Good Talk- Russell Davies

Watch live streaming video from liftconference at livestream.com

Points of interest: - People like things- they don't mind paying for an object (as opposed to web/ internet related stuff)

- A tacky figurine might be better than 1000 photo files on a cloud when it comes to recalling or remembering a holiday

- Screens aint all that

- People are amazed that internetty type data can become physical- especially personalised objects

- As old tech and practices change the infrastructure they used begin to become more accessible to the little guy (we've broken your business now we want your machines.)

Ted but not Ted

Found this conference called Lift- long story short- it seems to have videos of lectures/talks given by interesting guys in tech vs. design areas. James Auger has got a talk so you know... I've not worked my way through all of them yet and the site is a bit crap to be honest but it seems like a good resource. Give us a shout if anyone finds any gems. Check it here: Lift Videos Lift

Tutorials

I'm going to blog my two tutorials this week from the dynamic duo of Matt and Luara. Matts tutorial on Monday put me in a good mood as he said he liked my drawing about the projectors and sequential which mixed my trianspotting interview with my conveyor belts. It sprung me into looking for more collectors to talk to to help ground my project. But he also saw the potential in doing perhaps a series of outcomes (something i'm well into) which could be an illustration (loosely, I'm not going to get too prescriptive about it) of the collection process, i.e. acquisition, display and storage, or something like that. My tutorial with Laura went really well. She talked about my process, and the transitions between drawing/idea and model/physical and from that to outcome/presentation. She said that I might not need to create the things I'm drawing if the outcome wasnt actually a set of conveyor shelves (for example). I could present the outcome and design the process, which is kind of a lot of what my work is about anyway. Laura said I've really got to figure out what the point of whatever it was i was going to design was, even if it just so that I can display/ present it in the right way.

I'm now going to print out all the interviews, good drawings and good models and start to merge them slightly into groups to design around. I've also got some more focused making and stuff towards a finished 'thing'. I guess it's also encouraging that Luara was asking me what kind of outcome it was that I wanted to produce (a video, an object, graphics), and it made me happy to think that i didn't care; whatever is relevant to the project. I like that I might actually be this Goldsmiths designer and that I use only graphics as a convinient tool.

Tutorial and Stuff

Having a good time at the moment but I'm getting worried that my project isn't getting where i want to be fast enough- part of this problem is not knowing where i want to be, i just know I'm not there! I had a good tutorial with Rosario she harked back to an old project of mine: the one with the puddles in bags and water collections. She pointed out that it's success came from a specific thing- a context, a problem and that now i had good research but that i was in danger of letting my research outdo whatever outcome it might be that i come to- i need to start getting specific- and pretty soon- I'm going to say that by the end of January for sure (hopefully sooner) i will have concluded my research to do list and that i will have a more specific area of interest to run with and make real good. We talked about which bits of my project were interesting...... i like this drawing and the idea of getting movement involved, time passing, motion, something happening during the accumulation/ collecting process- the way i see it the collecting process goes:

start static---------during, movement, interest, play, motion, active-----------after i.e. completion static once more, lack of interest, shelved,

slopes, conveyors and time passing interest me with that. We also talked about completion:

this shows an item given which contains one item, with spaces to fill, promoting collecting and accumulation- this links to one of my interests previously about a frame with a label will attract not just more of the same item mentioned within close proximity but will actively attract like a magnet, other artifacts of a similar label. A split box is better at suggesting collection by implying a set and an aim- a completion- something of a particular size for instance, when compared to a large empty cardboard box. Levels, compartments, trays, sections all describe and imply a set. I fancy making a group of objects some with 2 parts ranging up to many parts. Making tools/ objects to instigate a collection in someone- i guess to an extent i have it with my book a week framework, why not make other tools for others.

Rosario was also interested in the industrial process of standardisation. That when everything is manufactured to be 'perfect' the imperfections become the rare collectibles. If there are limited editions, or only a certain number of an item in existence (as is the main norm with collectibles- here defined as anything collected) then they are ripe to be collected. I'm wondering, what if every thing was different, but still was a product of an industrial mass process, then every one would be collectible- so none would be as each was as valuable as the last and the next. This leads on to the idea of the specimen- the best artifact within a comparable group of artifacts. Would this evolve despite having nothing to be directly compared against. Could a specimen still be manufactured..............