Posing the question... it's difficult.

As of late I've been struggling to find a theme/question to settle on in my group from the seminar. We've been teetering on three points currently:

1. The Illusion of Choice
2. The Paradox of Comfort
3. The manifestations of Balance

What is it exactly that we are trying to extract from these points? We spent a whole session trying to link the things and come at them from angles that would provide citations and evidence... or rather we were trying to condense all three into one question that would umbrella them nicely.

The theme we talked most on was on the paradox of comfort, this idea that the more we have of something, the less we actually achieve for it. The more security we have, the less secure we feel; the more connected we are, the more lonely we feel; the freedom we have, the less free we feel.

Why is this?

Well, that's what I'm looking into, and so far this late night has had me reading the same sentences several times over - a sign that my brain needs rest before continuing. I'll reconvene this investigation in the morning.

Okay, it's a new day (evening...).

Could we look at comfort as being happy?

It would appear that throughout our group discussions we often talk around the ideas of wanting to feel good, pursuing what we feel will make us content with life. But is what we're after really making us happy? Do we even want happiness? Paradoxically, are we only happy to pursue happiness, rather than attain it?

Could we ask the question, what is it that causes us to be unhappy? It's broad enough to investigate, and can be taken from many angles, however specific. Although it is seen as very subjective, this can lead to a lot of discussion.

Is happiness possible despite a lack of well-being? And by well-being, I am avoiding the word comfort, I still have some qualms about the word as it doesn't quite convey what I believe my group have been trying to understand - The word comfort to me describes "good feeling", of "ease". Knowing that there are people who enjoy adrenaline rushes, comfort doesn't appear to fit well under that paradigm.

But happiness is a word that seems to be something that we can all sit on similar wavelengths about. It's one of the ultimate aspirations we all strive to achieve as human beings, surely. Our aims and goals in life is to achieve happiness, and if not for your self, altruistically for others.

The wars we have fought, the scientific break throughs we have had, the social injustices quashed, the day to day and even minute to minute happenings of life, are and have all been in the pursuit of happiness, for the individual, or for the masses.

I see the question about asking if we can escape the pursuit of happiness in order to attain happiness rather than constantly pursue it, or by paradox, we can only be happy if we are pursuing happiness...

Technology, our tools, not our answers [second draft]

During the second seminar of the Bigger Picture project, we were in a discussion that regarded Angela Saini's keynote lecture about "The Technological Fix". In her talk, she claims how today we place a great deal of blind faith into technology, and that we seem to take in the illusion that what science offers is the truth, and that through development of technology we will solve all our problems. She argues that this isn't the case, and that we must be cautious of developments in the scientific world. She held a very good attitude about how we must treat every new discovery with a great deal of circumspection until proven otherwise.

Many people in the room seemed to be in disagreement with her cautious optimism. The tutor especially appeared to rile up and drive forward the belief that technology today is perhaps causing more harm than we suspect; the room started to snowball with a one-sided overview of how we're losing touch with each other, or losing the human hand in the many processes of today. This made me think about how we are all connected to technology: Is it possible to separate the human from the technology?

Technology is one of the reasons we are so successful as a species, for when we feel we do not have the ability to do something, we create a solution: We create an axe to chop down a tree because we don't have the teeth to chew through one. Tools as we typically see them are physical extensions, from the hammer, to the use of trains, but extensively we are seeing advancements in tools that create mental extensions of ourselves, from the book to the internet.

It was much to my dismay that the many students who were criticising technology only focussed on the potential negative impacts - no, we don't know if this reliance of technology will have a very negative effect, but I feel that this is a form of cowardice that is stagnating our progress as a species. I will reason that it is down to the speed with which we are developing these technologies that we don't have time to understand and pinpoint what troubles could lie ahead, and that there is a risk that our poking and pricking of things we don't understand could destroy us, but as Saini argues, it is through these botched attempts that we make progress of some kind. Without this bravery, we will end up shunning anything with great potential, for the fear of losing what we already have and are comfortable with.

