citizens around the world awaken and respond.’

It proposes 3 possible futures, things remain as they are, we live in ‘barbarism’ (a police stae) or ‘the great transition’(a kind of eco-utopia) 

http://www.tellus.org/

Problems of Utopias

In the Science Fiction Novel, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, individuals are repressed in a totalitarian dystopia,  under constant surveillance, although the presentation of the society is one of a utopia. I think in literature and history, idealistic utopias often have a sinister strand or ending, so I think it is important to keep this in mind.

John Grey describes in Black Mass how utopian thinking helps us avoid facing realities. For example, the invasion of Iraq was (supposedly) done with the view to establish democracy there. But this is perhaps a misguided, naive view, that democracy can or should be implemented everywhere, in places with out the social history that supports its establishment.

Utopian ideals of the past, marxism, hippy communes of the 60's, Fascist movements all had utopian strands and this was perhaps part of their dissent into dystopias. 

Responses to Task 2

1. Benevolent Advertising This is one response to task 2- Design a fictitious Island. On this Island, the psychological knowledge of advertisers is not used to maximise profits, but well being to the consumers. They scan our genetic material and analyse our unconscious desires to determine the courses of action most beneficial to us and our surroundings. For example, emotional hang ups and insecurities are revealed and a clearer path of actions true to ourselves and responsible to our surroundings are formed.

2. Personality Modifier. With these glasses trying co-workers become friendly team members. A worker with a sardonic worldview can put on the glasses to interact with someone perky and naive. The glasses translate their words and body language into someone who communicates on the same cynical wavelength. Communication is easy and enjoyable. Resentments disappear. 

3. No taxes, everyone does voluntary work. Instead of the resentments brought on by a public assuming taxes are spent irresponsibly, taxes are abolished, but everyone does enjoyable, fulfilling voluntary work. Different roles can be chosen according to preference, working with kids, the elderly, keeping roads and streets clean. People become more engaged with each other and communities are strengthened.

Task 2

Award Specific Unit 4

Date: 2 February 2012

Workshop 2: Agents of Change – A Reaction to Rationalism

- Critical Design, Design as Author, Design Fiction, Futurescaping.

ʻSurveying the bounds of the believable and pressing against the perimeter of

the possibleʼ.

How designers challenge our assumptions and preconceptions about the role

that products and services play in everyday life.

Inform an enquiry with the design task below.

Extend this into your design practice and document your process. Ready for

assessment.

Deadline: Ongoing

Design Task:

Design a fictitious island

Part conversation, part design fiction and part manifesto.

This task will provide you with a critical framework in which to develop designs

for a new or alternative product & service, a categorisation for citizens, an

environment for living or an entirely new mode for advertisement and

branding.

Urban spaces will soon be saturated with both visible and hidden

technologies that gather, transmit, regulate and modify data and human

perception.

Urban experience is enhanced by media that increasingly enables

simultaneous existence in both the realm of the virtual and real.

By way of design fiction, explore where physical, virtual and fictional worlds

connect. Develop final design components into a set of documents for

circulation across a range of media.

Through designing fictitious Islands we are expressing our interest in

the processes and dynamics that shape the present moment: in the

tools and products we use, the things we experience, the ways we think

about ourselves, and the world in which we inhabit.

Referenced exhibitions:

Ideal City Invisible Cities

http://www.idealcity-invisiblecities.org/231/

Mega-structure Reloaded

http://www.megastructure-reloaded.org/superstudio/

Forms of Inquiry

http://formsofinquiry.com/

Referenced Design Agencies:

Superflux

http://www.superflux.in/

Videos:

City of Men – Slovaj Zizek

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbgrwNP_gYE

A day made of glass – Corning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38

Microsoft Visions of the Future Parody

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0USn7eufXps

Slovaj Zizek – The Awakening

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGrfYiGWZ1s

Future of Mud

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vkxju6aoZw

Song of the Machine

http://vimeo.com/22616192

Extended reading:

Owens, Mark. ʻ Forms of Inquiryʼ 2007

http://projectprojects.com/forms-of-inquiry/?view=thumb

Lukic, Branko. ʻ NONOBJECTʼ 2011

Http://www.nonobject.com

Poyner, Rick. ʻ Critical Omissionsʼ

http://www.icograda.org/feature/current/articles1273.htm

Video Collage- Response to Task One

Video Sketch Book

I made an archive of videos for the sketchbook task. They include videos of cute animals, sloths, dolphins and children playing, scenes from a Bollywood film, Dilwale and some cheesy 80 videos from midnight star, Grace Jones and John Foxx.  I also put in collages from Brandi Strickland, Sun ra Album covers and a sesame street animationWith these images I wanted to look into the theme of kitsch and nature.

I started with a lot more still images but I thought it would be better to keep as much moving as possible. I want to try to make a video in my final work about a desirable vision of sustainability, but I'm wondering if too much kitsch or irony will undermine the message or make it more honest to the viewer, by acknowledging some of the ironies of sustainability and making it look appealing.

Task 1

Award Specific Unit 4

Date : 2 February 2012

Workshop 1 : Mash Potato Mountain

- Briefing. Sketchbooks. Online Image Aggregators. The Extended Mind

Surfacing ones own practice. Investigating the relation between order and

chance and the ways in which randomness, when given a particular frame,

can reveal unexpected and new patterns.

