Barbican Screen Printing

We ran a workshop at the Barbican as part of their lates programme. The idea was a £3 bazaar, where no item or stall could cost more than three pounds. We had sets of stencils of people at a christmas party and let people choose the legs, torso and head of the character as well as the colours of ink and paper, they then got to learn to print it them selves. It perhaps was a little over ambitious, and too labour intensive. I can't say it was a success as we were unable to work efficiently enough to make the money we would have hoped for. However we were really happy with the concept and think with some refinement it could be great. The girls who we went with made a packet on their badge/ jewelery/ christmas card stall. I was working with Sam who is pictured below.

Democracy: Greenwich

Talking in a new borough, this time Greenwich. Probably a slightly different cross section of society and a larger tourist population.

Personal Pronouns

The use of personal pronouns in a selection of famous speeches from democratic countries. I was interested in seeing how leaders communicate with the people they are supposed to represent; whether they think of themselves as apart from them (i.e I and You) or connected (i.e We). Its far from definite but just interesting to look at. Context of course plays a huge part.

Democracy: Lewisham

A follow up to last weeks Deptford video, I went talking to people in Lewisham their views on the same two questions: 'What does the word democracy mean to you?' and 'Where do we have an impact on,or connect to Democracy?'

Democracy Video

A video on the streets of Deptford (in Lewisham), looking at the public view of democracy.

Document: Week 5

This weeks document, containing my fictions and images of my process and outcome. The front cover is intentionally a little austere, to match the bleakness of the short story and the outcome. The paper I used on the cover is really nice, got it from atlantis a while back. I forget the name but its a heavy hand made paper with a really nice texture. *geeky paper bit finished

Pound Shop Objects.

A project we did on artifact-based imagined futures this week. Taking no more than 5 things from a pound shop we had to suggest a future using an object and a fiction. One was supposed to inform the other and vice versa. A sort of creative dialogue between the two. The short fiction I wrote is below, however it probably fails to explain fully enough the world I imagined and just suggests a few parts of it. I may add the more complete description in time
I'm not sure how useful this week was for me or how successful my process was. I'm still pretty confused about the feedback that I got. The suggestion seems to be that my object associated too much with something, as ever there is a certain lottery about what response you receive, which is often frustrating when you work so hard. Though I acknowledge that I was too influenced by a James Auger lecture I attended which showed in my final outcome.

"Something never sat right with me about that," I said as I watched the puddles swelling in the rain.

"Why do they only copy what we already have."

Food was being slopped in tiny portions from large grey drums. A Ro-mu hovered by scanning for life. The rain fell and the queue stretched back for miles. The never ending queue, to eat from the drum. The man from downstairs began to reply.

"It's a way in." His creased and sickly face looked up, "Like a subtle evolution, one day its a real cat, the next it's robotic, its the only way we accept it."

We inched forward, probably using more energy in the act of queuing than we are likely to get from what meagre portions await us.

"Take the Ro-mu, it become its own species, but without the invention of the cat, it can't exist."

I saw he was half watching something and turned; a Ro-mu had captured and killed a mouse and was in the process of digesting it.

"So now we have a robotic mouse, eating real mice to survive, a pale replica of life." I said.

He showed no sign of having heard.

"Its not about looking back though, the real question is, what's next?"

He was right of course, as we watched the Ro-mu complete it's re-charge and begin scanning a feeble looking elderly lady. Collecting and uploading information, profiling the human species. On the wall in front of us, painted and un dimmed by the rain, showed a red symetrical symbol, an anti-human symbol seen a few times in shadowy corners throughout the last century, but this time not hidden or secretive but glowing in full public view.

Four so far.

These are the four diary (weekly) documents for my final project so far. Each one shows what I did in that particular week, and tries to relate it to my theme where possible.

Week 4, context debate.

Document from context report. Really enjoyed this as I was free much free-er in making it and didn't worry about having a grid or a specific system. It lead to some nice moments and a few less impressive spreads, but over all, having fun is the key to this diary.

Week 3; Voter Influence.

