*"You will need to do a lot more than just plug a sensor into a tree and get it
to tweet!" *Yeah, well, okay, I guess so
Doors of Perception Report
by John Thackara
Requiem for a species - and for lunch
April 2010
This free monthly newsletter starts conversations on issues to do
with design for resilience, and announces Doors of Perception events.
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THIS MONTH'S HIGHLIGHTS
Requiem for a Species - - - Eating Meat - - - Transition Towns - - - Blue
Economy - - - Think Less Feel More - - - Dott in Cornwall - - - Do Futures Have
A Future? - - -Service Designing Higher Education - - - Calling All Tadpoles
- - - Social innovator Website - - - Timelab - - - Breizh Entropy Congress - - -
Clothes Swapping - - - Celebrity Jelly Makers - - - Mart Guixe's Mead Factory
- - - Avoiding Cognitive Capture - - -
**** **** **** **** ****
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REQUIEM FOR A SPECIES
"It's too late to avert catastrophic change. Our politics and institutions are
too dysfunctional to make elegant adaptations. We'd better prepare ourselves
for surviving as best we can". Clive Hamilton's new book Requiem for a Species
is not for the faint-hearted - but my first reaction was to think: "So? what am
I supposed to do with this information?". There is an element of
fire-and-brimstone in the early part of the book - Hamilton lambasts our "greed,
materialism and alienation from Nature" before advising usto "abandon the
accustomed view of the future as an improving version of the past." But
Hamilton's larger purpose is more pragmatic than moralisitic: he wants to help
us prepare psychologically and practically for the the reality of what climate
weirdness will bring. In particular, we need abandon the traditional idea of
orderly 'adaptation' to climate change, and move instead a strategy of
continuous transformation that can account for big and sometimes unexpected
impacts. The book even ends on a positive note: Hamilton anticipates that fresh
values may emerge in the era of a hot Earth—moderation, humility and respect,
reverence for the natural world.
http://tiny.cc/d53g2
http://www.earthscan.co.uk/RequiemforaSpecies/tabid/102325/Default.aspx
EATING ANIMALS
If Requiem for a Species is shocking at an existential level, Jonathan Safran
Foer's Eating Animals hits you at the level of lunch. It's no less gruelling for
that. Among the in-your-face statements that pepper the text: "When we eat
factory farmed meat we live literally on tortured meat..and put it into the
mouths of our children". The author is especially appalled by the wastefulness
of modern food systems. It takes up to twenty-six calories fed to an animal to
produce just one calorie of edible flesh - and yet animal protein costs less
today than at any time in history. This is because meat producers don't pay
'external' costs such farm subsidies, catastrophic environmental impact, and
human disease. Those costs fall on the biosphere. Then there's the shit. Farmed
animals in the United States produce 130 times as much shit as do human beings,
roughly 87,000 pounds of shit per second. The polluting strength of this shit is
160 times greater than municipal sewage... and yet there is almost no waste
treatment infrastructure for farmed animals. For Foer, these horrors and
biocrimes are only possible because we are disconnected from the fact that
animal foods involve killing animals. The ways we buy meat and fish at
restaurants and supermarkets, pre-cooked in pieces, widens the disconnect. But
as the secrecy surrounding the factory farm breaks down "we can no longer plead
ignorance - only indifference" Foer writes. "Those alive today are will fairly
be asked: what did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?"
The website contains links to excellent organizations one can do something with.
http://www.eatinganimals.com/
TRANSITION TOWNS
Clive Hamilton regards the "enforced optimism" of some green campaigns as a
"means of disengaging from a reality" - but he nonetheless anticipates a
cultural shift away from denial and self-pity towards a resilience and
resourcefulness. For me, that shift is already well under way, big-time, in the
Transition Towns movement. You can decide for yourself at their new website.
"A website is just a website" says Ed Mitchell, leader of the 'transition
technologists' team that built it; "our goal has been to support the exchange of
reliable community-owned information without making people spend hours in front
of screens". (Face-to-face is the most important mode of communication for
Transitioners). Functionally, the new site is wonderfully clear and easy to use;
and the content is of course inspiring. My only reservation concerns the
homepage illustration: it reinforces the myth that Transitioning happens only in
cute country towns. A Bladerunnerish look-and-feel, in parts of the site, would
reassure the growing number of city-based initiatives that the site is for them, too.
http://tiny.cc/d53g2
http://www.transitionnetwork.org/news/2010-03-17/transition-network-launches-new-website
WHAT CAN DESIGN MEAN FOR A REGION?
