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lorenasworkbook · 5 years ago

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Corona Virus

We were planning to conduct at least one more experiment. We wanted to explore the idea of bringing people together while also observing more how people who are not participating will be affected by the idea. It seemed like the experiments helped to develop our idea quite a bit but this time it wasn’t the rain that interrupted us. Due to the pandemic we were asked to stay at home so we could not meet or conduct any experiments anymore so we virtually met to develop our idea. I even went back to a previous post, more precisely the “What If” when I imagined how it would be if the cities were empty because of an acid rain. The reason is not the same but it’s the same outcome. Being in quarantine. While many people are not happy we must stay home, it is understandable that we must stay and we needed to adapt to it and meet virtually to finalise our idea.

I was even furloughed after firstly being told I will be fired. You can imagine it wasn’t the best week but now at least I do not have to worry as much as I will still get some money and I am healthy. Plus, now I also have some free time to play or create art. I bought some clay so I would sculpt again.

I found many posts showing how famous artists spent their time in quarantine such as Munch during The Spanish Flu

and even Gustav Klimt

or Van Dyck

https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/culture/2020/03/24/five-great-painters-who-did-art-in-times-of-plague

Also it is interesting how now that people have much more time, they are recreating famous paintings. Some are really good while some are completely hilarious.

We could get inspiration from this and develop and adapt tasks and adventures based on it for our idea.

One last thing I want to mention is how many conspiracy theories are there at the moment.

There are people taking down 5G towers because they believe it brings the virus... from what I understand it is some fake news which started in Russia. While there might be some health related issues with 5G, in my opinion this just shows more how people are afraid of change.

This cartoon was exposed to promote Edison's direct current instead of Nikola Tesla's alternating current. Anyway, people were and are afraid of change.

This is the new cartoon against 5G.

Why am I talking about this? Because in a similar way, being afraid of change, people may be reluctant from using our new technology that we would like to implement and we have to be aware of the technology acceptance when implementing something new.

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lorenasworkbook · 5 years ago

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Neil’s Yard Experiment

In order to explore how the avatars would bring people together and prompt them to collaborate in a space we returned to Neil’s Yard to conduct another experiment.

As it was only 3 of us at the time we asked friends to join us if possible. We gave them a balloons each and asked them to do some tasks. While Isa was The Wizard of Oz again, me and Kasia filmed the experiment.

We prepared 3 different main tasks and we asked two people from the public if they would like to join in (we had the form consents too) and we were lucky enough and so they did. (these 2 guys who were in holiday from Germany)

Isa (who was playing the avatars) gave them some specific individual tasks and were prompted to join the other avatars (our friends) to do some tasks together.

As a result:

Collaboration took place

The participants said they were comfortable because other avatar owners seemed similar to them (through the ownership of the avatar),

The collaboration and talking with strangers was valuable to participants – “I really liked working with the Tiger” (who was one of our friends) and mentioned how they wouldn’t have done any of that without us initiating it.

Me and Kasia also observed how the activity might have been disturbing to other users of the spaces, especially workers in the area and we kept this in mind. There was this guy carrying some things around. the first time he looked a bit weird at us, also I almost hit him as I did not see him there. After a couple more times of going back and fourth he actually smiled and it felt like he was getting used to the idea and becoming even interested.

This was the next thing to focus on. Impact on other people around.

P.S. By mistake I lost my monkey avatar. Sorry, Isa! We can say I made him free, hahaha. I am wondering where he ended up.

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lorenasworkbook · 5 years ago

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Chat at the Barbican

We all met at the Barbican. I can say we were quite happy with the results from our experiments and it was good to get some feedback.

What we needed to look into more now was that we were worried that the person would take the avatar as being enough and this would be a barrier for the person to meet new people, which was not what we wanted to achieve. We wanted the avatar to guide them and show people things that they might miss otherwise, or make them see things differently. We also previously discussed how the avatar will bring people together, rather than the person becoming friends with avatar and not look further to meet new people, so exactly otherwise.

This discussion reminded me of the similarities of this concept with AIs in different movies/series/books:

Altered Carbon

Poe was a nanobot artificial construct that aided the main character, Takeshi Kovacs. He was tethered to Takeshi and followed him everywhere. The other, Dig 301, is an AI that joined them later and took Poe’s place as Takeshi’s AI for a short while. In the series the AI are already outdated and people avoid them because they are too clingy. Originally the AI was supposed to be Jimi Hendrix by following the book but they declined production rights and therefore Poe was adapted as being the father of modern detective stories. Apparently he is popular in TV adaptations as I remember “The Raven” being the theme song of a series I once saw about a cult and FBI named “The Following”. Poe appeared in DC Comics and he even was in Simpsons.

Blade Runner

A 'Giant' Hologram named Joi that the main character fell in love with

HER?

This is just Voice AI but follows a similar theme about love.

JARVIS in Iron Man

JARVIS is like a personal assistant.

Kiss Me If You Can and Reverie have as main theme getting into VR and not wanting to leave, but this is already another discussion.