However, at the same time, we can't give into blind faith that in order to fix our problems we have to invent a solution. There is a consensus that we need to achieve a balance and compromise that does not risk the destruction of the world, but at the same time, does not hinder our progress to improve things - the worry of using technology as a quick fix, which invariably ends up causing more problems, but through these problems we find solutions.

Currently, I see that the problems we are still facing is being distracted by a misunderstanding of new technologies, and that we avoid tackling the root of the problem by creating other problems. Technology is not to blame - it is inherently a neutral thing - it is down to how that technology is applied, and so far, we only have ourselves to blame.







How is technology connected to humans?

Should we be so paralysed with new solutions that do not have an apparant danger.
- but do we need this solution when we should spend the time to fix the root of the problem.

The worry that we see technology as a quick fix - rather than changing the actual problem

Tackle the root of the problem - individualism, brought on by the way the capitalistic economy is structured. The sense of entitlement.

Topsy Turvey Realities and a Clinical Mapping of Economic development

Okie doke, a second take on yesterday's - ok, looking at the time, it is now the day before yesterday's keynote lectures.

The first was delivered by Eliane Glaser, Writer, radio producer, and an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London.

Let's say this has something to do with subliminal agendas.

Her talk is entitled: Ideology Now: A world turned upside down

Despite her talk coming from a very political stance, what she is arguing about is that we must be careful with taking in the visual language and portrayal that recent politics in Britain has had in leaning towards Capitalism.

With pernicious use of social media, visual language and psyhological tricks, we are seeing misrepresentations of politics and brands that create the illusion of the "big money pretending to be the little guy". This is seen in how David Cameron rolls up his sleeves and recalls the last pastie (a very working class food) he ate, to Jamie Oliver's preserve jars designed to look fifty years old or Starbucks using chalkboard menus and keeping coffee bean sacks in view.

Capitalism underwent an identity change which has put it in a more positive standing and is harder to criticise than the old-school traditional business image it once had - through subliminal means.


The second talk of that day came from Evan Davis, a presenter of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

Economic Models

How Britain Earns its Living

Davis mapped out to us a linear development of a western developed economic model. With three levels, he explains how the British industrialisation was a key discovery in the way the world's economies function today. (Imagine, if you will, a leveling system as one might find in an RPG video game):

Level 1: Industrialisation. Factories and manufacture of physical goods for export. Cheap to set up, fast to put into production, can take on unskilled workers and make them productive.

Level 2: Intellectual Property. Scientific products and designs, coupled with creative products. This concentrates more on selling an aesthetic and choice, and detracts focus on producing the physical end product to more on the design and blueprints. Money is made from licensing.

Level 3: Services. Providing highly trained intangable products, including financial, law, educational, management etc.

He goes on to bring out attention to how abandoning any form of physical manufacture has left us vulnerable to relying on imports of goods, and that the problems faced with Intellectual Property and Service based industries has lead to a disproportionate balance of jobs creating inequality in the distribution of wealth.

However, he predicts that having now identified the problems, we will start to revert back to some of the more basic industries in order to create a greater balance in the "goods" that Britain as a nation will provide, creating a better balance of jobs across social backgrounds.



Ugh, that last one has me feeling like I stepped out of a history lesson in secondary school. Not an entirely bad thing, but I dislike how I've not really developed any sort of idea in there, I've just pretty much done a mapping out of his mapping out (meta!).

Finding Leadership in unhappy locales [working draft]

This time I'm gonna try and make it concise, although I must say that I find it challenging enough to simply process everything I hear from the lectures. Also, I'll adhere to the instructions that were given in regards to these blog posts:

Choose a keyword from the key note lectures and review that in 150 words, the keywords being one you select (*shrug* yeah, I'm not entirely sure what that means).

So for today's we had two keynote lectures, the first one from James Woudhuysen, Professor of Forecasting and Innovation at De Montfort University, Leicester.

The title of his talk: Leadership,  innovation and the silo mentality

I'll pick Leadership.

When Woudhuysen spoke on Leadership, he gave claim that today we need more of it. He tells us that we should all look at ourselves as leaders that should strive to move towards a vision. He emphasises the importance of being well informed of key political, economical or historical events, in the statistics and predictions to add more substance to the way we design.