Develop an enquiry into one of the two design tasks as stated below.

Extend this into your design practice and document your process. Ready for

assessment.

Deadline: Ongoing

Design Task:

Explore the trans-formative material / pictorial artifacts imposed upon an

original image (self designed or found) as it passes into a digital medium.

Consider the effects of it being downloaded & distributed via the www. How

does this process conceptually & visually alter the original image? How does

this change its intended meaning? What is lost and what is gained from an

image becoming 'available' & 'accessible' to a global market?

How can you effectively convey this altered meaning through design? Develop

a poster and consider the effects of dispersal /compression / disintegration /

multiplicity over the original.

Design Task 2:

Designer as archivist. Using found imagery communicate an idea based on

visual content / context and/or composition/ colour & form.

Organise these images without commentary and according to your own

taxonomy.

Expand upon the notion of a visual narrative and explore diversity and

specificity through your approach.

Consider the use of Internet tools and be creative in the way you use these

tools, don't limit yourself exclusively to sourcing your images online.

During this design task, document your process of selection.

'the more we get involved with this process of entropy as an organizing force

the more planning and chance become the same thing' - Robert Smithson

Referenced work:

Hans Peter Feldmann - Sonntagsbilder

http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/2718200

http://www.303gallery.com/artists/hanspeter_

feldmann/index.php?exhid=73&p=images

R.Arden - The World as Will and Representation

http://www.royarden.com/pages/worldas.html

Image Archives:

Collect the World Exhibition 2011

http://collectheworld.tumblr.com/archive

Golden Voyager Record Mission 1977

http://www.laboiteverte.fr/le-voyager-golden-record-comment-se-presenteraux-

extraterrestres/

Online search tools:

Google image recognition

http://www.google.com/insidesearch/searchbyimage.html

Search by drawing

http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/

Search by colour

http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#

Image Aggregators:

http://jjjjound.com/

http://ffffound.com/

http://haw-lin.com/

Extended reading:

Nelson, Gerald. ʻDDDDoomedʼ Oct 2011.

http://www.makingknown.org/editionmk/

Troemel, Brad 'Obsession With Compression' March 2011.

http://cerealrecords.com/3318/

Nash, Adam. Dodds, Christoper. 'Manifesto Of Virtual Art'. Mar 2010.

http://www.acva.net.au/blog/detail/acva_manifesto_of_virtual_art

Benjamin, Walter.

Nuclear Power, Sell the Sizzle

I have a friend who works for Parliament advising on energy and we were talking about the nuclear power debate. He said that while nulcear power may have drawbacks, he sees it as the lesser of two evils. It's carbon emissions are much less than fossil fuel energy.

Also, while in Fukushima there was a nuclear disataster, another nuclear factory nearby had technology that switched itself off when it got things went wrong. 

Things like wind energy are great, but blades must be replace, all nedding a great deal of energy. 

He recommended a sustainable design agency called futerra, in their “sell the sizzle” report 2011, they talk about how doom and gloom is not motivating and it is necessary to show  positive vision of sustainabilty. 

You have to “sell” sustainabilty. But in advertsing you dont selel the suasage you sell the “sizzle” ie.e you have to selll the excitemnt surrounding it.

http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/Sellthesizzle.pdf

Shana Moulton

During a feedback session with Jaygo about the RIPU, I was told that it's important to try to place my work in a context and I was introduced  to a video artist called Shana Moulton. I really enjoyed her work, she has invented an alterego named Cynthia, a hypochondriac recluse who surrounds herself with self-help, new age kitsch and has hallucinations. I thought it was really funny and I feel like I’d like to introduce something of that humour in my work. 

I was planning to go down quite a predictable route of climate change public warning communications. But the idea of this humorous new age kitsch could a more exciting, although much more challenging route

.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNtWstWX5Lg

Nandita Jain

I also saw a really interesting animation called Labyrinth by the Animator Nandita Jain. It's only a minute long , and it shows a little girl getting lost on the tube. I think the imagery and style is really clever because it captures all the scenes from the underground but it's also quite abstract, I thought I could make something similar in style about a Climate Change worst Scenario. 

http://vimeo.com/22882006

BBC Climate Change Experiment Worst case Scenario 2080

I had the idea of presenting a kind of 'worst case scenario 2080', plagued by floods, fires, agricultural problems and loads of refugees, based on the BBC's Climate Change Experiment, where scientists and the public try to predict the worst of climate change problems in 2080. For example, floods, fires, agricultural problems, refugees.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/climateexperiment/

Sustainabilty

For the ASU4, I would like to carrying on some of the ideas from the previous Unit. I looked at Product Service Systems, a way to create a more sustainable method of consumption, based on the idea that when you buy something, when you are finished with it you have to take the product back for recycling. Thus people no longer buy products but buy services, and this would curb consumption habits and hopefully lead to the protection of the environment and natural resources.

I also looked at the problems with this idea. For example, our economic framework supports consumption and the idea of private property is deeply ingrained. Forcing people to give up their things could appear authoritarian.

However, the problems facing our planet are very real and so we need to find some solutions...