The stated ambition of Cornwall, in the the far south west of England, is to
become a "green peninsular". It's an evocative concept, but there are different
interpretations of the word "green". For example, although Cornwall aspires to
become a "knowledge economy" it is more of a playground economy at the moment:
Many of the 500,000 people who live in the county rely on five million tourists
each year visitors who come to holiday, consume - and then leave again. New uses
are also being considered for the relics of Cornwall's clay mining economy - but
plans for the development of offices, shops, marinas and eco-towns bring with
them another dilemma: increased transport intensity. Despite the fact that 27
percent of Cornwall's carbon emissions come from the transport sector (compared
to 15 percent for the nearby city of Bristol), new roads, and airport expansion,
figure prominently in its regeneration strategy. But there's a parallel Cornish
reality to these big-ticket investments: Grassroots projects are thriving. The
region is filled with groups restoring ecosystems; teaching each other
environmental stewardship; recycling buildings and equipment; cultivating fungi;
swapping and banking seeds; composting; growing medicinal plants; planting fruit
and nut tree nurseries. The question facing last week's DottCornwall seminar on
'emerging design practice' was a tough one: where can designers make the best
difference? Read more at:
http://tiny.cc/d53g2
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2010/04/design_and_the_1.php
IN PLACE OF OUR "DO LESS BAD" ECONOMY
"A thief who tells a judge he is stealing less than before will receive no
leniency. So why do companies get environmental awards for polluting less –
even though they are still polluting?". Gunther Pauli is scornful of the "do
less bad" school of environmentalism. "It's an approach which sees billions of
dollars invested in less toxic and longer lasting batteries - even though the
'less toxic batteries' still rely on mining, smelting and toxic chemistry, are
not recycled, and are dumped into the environment to toxify our ecosystems and
pose long term health hazards". Pauli's alternative is to build a new economy on
te base one hundred of the best nature-inspired technologies. The central
principle of what he calls The Blue Economy is the idea of cascading nutrients
and energy - the way ecosystems do. "A cascade is a waterfall. It requires no
power, it flows with the force of gravity. It transports nutrients between
biological kingdoms - absorbed minerals feed microorganisms, microorganisms feed
plants, plants feed other species, with the waste of one being nourishment for
another". Cascading energy and nutrients leads to sustainability, says Pauli, by
reducing or eliminating inputs such as energy, and eliminating waste and its
cost - not just as pollution but also as an inefficient use of materials. In
ecosystems there is no waste because the by products of one process are inputs
to another process.
http://tiny.cc/xm95o
http://www.paradigm-pubs.com/catalog/detail/BluEco
THINK LESS, FEEL MORE
"People do not resist change; they resist having change imposed on them."
Inspired by this line from Fritjof Capra, and mindful that thirty years of
campaigning have not yielded adequate results, the World Wildlife Fund is
exploring new approaches to its work. Its Natural Change project explores how
experiences of the natural world can inspire people to live more sustainably.
Participants experience personal transformation and reflection through
nature-based workshops. The programme is inspired by the work of eco-philosopher
Joanna Macy, a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology,
whose website proclaims: "Welcome to all Beings".
http://www.naturalchange.org.uk/
http://www.joannamacy.net/theworkthatreconnects.html
DO FUTURES HAVE A FUTURE?
If the field of futures were invented today, what would be its intellectual
foundations? And how would its ideas and insights be put into practice? Alex
Soojung-Kim Pang, an alumnus of the Institute For The Future in California,
concludes that futures practice is ill-prepared to deal with problems that are
complex, contingent, uncertain and urgent. He believes the discipline could use
social software to make futures research more perceptive, and insights from
behavioral economics and neuroscience to make it more persuasive. My own take on
the the futures business is not that it lacks persuasive power, but that it
values value the next, at the expense of the here and now.
http://www.future2.org/
CALLING ALL TADPOLES
"You will need to do a lot more than just plug a sensor into a tree and get it
to tweet!". Usman Haque and Natalie Jeremijenko - remarkable
designer-artist-engineers both - are on the look out for truly innovative
projects that "push the boundaries of environmental analysis and action". Such
projects should address "the relationship between all sorts of systems, human
and non-human alike, technological and cultural". $5000 will be awarded to the
best project; it will be featured as part of the Out of the Garage, Into the
World program at the 01SJ Biennial (see below). "Remember that sensors and
actuators are not necessarily bits of technology: a human, a tadpole and a
houseplant can all be considered sensors and actuators too".
http://tiny.cc/atdlr
http://community.pachube.com/pachube_xclinic_zero1
SERVICE DESIGNING HIGHER EDUCATION
Frustrated that an army of politicians, bureaucrats, auditors, managers and
administrators has failed to offer an innovative vision for higher education,
Andrew Polaine (founder of the esteemed new media agency AntiRom, and a
professor at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts) has decided to
take the initiative. He's launched a project called "Creative Waves COTEN -
Service Designing Education" to explore two questions: How might we we
re-imagine the structure and experience of higher education using service design
techniques? and, can service design be used in a purely online, collaborative
environment? Andrew is convinced that service design can make a difference due
to its focus on the entire ecology of a service. Andrew invites you to apply
your most innovative thinking to the problem. I've agreed to take part in order
to learn more about this stuff for my own and Doors of Perception's work.