Also, while not many people are fans of brutalist achitecture, I must say I quite enjoy it and I took a few pixtures of the Barbican Estate:

I find it quite inspiring. There’s something about it. Even the loo reminds me of something, a great movie: “A Clockwork Orange”.

Also, I really like the conservatory, the post-apocalyptic atmosphere of nature reclaiming its place. Something I will try to show in my final drawing.

I do not have a picture of the inside, but I found this great picture taken by Mickey Knox. It feels very similar to the National Theatre where we conducted out last experiment. Here are also a few pics I took then. How can our idea be better included here? Why do I find it so intriguing? Is it because of the few influences I had back home that I briefly discussed in a previous post?

Here are some more amazing pictures taken by David Hoffman:

https://britishculturearchive.co.uk/2019/10/20/david-hoffmans-images-of-the-barbican-estate-1975/?fbclid=IwAR1cL7aUE9CaF1Nl2OGgn1r6Zal9k8vM2yJd6613_MZYVsidiaMtF7w83hE And some more

https://dirtymodernscoundrel.blogspot.com/2015/10/barbican-1969.html?fbclid=IwAR3YfGj0BW8_yQVJsiKzJ4ciqdw8YGCA14niLnUkXkJtruWkXnRH8NmMnZM

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lorenasworkbook · 5 years ago

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National Theatre Experiment

After the chalk experiment, we decided to follow up with another experiment. Due to the heavy rain outside, we had to conduct the experiment inside, in a place where we would be allowed to also film.

While then we wanted to see if people would join, now we wanted to see how a person will interact with the avatar rather than just having it with them. Kasia’s friend was visiting London for the weekend and she asked her if she would be willing to participate in our little experiment. She initially took a walk by herself through the museum while we prepared everything.

We again had the balloon to be the avatar but compared to last time, now we had a very small speaker that she attached to her shirt (as even so it’s so small, it was still too heavy to stick it to the helium balloon). Being inside also helped as she could her “the avatar” better. Isa was the Wizard of Oz, staying away from us but somewhere where he could see her so he could give her some prompts as the avatar. These tasks included a picture taking/drawing activity because the theatre offered good opportunities for nice photos/sketches and discovery of things. We gave her the choice of using a sketch pad to draw things in the environment that she wanted to change or take pictures of things that stood out to her. She was beingprompted by the avatar to observe and maybe photograph things in the theatre.

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This time we had the informed consent forms and at the end we also took a small interview with follow up questions. It resulted in being very informative. She gave us her opinion on how the experience was overall, how having an avatar was and how she saw the theatre somehow different than when she was alone as initially she missed things that the avatar pointed out to her.

She said that it was good to be having some company even though initially she felt a bit awkward as she was the only person with the avatar and she felt more engaged when she could talk back to the avatar.

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lorenasworkbook · 5 years ago

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Lecture 5: Creative video in design & Chalk Experiment

I can say that the weather was not on our side at all since starting this project, raining almost everyday it was hard to find a suitable day to conduct our experiment, but we knew we do not have much time. When we did the observations, rain interfered and results were impacted because of it so we were hoping this time it will be slightly better. We decided on the busy area at Angel, not far from university. The wind was strong but it did not stop us.

We wanted to see if people would walk past or if they would stop and join something like drawing/ writing with chalk on the floor. We wanted to see if they would join without being prompted to do so. We did not have a specific theme, everyone could join and contribute with anything for how long they felt like. Will they draw something random? Will they create a bigger picture together? Will they write quotes? Would they even stop? Would they laugh?

The experiment lasted for about 20 minutes. Because there was no explanation I was thinking that people won’t join because they might think we are doing something specific so it would not be nice to interrupt, but, after few minutes we decided for someone else that we know to step in, mimicking that they are a stranger, and started to draw something. Soon after, as the drawing became bigger, a girl asked if she can join, I gave her the balloon (which was instead of the avatar). After that more people joined (and we gave a balloon to each) and it seemed like everyone was enjoying it.

Many people were passing by hurried like I thought, but many were also stopping to look for a few minutes even though they preferred to not step in. One of the girls was with her mom who was taking pictures and videos of her. , We decided it wasn’t much interaction between everyone, even though more people joined. Thus, we were wondering how could we encourage this interaction between people to communicate in a space and try to find a solution for the next time we met.

These were the results:

Not long after we packed everything, only few meters away, a lady stating singing and we wondered how would the same experiment be influenced by her presence. Drawing while also having music will impact people differently. Do they like the music? Do they just want to do it without music? How music preference will gather some people while not the other? This could all be part of the AI personalised experience.

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lorenasworkbook · 5 years ago

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Lecture 4: Cards, Probe Packs & Toolkits

Between other things we received a disposable camera!!!! As you can see my excitement I already tried to use it somehow, I took a picture of my team mates with my phone through the view box (if that’s even the name of it).