Here's the delayed document from week three. Its a little lighter than some of the others, but still explores and interesting area.I'm looking at influencing voters with key themes and imagery to suggest up to the moment information on key parties and debates. My object trawled twitter for the search term democracy next to a ballot box. It will only become interesting once put to use.

Presenting...

We presented yesterday and it went reasonably well, however we lost by a narrow margin to the opposition who had an excellent speach (and more precise presentation) than us. It was heaps of fun and I got a lot out of it. Mostly working well in a group and learning to perhaps be a bit more succinct next time. Hopefully there will be some pictures of when we were presenting soon.

Eat-Dough

To advance our arguement and explore the statement that we were given, we decided that it made sense to look at dough. In particular the difference of dough in famine countries contrasted by play-dough in the western world, where food sources are poisoned in effect for our entertainment.

To be clear, this is not a critique of that, but rather an example of why context is all important in design and must drive the process. Imagine trying to justify colourful inedible dough to children in famine ridden countries. As an illustration of this we packaged an edible play-dough like product for that market.

Context

This week we are engaging in a department wide brief, where we have to debate a number of themes. We were addressing the question, design should be/ is context driven. We will have to fight it out with a group arguing the opposite on friday. This leaflet was designed to give direction to our argument and the stamp hopefully will be used to brand other peoples proposals and show that everything is a context.

Drawing Document

Last week was spent drawing as a way of expanding and exploring my project theme. I've gathered the work into this medium sized booklet for future reference and as a way of documenting. You can start to see a theme of documenting each week with a booklet. I'm going to have to knuckle down to make this weeks one interesting now.

Final Project Brief.

The last week has been spent refining the brief for my final project. It is not concrete necessarily but represents a flag in the sand, with regards to outlining what I will be exploring for the foreseeable future. The document is 16 pages of objects, ideas, references and people that my be useful in my exploration of the area. An uploaded pdf is available here: bgbarker.com/briefdoc01

Democracy Map

I am beginning an exploration of my possible (read probable) final project territory.  This was a poster to map how we (humans) connect to democracy. The inspiration came from a silly story in America where people were using tax payers money (through credits) to buy golf carts. The governments response was to do nothing. I felt this disconnect was interesting and could form a basis for project understanding why we feel so removed from our money. I've been speaking with local councils to gauge their opinions on this. (thanks to Matt Ward for the image)

Christopher Baker Influenced Ideation.

In exploring new ways of generating ideas I drew on a piece of work by Christopher Baker, famous from the Data Flow book. He made an average gun by taking a line drawing of every toy gun patent ever filed in the US and laying them over the top of each other to make an average. Its a very beautiful thing. My posters were made from a series of robots that I made using everyday technologies, like the wii remote, a laptop and an electric tooth brush. It was hoped that while I was building these robots, I would start to make connection between thing that I would otherwise not have considered. In other words I was distracting myself by making robots, whilst I was actually coming up with the seeds of an idea.

Digital Interfaces in the Real World

These were illustrations of idea I had had for using digital interfaces in new contexts. Specifically in areas where it avoided a question. I had be struck by a couple of points that Tom Igoe had made in his book Making Things Talk. He was referring to the way interfaces should be designed to keep the user in the loop and understanding the process that was going on. If it was common for a pregnant lady to wear a loading screen, or a sleeping person to show a buffering bar. I also tried to represent the idea of a real world colour picker in the video below.

Exploring Choice

Through an exploration of negative intervention for brief developement. I arrived at an area that was interesting to me which was that a negative impact can affect the number of choices available, which can have a positive impact. This brief can lead to explorations of how we can navigate (or possibly remove) the choices of modern life. The video was designed to represent the noise of modern life.

Little Book

A booklet I've made to collect the results of my survey of the pubs in New Cross. I was surveying them to understand the impact of the heavy snow day in February earlier this year. It is part of a project to understand if positives can come from a negative impact.

Screen Printed t-shirt.

I decided to learn some screen printing technique as the chance presented itself. This was done using two photographically exposed screens and two colours.