It's all well trying to design something great, but he indicates that we must have the ability to put a price on it and understand how what we design will fit into the current climate. Without this, we are stuck in stagnation. Woudhuysen provides examples of the development of retail innovation in the late 19th century. He pointed out how these technological innovations were all mutually beneficial towards a greater vision of how the consumer was to perceive purchasing goods.

This brings us back to the need for leadership to be present amongst today's struggles. Under no leadership, we are not banded together to strive for a shared goal or vision - he warns us against the silo mentality that develops when people disconnect themselves from each other to create designs in independence, that trapping information stunts the growth of any major innovations that could have resulted from collaboration.

We'll call it about 150 words there. Next.

In the afternoon we received words from Anna Minton, a writer and journalist and writer of the book "Ground Control".

Her talk: Ground Control Fear and Happiness in the 21st century city

[Darn, I feel I ought to re-listen to her talk. I don't feel like I've absorbed much of what she said, but here's my first shot]

The major point gleamed from Minton's talk is that the happiness of people in today's cities is affected by the way in which architecture has been designed to detract from our ability to trust each other. She mentions how as a result of privately owned estates and property has created buildings that have a defensive structure, is monitored by surveliance, and is guarded by security; all this creating a priming effect that diseminates a sense of fear and paranoia to its inhabitants and therefore creates unhappiness.

Reversed Realities [A DRAFT]

Today was marked by the first set of key note talks for the Bigger Picture project. The first given by Eliane Glaser, author of "Get Real: How to tell it like it is in a World of Illusions, gave us a lecture explaining the gap in appearance and reality.

She began the talk by bringing up the subject of the large gap of wealth between the rich and poor in Britain today, and how corporations and politicians use illusions in which the "reality of massive social and economic inequality appear to be reversed". Glaser explains that there are tricks being employed in politics and marketing that sublimally influence us in ways that we're not entirely aware of. Examples given involved spin marketing and public relation stunts, from McDonald's fake interview with a thatcherite dream farmer, to David Cameron blagging the details to buying and consuming a pasty. Each and every example she gave, I seemed to step back and take into account that she insinuates that everything demonstrates some sort of (her favourite word) perniciousness.

You and I can tell full well that these "lies" are being employed. It's one thing to be concious of it and still play along, but I found it hard to take anything she said without questioning where the harder evidence was. However, moving on from critiquing her delivery of the talk, she moved on to explaining the "age of authenticity". I remember well a talk delivered by Jesse Schell, a professor of game design at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also touched upon the issue of the desire for authenticity (view the video from 12:19, he references the book "Authenticity" by James M. Gilmore). Schell, like Glaser today, explains how right now, we as consumers crave products that are real, that are authentic; examples given include organic food, hand-made crafts, genuine retro fashion goods etc. Unlike Schell, Glaser only seemed to bring our attention to the observation, but Schell references Gilmore's book in that it is due to our desire to get away from the "bubble of fake bullshit" and to reconnect with nature, as it hasn't always been like this.

Glaser, after explaining the "age of authenticty", makes the claim that this authenticity that we are attracted to is superficially taken by corporations and turned into an "empty brand". We see this in the way Starbucks have ripped the idylic independent itallian cafes that could be found around Shoreditch, the sports jackets you may find in Primark, or Jamie Oliver's preserve jars that are designed to look like they're half a century old. She criticises how we are being tricked.

The real deal is being mimicked and resold to us as the genuine product, but it's empty! Oh so empty! (She claims, and I'm willing to accept this point).

In a sense, I see this working in the iPhone app Instagram, or the way Lomo cameras have recently risen in popularity - this idea of taking photos that instantly have a false sense of history simply due to the imagery that they conjure up through the photo filters provided by the app, and the rustic nature of the photos produced by cheaply made cameras.

Springboarding from this talk of our desire for authenticity, she moves through several methods she claims is being employed by corporations and even admits the amount of conspiracy theories it could induce, from Astroturfing, to accusing companies of using social media to paint a more friendly approachable character when they're far from it (she claims!). But again, it's hard to simply agree when I'm not given much evidence other than clips from adverts.