After class it was time to discuss again:

As mentioned in the previous post it was the time to narrow down the idea. Even though our idea was mostly uncovering historical events from the previous observation session, we all kind of agreed that we are not following the idea of historical events but instead we would focus on the community element and how to get people to collaborate.

As we decided that we won’t use a phone/ tablet screen in our idea, we were thinking what else we could use. We took the little hologram idea we discussed about when I came with the waste management idea and used it now. We thought about a hologram avatar to lead the people through town to make them discover the city in another way, by uncovering new things or by connecting people that have their own avatar. The idea was still in the early stages so we discussed what to do next. We wanted to see how people would actually behave in a natural setting with the avatar and a set of tasks. The locations we discovered through the observations offered opportunities for people to engage with each other in creative ways, so we decided to investigate a few of them in further detail through a social experiment. A little drawing can also be seen on Isa’s notebook, it was the setup of the experiment. Things were coming together. We would have an avatar similar to a guide to show people around, making it easier for them to navigate while also having a personalised experience given by the AI. As previously discussed, the person would do a good thing such as helping someone else or throwing waste in the bin would somehow get rewarded by the city - like in the example when singing at the traffic light to make it turn green. You could activate this technology in different parts of the city and if more people would do things together another layer would be uncovered, rather than the one you could see by yourself. If I sing, I will unlock the first layer, but if I were to sing with more people we would be able to unveil another layer. Thinking how to incorporate the goods we received we used a Tic Tac Box and cut it to get a filter for the camera and the person doing the task would see through the filter if applied, helping them see through another layer. This is just a little example.

This is how we decided to conduct the social experiment.

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lorenasworkbook · 5 years ago

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The difficulty of narrowing it down & Observation

The walk we took last time opened our eyes. However, after we met to discuss the next steps once again, we realised that we needed to try narrowing down somehow. We were all throwing ideas at each other but with no precise outcome, so we then researched places in town where to do more research as to how our idea would work and which areas would be suitable to be implemented. We decided we needed to look in a touristic place, a family neighbourhood, a busy working area.

That day we visited Neal’s Yard to investigate how people engage with their surroundings . The weather wasn’t on our side and we knew that was going to affect out research but we still wanted to get an idea of the surroundings.

As it can be seen in the pictures, colourful pretty buildings were the attraction of the yard, people were taking pictures, and not really enjoying the moment, they were just trying to get the best shot for social media, we presumed.

We then walked and got to another small yard.where other people were taking pictures, this time with the well known red London telephone booth.

We did not have any informed consent forms with us at the time so we could not find out their reasons and therefore we could just presume. Rain was starting to get worse so people were looking for shelter and there weren’t many more people to observe. We also entered a supermarket to get some water and the rain stopped til we got out which was great.

We continued walking and found a multitude of statues again and also some monuments:

I have many more pictures but there’s no point on just showing them all. The point was that we were thinking to somehow bring them to life.

We realised that very few people actually read the descriptions at least in the time we were there, when we found this one which not only had text but also a QR code we could scan so we did:

Scanning the code sent us to a web page where we received a phone call from Rowland who explained the history of sending letters.

It was better than just reading it, however still not immersive enough. There was also a map to find the other characters in town. Again we were wondering how could we resolve this issue without using a phone to experience the city. It seems like in most examples we researched or found the phone is an important aspect.

Walking a bit more we saw this monument and I was thinking that if I go next to it mimicking their posture I would somehow activate the story This way I could “activate” our idea without a screen. What technology would make that possible? Still not sure. We then found Postman’s Park and observed people there too. As it stopped raining we could observe them for longer plus that they weren’t just looking for shelter this time.

We concluded that there were two categories of people: some were coming specifically to read the stories while some were coming to have a break, smoke a cigarette. Some were alone, while others were in pairs. We were wondering if people passed by and saw the stories and therefore stopped to read them or if they were coming specifically to read them. Did they know the park was there or did they find it by mistake?

Unfortunately these stories were sad, they were memorials about self sacrifice. However, we were again wondering if people would want to visualise the action around them rather than read from the plaque?

Until now this ideas were highly historical events related because I guess it was easy to tabulate on it, which even though it wasn’t exactly what we wanted to focus on it was a way to put it in words somehow. I must say my colleague, Isa, was having a lot of imagination that day which helped a lot. We had the idea but it was kinda difficult to explain it.

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lorenasworkbook · 5 years ago

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Lecture 3: Image Making and Research in Design

Before class we got together to discuss our ideas, and how we could incorporate parts of our ideas in one big idea - how could we connect the strings.

Ingrid Burrington: Networks of New York project was very inspiring and shows that networks of connection are all around, right under our noses.

What is the internet? How big is it? Through sketching you can better understand the internet infrastructure reproduction and maintenance. And the best thing about is using sketch noting to understand things. If used correctly it can be eye opening. I try as much as I can to do it and I keep telling myself that how pretty the drawing is, it doesn’t mater...as that stopped me few times in the past from keeping a sketchbook and constantly write/draw in it.