http://tiny.cc/atdlr
http://www.creativewaves-coten.com/project/
] FORTHCOMING EVENTS
BUILD YOUR OWN WORLD
"The future is not just about what's next. As artists, designers, engineers,
architects, marketers, corporations and citizens we have the tools to (re)build
the world, conceptually and actually, virtually and physically, poorly and
better, aesthetically and pragmatically, in both large and small ways". Under
the theme "Build Your Own World," the 2010 01SJ Biennial in San Jose will
feature hundreds of artworks, performances, events, and artist talks, which not
only imagine the future of the world but begin to build it.16-19 September, San
Jose California
http://01sj.org/
THREE MEALS AWAY FROM ANARCHY, LONDON
Twenty For Harper Road is a creative project space operating out of a disused
travel agent in Southwark, London. Anisha Jogani is curating an event on 17
April called '3 meals away from anarchy.' An aroma-dining experience will
accompany a round table discussion about the connections between art, politics,
science, and food. Celebrity jelly mongers Bompass & Parr will be there, along
with a bunch of other bloggers, artists, architects, chefs and farmer/producers.
http://3mealsawayfromanarchy.wordpress.com/
http://www.jellymongers.co.uk/jelly/sfmoma.html
SUSTAINABILITY IN DESIGN, BANGALORE
The Sustainability in Design: Now! conference is to share the latest knowledge
and experiences in product, service and system design, and to promote
sustainable systems thinking in design education, research and practice.
"The objective is the creation of a new ethos, within the design community,
that will enable all possible synergies and fruitful processes of knowledge
and know-how osmosis and cross-fertilisation".
Bangalore, India, 29 of September - 1 October 2010
http://www.lensconference.polimi.it
SPACE-X, VIENNA
It's about how information design can make public space, private space, work
environments, public transport and sports environments more accessible and
enjoyable for visually impaired people. Space-x wants barrier-free design to
have aesthetic quality, too. Vienna, October 25-26, 2010
http://www.space-x-vie.net/
VELO CITY, COPENHAGEN
Joel Mulligan writes with news that Velo-city Global, "the premier international
conference about cycling policy, planning, design, and marketing", will take
place in Copenhagen between 22-25 June. Among the keynote speakers are Enrique
Peñalosa who, as Mayor of Bototá, Colombia in the years 1998-2001, initiated the
construction of over 300 kilometers of bike lanes crisscrossing Bogotá from the
suburbs to the city center increasing the use of bicycles five times. Janette
Sadik-Khan, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, will
talk about her ambitious strategy to make New York City more green and
accessible to cyclists. A third keynoter is John Whitelegg; one of the best
writers anywhere on sustainable transportation issues, he draws on deep
experience of third world cities such as Calcutta, and emphasizes the
relationship between sustainability and human health, and on the interaction
between human rights and environmental quality.
http://www.velo-city2010.com.
MOBILE TAGFEST, SAO PAULO
In what ways might mobile technology contribute to democracy, culture, art,
environment, peace, education, health and the Third Sector? One place to find
out is at Mobilefest in September. Even if you choose not to go to Brazil, they
have compiled this useful list of tags: 3g, mobile applications, interactive
architecture, electronic art, mobile activism, bluetooth, cyber culture, live
cinema, mociology, culture, democracy, inclusion design, ecology, education,
d-i-y, gprs, gps, LBS, innovation, mobile and wireless games, lbs, locative,
geotagging, electronic music, mobile music, m-health,_m-payment, m-gov, mobile
narrative, peace, interactive net performances with mobile and wireless devices,
interchange, video production and distribution, augmented reality, open
wireless, mesh, social nets, rfid, expanded classroom, health, sms, mobile
streaming, wearable technolgies, tendencies, third-sector, citizen video, video
call, TV on mobile, wi-fi, wi-max, zigbee, etc.14-19 September, Sao Paulo.
http://www.mobilefest.org/
BREIZH ENTROPY CONGRESS
This event wins our opaque conference title of the month award. If you like the
title, you won't want to miss the session on "Folded Polysemy in the works of
Rybczynski and Robbe-Grillet". But the theme is good: "why openness matters".