This "short" writing up of one of today's talk is dragging on a bit, so I'll cut to the chase with some highlights I want to discuss:

In particular, I found that much of what she said did make sense, and I find myself wanting to fully agree with some of the points she made, but as I mentioned before, it's hard to fully accept the accusations she has made without feeling like I'm missing some hard evidence.

I found myself especially conflicted when she affirmed that the use of humility by public figure heads is indeed a dirty trick of some sort. She seemed to give the opinion that as of late, people who have publically apologised use this humiliation as a get-out-of-jail-free-card. Looking at the videos, I'm sure we'd all like to convince ourselves that they're not being sincere at all, but it would seem very unjust to expect that anyone who has tried to make a public apology has done so insincerely all the time. It particularly didn't help that Glaser came from what seemed to be a very political angle and obviously tried to force an opinion on people present in the lecture theatre.

The most important aspect I took away from the talk today was that she highlighted the subliminal means employed to subdue the amount of criticism that would surface (against corporations/politicians), and I don't mean flashing a single frame for a fast food company logo, or product placement found in music videos. The subliminal messages that she brought up seem, in my opinion, far more dangerous and sophisticated than I had expected it to be.

In politics, take the example of Boris Johnson's public image. He's far from what one would expect to be a straight laced, serious character with whom we could trust to make paramount decisions for our living. He comes across as a lovable school boy stuck in a middle aged man's body, or that riddiculous scruffy dog demeanour he seems to have. AND THAT HAIR! Stunts like his zip-lining detracts away from the fact he is in a privellaged position of great power, making decisions that don't necessarily benefit those in need the most (citation needed, gah!). It is the idea that these tactics employed are designed to make us relate to the politicians in a false way - we'd like to think it doesn't work, and many of us guard ourselves against it, but it dismays me that some people don't think the same way (I've known individuals who have voted for Boris Johnson BECAUSE OF HIS HAIR!).

Even a waiter in a restaurant who asks you if "everything is all right"? is portrayed by Glaser as another dirty trick to silence you from making any complaint, because "this very nice waiter has just asked me if everything is all right, how considerate, how could I possibly make a complaint now?"

What got my attention the most, though, was the idea of The Cult of the Amateur. Placing the everyday man on a pedestal. Celebrating the ordinary. This, she claims, is the destruction of our culture. I believe I semi-quoted that, it's a bit of an exaggeration, but after her explanation I can see what she means.

Through the rise of internet use, and the empowerement of the underdog (through more accessible means to produce content - think adobe, think cheaper equipment, think online upstart crowd funding and crowd sourcing), our culture is now beginning to expect rich cultural content for free (she claims!). So through tumblr we enjoy art by many people, through youtube we enjoy video entertainment, through soundcloud we listen to remixes and original music, through indie game developers they simply upload their creations to share - all for free. Does this necessarily cause us to begin to expect cultural content to be free?

On the one hand, it seems plausible as I see myself pulling away from the tv and making less of an effort to go out to the cinema, hardly ever listening to the radio, but on the other hand, when I find a product I truely love, I will part with cash. There have been instances when the product isn't even finished, but I support the creative goals an independent games studio is striving for and forward my money. I do value cultural content, and though as a student I appreciate avenues of free quality content, I also value content that is paid for in order to support those who have worked so hard to bring it to fruition.

There is a vicious cycle of being made to believe something through it's imagery and visual communication, to then supporting it because of another reason, but then not being able voice your opinion or criticisms in order to end the cycle. [this needs editing]

Discussion in a group seminar afterwards brought out some interesting questions with which we condensed into three:

1. How can we end this pernicious cycle?
2. Does the underdog have more power and influence than they realise?
3. How do we make these manipulations more transparent?

Ok, I'm going to end this draft and call it a night. I'll explain these three questions in more detail tomorrow when my brain's had time to process everything from today, my goodness it's been a lot. I may return to this when I've thought a bit more on it, if anyone reading this can help me out, I'd very much appreciate your feedback and opinions, stir up that debate some, yeah.

Okay, Liyi out.