Julian Oliver: Stealth Cell Tower project made me realise what I was starring at few nights before. One day I was going to the cinema with a friend. Thinking how to get there from my place we decided to walk there, as it was a beautiful day and we had enough time before the movie was supposed to start. It took us about 50 minutes and we used the phone for navigation. When the movie finished we decided to get home without using the technology at all as a challenge. We were discussing how lately, especially since coming to London, I am dependent on Google Maps and City Mapper. Thinking how well I knew my way through Brasov (the city where my parents live) or Newcastle, my home for the last 4 years, made me sad that I am so dependent on my phone and that if I lose it or it breaks, what will I do? I wanted to be capable to navigate by my self here too. I mean, London is waaaay bigger and I am aware that is going to take way longer. Due to time constraints I mostly go to uni and work most days and those are the only routes I know without using my phone to navigate as a result. To go back home it took longer than I thought as we did not take the same route we came on to avoid the muddy route via the park, but we eventually got home. I tried to use anything I could including maps in bus stops to make an idea of where I am and where I must go. I was looking around after signs or anything that would help us get home when I also observed this and took a photo of it:

Seeing all the crazy examples in class, now I understand that this is probably a Stealth Cell Tower. Or... am I wrong? Also, this experience made me realise that what I knew was that I wanted people to experience something without using their phones. I don’t know what I would do without my mobile, using one since I was about 7, however, I was imagining that what we were going to do would not require the help of a smartphone to experience something, whatever that will be. This session’s activity was exactly what we needed. Excited we went out the class and started walking around, looking at buildings and people. I think that after the drawing lesson this was my next favourite one.

After two group meetings where we came with our ideas and tried to get them together with no great success, I can say that the walk opened our eyes.

Waiting for the green light at the crossing Kasia said:

- What if we’d sing at the traffic light to make it turn green?

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- We could pass faster!

- We could do something fun or helpful and get rewarded!

- We should do something to give back to the city not just for our own benefit, changing the traffic light will also affect the drivers, what if they are gong to start singing too?

- I always listen to music in transit and feel like dancing, now I could actually do it without looking crazy and give something too!

- Sounds fun but it’s unlikely that will work, it would probably create a mess in traffic. How can we adapt this idea?

Ok, now we had something that we all wanted to follow, but we still needed to develop the idea further.

We went on and walked around the block to find a building with a green plate:

- What if we could see how the place looked like before?

- What if we could see the history of Betty Knight?

- Or that of William Compton?

- What if we could experience some of this statues’ story without reading the metal plate.

We decided to move on and not stop here. We walked without a destination when we saw this person. This picture? Just a man walking his dog. However, for us wasn’t just that. He was waiting at the crossing when he stopped to let a biker pass by first. The biker thanked him, I wasn’t fast enough to take a picture or short clip.

We were discussing how this apparently insignificant gesture could be part of our uncovering the city project. Backing up what Kasia was initially saying regarding doing good things and the city giving back to you.

The sky was very beautiful, the light falling on the buildings. What if we could uncover another layer?

Then Isa came with this idea in which, as a tourist you’d be somewhere on top of the city and you could change the layers. Would it be for fun? Would it be to change people’s attitudes in good? Would you get rewards?

Would there also be discovery of businesses or cafes? - we were not very keen on this but as we were still not sure of the whole idea we just discussed briefly.

Would the city be a game?

We thought about this for a while but there was something we all knew, we did not want to do another Pokemon GO game or the Harry Potter Wizards Unite rip off where you collect characters you find through town.

Isa’s research also uncovered Ingress, a similar game but which includes real statues and others, similar to what we are thinking, rather than fictional characters.

What I was envisioning and what I think we all agreed we wanted was to do something more along the lines of an Escape Room but through the town. At least similar, I personally do not want people to “escape” but to do tasks that will reveal parts of the city they did not know, helping them see aspects of the city they would otherwise not pay attention to.

Building on this, Kasia told us how she participated in Hidden City for a team building. It is similar with what I wanted to express that going through town you get hints to discover the city from another perspective than if you would just be waking around. However, this was also possible by using a smartphone to get the hints on. Again, how could we stay away from using it?

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lorenasworkbook · 5 years ago

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Lecture 2: Fabulation & What if?

You can imagine everyone’s reaction when we entered the class and there were strings everywhere! I cannot even believe I did not take a picture of it! I sketched it though, haha.

While I could talk about art and maybe a little bit of philosophy previously, I do not know physics.

When we got to the 3rd story about industrialisation of light, I remembered that Bucharest, the capital city of my country, made history as the first city in the world that introduced gas lighting, being illuminated with 1,000 kerosene lamps. It is interesting that after class I had to fly to Bucharest, as my grandfather was sick. Going back to the cities of grey communist blocks. Maybe I am going to get inspired by something while visiting?

But what caught my attention the most during the lecture was the question:

“What matters matter in the designs we design?”

This was what I would keep in mind throughout our smart city design project. We must create something that will influence people lives in a good way.. but how?

The What If tutorial challenged us to brainstorm ideas about the city.

Mine was quite dystopian along the terms of:

“When acid rain came what if everyone hid in bunkers and the city becomes empty.”

I tried again and came with:

“When a portal to a parallel world was discovered, what if you could meet the other you/self and the city becomes another.”

[This is a small parentheses as I just want to mention I came back later to edit this post to add this: I never though that my first dystopian future will come so fast but here we go... Rather than the cities becoming empty because people hid in bunkers as a result of acid rain, people must now stay in the house as a result of the Corona Virus pandemic situation and therefore the streets are indeed empty now...]

My teammates’ ideas weren’t as dark as mine and the only common theme was transport, through space or time. Thus, we discussed the idea of teleportation. I thought on how my ideas were impacted by TV series I previously saw and while on the moment I thought they were quite original, they weren’t in fact.

We all found the movement theme exciting and discussed different ways on how teleportation would be possible just by teleporting yourself every few meters or only at specific stations and how standing in the que would take as much as actually getting at the destination via different transport means. However, we were not sure this is the way we wanted to go further so we decided that for the next time we needed to each choose and expand on something that we want to focus on.

With the question of “What matters matter in the designs we design” in mind, one of the ideas I came with after I returned was a waste management system.

During my trip I paid attention to how people throw things away from food to objects without even being fully finished or used out, without thinking about it. What if there would be a way to display the amount of food/ product waste through a holographic representation that would pop up every time something would be thrown away. Something about the lines: “X threw away a soda can half full, -0.20 pence penalisation”, “Y threw a plastic bag next to the bin but did not bother to pick it up and try again, 0.47 pence penalisation”. Kind of how holograms are in GTA but instead of an arrow like in the following image there would be text to show the penalisation sum of money.

The idea would be to make people more aware and if there would be a limit, they could reach or a money penalisation, people would be more careful to what they are wasting. Until I got to discuss my idea with the group the following week, I did not realise that the waste idea was discussed in the previous year by the group who started by finding a solution to garbage in the park, so I kinda gave up on it. We also decided we did not want to penalise people, but we wanted to reward them in exchange of doing good things.

Some other ideas that crossed my mind but not developed further:

- Zero gravity in common spaces to have some fun;

- Some kind of way to clean the air - not sure how this would be achievable with a tech or by making people do some kind of activity (fun one) by including everyone.

One other idea my teammate mentioned was related to sound and how this might be integrated with my previous idea of including dance, which I really liked. Another group member was imagining a room above the city where if I understood well, would be like in some kind of AR/VR seeing the city in different eras. While all of them did sound great and liked each others’ ideas we couldn’t decide on only one. It wasn’t that we all wanted to keep our individual idea and focus on that but more that we wanted to find a way to incorporate a little bit of everyone’s idea and find a solution.

Some of the pictures I took while in Bucharest with a brutalist feel but mostly the soviet style (Ceausescu went to North Korea and presumingly was inspired by their brutalist architecture), metro station, steel mill (or compound?) and a very old tram.. I promise there are nicer areas to visit, however this where I needed to go now as ti wasn’t for fun..

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lorenasworkbook · 5 years ago

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Areas of Interest

a One thing I did not mention in the list I created in the previous post is Abstract: The Art of Design. A show on Netflix about different types of design.

Some people might say it’s commercial, however I liked how each episode focuses on an individual and the area of design they are a master in and how do they go on about it or how did they discover it and became good at it, while other episodes are about specific projects. And I also do not like each episode equally.

One of my favourite episodes was that of Neri-Oxman’s on Bio-Architecture @ MIT Media Lab - Design at the intersection of technology and biology. She also gave a TED talk about it.

She has many interesting projects they worked on which can be found on the MIT website.

It might be because my old passion for architecture, but the episode was fascinating to see how the sciences come together.

This structure is Fabricated from the molecular components found in tree branches, insect exoskeletons and human bones, Aguahoja I demonstrates the application of water-based robotic fabrication at a scale close to those of natural ecologies. Judges comments: "Finding new sustainable materials is an urgent matter. Aguahoja I shows how nature can help us to design new materials, highlighting the relationship between nature and technology. It is completely innovative and presents hope for the future. The organic material shows huge potential, which could change even how we think about architecture."

- Mediated Matter Group

Thus, Architecture and Environment was one of my interest areas:

- Sustainable Buildings;

- Transparent Solar Panels;

- Smart irrigation system easier for everyone to use not just by professionals to grow vegetables, basically, make it easier and accessible for everyone to grow fruits and vegetables.

While this was one episode of interest, that of Ólafur made an impression on me too.

I firstly found out about him when working on the Interaction Design coursework. He had an exposition at Tate Modern at the time of our project. I interviewed a number of people and there was this guy who was his biggest fan of all those people I talked with that day. He was with his family and he was enthusiastically telling me about this amazing exposition Olafur had years ago at Tate so I searched it when I got home. It definitely looked amazing. I admired the passion he was talking about him. He was telling me how Olafur has used light, architecture, ecology, and digital design to challenge the assumptions many of us make about design and perception.