IN SUMMARY:

Her argument isn’t completely politically based, what she is arguing about is to be careful about the language and portrayal that recent politics in britain has had, leaning towards Capitalism. Capitalism underwent an identity change which has put it in a more positive standing and is harder to criticise than the old-school traditional business image it once had - through subliminal means.

BOOM

That was the big bang. My return to this blog. Lately I've had an affair with tumblr. I'm sorry, Blogger, tumblr just... tumblr does things that you never would, y'know.

Look, let's just put this behind us, I'll be over at tumblr when I need to do certain things, and I'll be here when I need to do other certain things. We have an understanding.

Cool.

Alright, well, time to collate my stuffs.

Here's some tea before we start.

Update:

This is following the introductory briefing with over 400 students across 4 BA dsciplines including mine, Graphic Design.

It looks like this is how things will turn out for my set of blogs:

• sife-land blogger (this one) will be for my more detailed and more deliberate entries
• sife-land tumblr (http://sifeland.tumblr.com/) will be for my n'importe quoi and personal endeavours
• Bigger Picture 2012-13 Group 7 (http://myblog.arts.ac.uk/groups/bigger-picture-2012-13-group-7/) will be where I post duplicates of posts from this blog (for assessment purposes etc.).

Right, I'm in group 7 with Rachel Cattle as the tutor.

I have a mix of people in my group from my own course in Graphic Design, to people from Ceramic Design, Product Design and the Architecutral Studies course. 26 people in all.

We've set down ground rules, and have yet to break the ice fully, but during today's latter half seminar we were being taught about small group psychology and management.

So apparantly, according to some bloke by the name of Bruce Tuckman who came up with the theory of group dynamics, he believed he had sussed out the behaviour of small groups into a model which he split into four main phases of a linear development:

1. Forming
2. Storming
3. Norming
4. Performing

Going through these phases in order:

1. Forming:

Is the stage whereby everyone in the group is orientating themselves, testing boundaries, seeing what they can say, and what they can do and gauging the reactions of the members of the group. We learn about each other and try to avoid conflict, try not to upset anyone, try not to show too much of ourselves at first - much more open to taking direction from others for the time being.

 2. Storming:

This is the volatile phase of a developing group, whereby people will begin to have disagreements and arguments. This is where the group truely takes shape in structure, ideals and goals, a lot of clashing visions and types of leaderships as well as allocations of workloads. The lecturer explained that this phase would exhibit the "hissy fits" that are seen in adults as the "ugh, I am not being a part of this," "argh, I can't believe you'd rather do that!" etc. It's where the group is likely to "blow up".

3. Norming (norming? what kind of term is that?)


After all that energetic activity, the group starts to settle down, "group feelings" are created and standards are shared, enough debate and compromise has gone on to finally come to unanimous agreements amongst everyone. We can start to see people actually getting along after Storming.

4. Performing

The phase when everyone is actually getting on with work. Each person has a role now, and they fulfill it for the sake of the group's progress. The structure has settled, members are flexible and task-focussed. They handle difficulties together and balance individual contributions with group aims. They have a tradition now that they follow.

This is however, as the lecturer cautioned, only a model of how most or many groups will function. So for all I know my group will be completely different and bat-shit off the rails. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Most likely not. I hope.

The lecturer then gave a load of helpful tips about how to manage groups, but being young and inexperienced I stopped paying attention, obviously, and rather busied myself setting up my group's organisation methods online via google docs, recording contact details, setting up the facebook group - I kid, I did all that, but there's so many extensive notes I took in group management that it's probably a bit too much to write up without the temptation of just copying and pasting what I copied from the lecturer's slides.

Here's to a beginning to what may be an awesome project of an exploratory learning process.

Going into construction

*cricket chirps*

*tumbleweed*

Gosh, this place is dusty. Pretty cold too.

My first term at Central Saint Martins has been largely undocumented on this blog. Adjusting to life in London, keeping up with my course as a student and student rep, as well as being actively involved in my music society seems to have re-routed most of my energy.

However, the xmas holiday season is upon us, and I shall endeavor to revamp this ol' place up. Learning code is on my to-do list, and with all these talented people here at UAL, I hope to really tear it up.