The artist made a sunny entrance to the public consciousness with ‘The Weather Project’ – a combination of yellow lamps, mirrors, and mist which gave the impression of the sun hanging over the hall. launched a very fruitful union between Eliasson and Tate Modern. He was back last year, to display giant blocks of melting polar ice outside in order to call attention to the frightening rate of global warming. The reward for doing so, however, is ‘Din blinde passager’ (Your blind passenger). Describing it as “a room full of fog” is deceptively simple – though true – for the artwork gloriously, gleefully messes with your head. Moving through a 39-metre room where you can see barely a metre beyond your own nose is unsettling enough, but when the room slowly turns a deep shade of yellow

- Alex Landon

Therefore, I might not be able to come with such innovative architectural solutions to the smart city as the team at MIT, but, I could think of a way in which to make people aware of their actions and how they impact the life in the smart city. How can we do that? That we must discuss further next time we meet. I would like, though, when we are going to eventually select an idea, to go further with doing some happenings.

A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow during the 1950s to describe a range of art-related events. He even did a lecture about how to create a happening. I firstly found out about it from one of my previous art teachers who introduced us to Marina Abramovici.

Marina Abramović is a performance artist and art filmmaker. Her work explores body art, endurance art and feminist art, the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.

We might interpret her work as having displaced art from traditional media such as painting and sculpture, and moved it directly on to her body. Yet far from conceiving it as simply a surface, she has said that she thinks of the body as the "point of departure for any spiritual development."

Between 1976 and 1988 she collaborated with the German-born artist known as Ulay. The performances the pair created during this time often exploited their duality to investigate ideas such as the division between mind and body, nature and culture, active and passive attitudes, and, of course, between male and female. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/abramovic-marina/

Her views on performing with the body were critiqued as being quite extreme and this is not necessarily what I was thinking about. Also, in the last years she has been exposed as performing rituals named “Spirit Cooking” which imply a lot of different nasty things and since then she lost most of the public. Basically, I thought about doing a happening to see how people react. A social experiment. Besides, I would like to discuss how and if dance can be incorporated? Can dance be part of the everyday life in the smart city as a gateway from the mundane life? Otherwise how else can this be achieved? I always find myself dancing on the street when I have my headphones on and when I see someone looking at me I realise and try to stop. It would be great for more people to dance, not just tap your foot or move your head slightly because dancing is too much and people will believe you are crazy. Quite a hedonistic approach such as in the following painting:

This is Henri Matisse’s famous painting “La Dance” he created for a russian businessman along a companion piece, Music. Because dance comes with music. Now I do not imply I want motamo (literally) naked people to dance on the streets, I just want people to dance freely without the fear of being judged they do so.

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lorenasworkbook · 5 years ago

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Lecture 1: A drawing Lesson & The Smart City

Why did I talk for so long about sketching in my previous post? I wanted to eventually get here:

This was one of the first slides presented to us. I was happy that the first lecture was dedicated to drawing. We’ve watched Kentridge’s video showing the way he creates his animated films. These are constructed by filming a drawing, making erasures and changes, and filming it again. It somehow reminds me of the flip book animations as it can be seen in the following gif I found on Google Images:

I did not know about him before.

While he was talking about the limitation imposed by the canvas my mind wondered to Picasso’s quote “Everything you can imagine is real”. I might’ve thought about it due to the horse ink sketch on the wall, or maybe as he was talking about limitations.

You might have to connect the links as I haven’t explained it very well but to be fair, I am not even sure why my mind made that connection anyway. Maybe because even though the canvas is limiting in some ways, it actually is open for our imagination and even though it is a limitation it is also a challenge!

I quickly searched more of his artworks and found some that I like even more, but this time they made me think about Francis Bacon’s work, one of my favourite artists, yes, the painter, not the philosopher.

Bacon also examined Picassso’s work in his career. I had the chance to visit Picasso museum in Barcelona about this time last year and I really enjoyed it. Bacons’ canvases communicate powerful emotions, his subjects were always portrayed as violently distorted, almost slabs of raw meat, that are isolated souls imprisoned and tormented by existential dilemmas.

I felt that William’s Kentridge’s paintings have a similar feeling - people are presented as uncertain, divided and chaotic, living in a world with much the same characteristics. It’s quite contemporary considering the way the world is going lately.

Through his paintings I also found one drawing with a man and a rock. Does it ring a bell? The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. Sisyphus is condemned by the gods for eternity to repeatedly roll a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down again once he got it to the top, as a metaphor for the individual's persistent struggle against the essential absurdity of life – my presumption of the existentialism theme was confirmed. Sisif was not giving up. However, again I made an assumption, this time that is connected to Sisif while it might not be, I did not go as far in searching to see if there is any meaning he discussed about related to the rock and maybe it is just learning to live with the burdens in your life, while the rock is a physical interpretation.

As initially I just searched other artworks, now I wanted to know more about his approach on philosophical themes. I discovered that in one of his lessons he focuses on indeterminacy, represented by emergence of the occupiers of Plato's cave and their problems with "the light" and the "reality" of what they had seen previously only as shadows. Kentridge is concerned with the way we are wired to impose structure (and meaning) to fluid experience.

Much of this he gathers in the 6th (final) lecture:

"This is the artist's project: needing the fragments, even delighting in them, in the process of wresting meaning from them. The meaning is always a construction, a projection, not an edifice--something to be made, not simply found. There is always a radical incoherence and a radical instability. All certainties can only be held together by a text, a threat, an army, a fatwa, a sermon--that holds the fragments in an iron grip"

The Smart City Introduction

As cities get smarter, they are becoming more liveable and more responsive—and today we are seeing only a preview of what technology could eventually do in the urban environment.

Top down and bottom up approaches:

Top down or technology centric approaches are associated with pre-defined offerings. Cities adopting this approach become smart by integrating data gathered from different kinds of censors (smart meters and CCTV cameras amongst others) into a single virtual platform in order to manage city operations more efficiently, often working with technology companies to take advantage of already developed products or software

The bottom up approach emphasises the use of new technologies (for example, social media, websites, mobile applications or censoring technologies) and new data (becoming available mainly through open data platforms or censors) as a means to enable citizens to devise solutions, acquire new skills through online learning and improve their interaction with public authorities. Such initiatives include open data platforms that allow the development of new mobile applications or online crowdfunding platforms to fund innovative projects.10 By making citizens more engaged in civic life through online platforms, it is also argued that bottom up initiatives can encourage a “more direct form of local democracy” as David Willets, the Minister of State for Universities and Science recently stated

My instinct was to read more definitions to familiarise myself better with the subject, however I just started thinking about all the tech noir, cyberpunk movies and series I saw with futuristic cities and also games I played with a similar theme.

Tech noir presents technology as a destructive and dystopian force that threatens every aspect of our reality.

“They often expose the temporal nature of concepts of identity and society: rather than being fixed aspects of a permanent and indestructible ‘nature,’ these concepts, like nature itself, are shown as mere parts of a larger simulacrum that is subject to change, exploitation, and even annihilation. Yet, even as tech-noir films present the mirror that reveals us to be as expendable and replaceable as any consumer product, they simultaneously affirm conventional beliefs and values - as do all popular genres.“

James Cameron coined the term in The Terminator (1984), using it as the name of a nightclub, but also to invoke associations with both the film noir genre and with futuristic sci-fi.

At home I later created a list with all the things that crossed my mind and from which I did get some inspiration.

Movies:

Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, Ghost in the Shell Animated, Ghost in the Shell Movie, The Matrix, 12 Monkeys, Ex Machina, Children of Men, Minority Report, Upgrade, Strange Days, The Terminator, Gattaca, Alphaville, Minority Report, Back to the future 1,2,3

TV Series:

Person of Interest, Almost Human, Mr. Robot, Westworld, Altered Carbon, Alter Carbon Resleeved, Love, Death & Robots, Rick and Morty, The Rain, Travelers, Black Mirror, Humans, Kiss me first, Orphan Black, Greyzone, (Dark, FlashForward, Counterpart)

Games:

Deus Ex, Watch Dogs, Mirror’s Edge & and I absolutely cannot wait for CYBERPUNK 2077 <3 to be launched this year, hopefully and also Death Stranding PC version as I do not own a PS4.

(I was considering adding images for them too but I realised it will be a never ending post if I were to do it)

After the brief was presented, it was the time to create the groups!

We needed to put ourselves in only one category and I am a very undecided person! I had to choose through exclusion. All of us have all of these traits more or less, but which one is the most recognisable? I knew I am not a word smith, even though I have a sales job, so this choice was the first one out. While I really enjoy making things, I identified the most with the People Watchers.

I am observing people everywhere I am. Since I came to London watching people it’s one of my favourite activities. I find myself staring at people in the underground and try to remind myself it’s not polite, but oh, the diversity is fascinating! I am endlessly curious about what they do and why they do it, trying to work out what makes them tick, what do they do for living, what music they like? etc.

After we created our groups, we needed to decide on the rules to run the group by and we wrote them down:

How will we communicate in a way that values each others’ contribution?

How will we listen to each other?

How will we own/share ownership of the work?

When will we meet in person?

How will we communicate otherwise?

How will we distribute work?

The synergy between members was great from the first meet, we created our principles and we were excited to start working on the project. We decided to go home and for the next time we meet to research and write down areas important for us and that we want to focus on further. I did not have an idea yet, I just knew I want people to have a great experience, especially in these times of uncertainty and make thinks easier for people in London.

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lorenasworkbook · 5 years ago

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Lecture 1: A creative orientation to design

First lecture, first post… Here I am writing my first blog post. During the lecture I was thinking:

“Hmm… we need to create a blog... that’s an interesting approach! I always wanted to have a blog but could never decide what to write about.”

Through the years I constantly looked around at what platform would be best for the blog I will create someday:

“I do not even need a subject for it yet, I can just look around for which platform would be easy to use and has the nicest layouts!”

Eventually, after reading all about it, using the trial period or signing up on many website builders just to try them out, I realised I am never going to do it because I do not like writing. I am not going to lie, I do not think that writing is my best skill, but you have to do these things you’re not good at to get better, right? I never did It so now is the time. Now I have to do it.

Along many others (Blogger, WordPress, Quora, Medium, etc.), Tumblr was one of the platforms I found back then, and, while it did not make me have a blog in which I would come back to tell my story, it still made me tell a story, but it was a visual one. I started collecting images that I found visually appealing on my blog – pictures about anything: interior design, architecture, landscape, portraits, paintings and sculptures, famous or not. Anything I visually liked:

There is a print screen of my Tumblr blog with a very minimalist theme and a horizontal scroll effect which many might argue it is not what users would expect, but I really liked it and it was my tumblr blog which I did not created for other people. It was just for me.

I posted little original content but mostly reblogged images I found interesting from other people – I just thought:

“That’s what Tumblr is about, right?”

In time I found out that people were using it in many different ways. I do like photography, looking at it or making it, but never thought mine was good enough for the collection I curated on my blog, haha,

“I am just using my phone, I do not even own a proper camera...”

Looking back now, I realise Tumblr was actually the best for that, never mind...

Through Tumblr I also found out about HTML & CSS. Tumblr has themes you can adapt but If you want to explore, you can modify these themes or create your own. During this HCID course, I am taking the Web Applications Development elective class which takes place just before the Creativity in Design module. My point is that even though it was not writing, Tumblr still influenced me in a good way by making me interested in Front Web Development. How relevant this is? I do not know, I just thought it would be a nice introduction. Here is a print screen of one of my first web pages – looks like it is form The Matrix, I know, that was my intention:

While I am writing this post, new ideas pop into my mind. Coming back to the fact that I always had the impression writing is not my best skill, as I previously mentioned. When I say this, people presume I say it because English is not my native language. While that might be one point, I think the same about writing in Romanian. Just writing in general makes me anxious, hahah. How do I say what I want to say without sounding too boring? Which word would better express what I want to say… most importantly, what is the best order to present my thoughts in, especially when they come in waves? I have so many thoughts and sometimes I feel like I must tell the story from the beginning for people to accurately understand the point I want to get at and how everything leads to that, and even then they might still not understand my ideas, haha. That’s how I spend too much time overthinking everything and that’s why I presume that growing up I got more into photography, drawing, painting or sculpting in clay – I wanted to express somehow. It just wasn’t going to be writing.

While I liked the humanistic profile but did not want to write much, I chose to go to an arts high school, which also introduced some of the Social Sciences but I think the mistake I did was to choose Architecture, thinking about money:

“What will I do with my life if I go to any other section, such as painting? I am not going to find a job to support living, I can just create art in my spare time. If I do architecture, I can do any of the other, but if I do let’s say painting, I cannot do architecture”.

That’s what I thought back then...but architecture was a lot of technical drawing as it can be seen in the next picture, and that wasn’t too much fun. I did not even know you can do sculpting or graphic design. But it was still fun learning about architecture styles.

While I enjoyed high school, towards the end I did not want to create anything anymore, I was doing enough to achieve whatever was needed for the courses but not more. I wasn’t enjoying it anymore and I felt like the way it was thought it was to make people follow some outdated rules, it was narrow minded. In my opinion art had to be the other way around, and this was not what I wanted to do with the rest of my career… Art was my gateway. But this discussion is more related to the bad teaching style in Romania or maybe arts schools in general and this is not why I am currently writing this post.

After years I started creating art again, even if just now and then. I painted at home when I was feeling different strong emotions. After, I went to sculpting classes. One of each can be seen in the following pictures:

All this time I kept taking photos as nowadays technology allows us to have a pretty good camera on us all the time, on our smartphones. Why all this discussion about drawing/ art in general? All this got to be useful at something. I realised I never read any notes I take in class because they’re just long lines of writing. Boring. That’s why I decided to start Sketchnoting from the second semester. I saw someone (Michele Stara) doing it at the UX Live conference and thought:

“Wow, that’s pretty cool! I want to do that, maybe I will actually look over my notes again!”.

So that’s how I started sketchnoting for every class, not just for Creativity in Design. As I did not actually draw in years, my sketches are not the best and also combined with paying attention to class, I have to be fast, resulting in not so pretty drawings. However, apparently transmitting ideas through image rather than just writing text requires a bigger thought process and I should remember the facts easier.

In conclusion, I am now willing and ready to approach things from a different perspective and while my writing or my sketches are not the best, there’s only one way too get better. Practice, practice, practice, practice.

How relevant this is to the class? Not sure, but I thought it would be a nice way to introduce myself.

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