This inter-disciplinary event is all about free creations and culture: Free
hardware, Free devices, Free software, Free radio, Free science, Free society,
Free individuals, Free art". April 15-17 2010, Rennes, France.
http://www.breizh-entropy.org/
PIKSLAVERK
The Pikslaverk festival is is pretty cerebral, too. It's about "software art
that places poetic, conceptual and/or aesthetic concerns above utility". Should
they be seen as artworks or does emphasis on utility in programs like Pure Data
and Processing that are made by artists disqualify them as artworks?
May 17-21, Reykjavik.
http://piksel.no/pipermail/piksel/2010-March/044860.html
ON A HIDING TO NOTHING IN MANHATTAN
I've agreed to give a talk at the School of Visual Arts MFA Design Criticism
Conference on Friday April 30 in New York. It's a debutante event for students
completing a two-year graduate program that trains them to research, analyze,
and evaluate design and its social and environmental implications. The students'
thesis topics range from the design of personal memorial objects, to the use of
smell as a communicative tool in design and architecture; and from physical
wordplay in the films of Jean-Luc Godard, to the applications and implications
of car sharing. No pressure, then.
http://tiny.cc/atdlr
http://dcrit.sva.edu/view/news/save-the-date-crossing-the-line-the-2010-d-crit-conference-moderated-by-kurt-andersen/
] RESOURCES
THE PLACEMAKER'S GUIDE
Nabeel Hamdi, author of the excellent books Small Change and Housing Without
Houses, has now written an engaging guide to "placemaking...the complexities
faced by practitioners when working to improve the communities, lives and
livelihoods of people the world over". The book shows how these complexities are
a context for, rather than a barrier to, creative work. Hamdi critiques the
'single vision, top down approach' to design and planning, and advocates "a new
paradigm of professionalism whose goals are to be providing, enabling, adapting
and sustaining".
http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=102270
SOCIAL INNOVATOR WEBSITE
Social Innovation Exchange (SIX) has launched a new website, the Social
Innovator. The result of a two year collaboration with the National Endowment
for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), the site maps the many methods
being used to - er - socially innovate? I'm associated with the Young
Foundation, and am very happy to be so - but I must admit to being confused
about the relationship between the Young Foundation, the Social innovation
Exchange, and Social Innovator. Whatever: the new site looks great and contains
invaluable content.
http://socialinnovator.info/
http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org/
SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP POLICY GROUP
Meanwhile the Social Entrepreneurship Policy Group (SEPG) has published Leading
Social Change: A Social Entrepreneur's Manifesto.
SEPG, which was established by the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE),
includes among its members Ashoka, Changemakers, Community Action Network
(CAN), SSE, Training for Life, and UnLtd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs.
And no, since you ask, I don't know what the relationship is, if any, between
SIX, YF, SI, SEPG, CAN, SSE, Tf, FSE, NESTA, UnLtd, etc. Some would call
it brand drift; others, healthy diversity.
http://www.se-manifesto.org.uk/
SEIZE AND DESIS
"In a small, densely populated, highly connected planet, people's intelligence,
sensitivity and creativity are the most abundant resources. These social
resources, if and when catalysed, become powerful drivers for sustainable
changes". Ezio Manzini and his network (which includes Doors of Perception) have
seized on the opportunity to explore how design can help the process: they have
set up DESIS as a network of schools of design and other institutions, companies
and non-profit organizations, that are interested in promoting and supporting
design for social innovation and sustainability.
http://www.desis-network.org
TIMELAB, GHENT
Timelab is "a new workplace for art, technology and society". It consists
consists of a fabLab, an artists-in-residence programme,
and all sorts of social research and get-togethers when artists, experts and
other interested parties meet, exchange ideas about the social relevance of
technology Every month there is the international network meeting of Dorkbot,
"people doing strange things with electricity", where makers explain the
technical aspects of their creations or research to a group of interested
people. In addition to the numerous get-togethers there is an annual summer
camp; its 2010 edition runs from June 20 to 30.
http://www.timelab.org/
TRANSFORMATION FACTORY, LIMBURG
The Belgian Province of Limburg, under pressure to evolve towards a knowledge
economy, asked Experientia to help them to define a future design centre. The
result is called the Transformation Factory, and the new centre will be located
at C-Mine, a former coal mining site that will be transformed into a hub for
creative institutions and innovative companies. Its core activities will be
experience prototyping, mentoring and hosting a creative incubator; it's
targeted at small and medium sized companies, government and semi-public
organisations, schools and universities and professional designers. Check out
the project at Experientia's sparkling new website.
http://experientia.com/projectsandclients/transformation-factory/
CLOTHES SWAP, GRAZ
Clothes swapping has probably existed as long as we've been wearing clothes.
However, having a larger group of people swap and restyle old clothes together
is a fresh approach. in Graz, Austria, RE.create - an informal network of young
creative people - organized 80 hours of sorting 1,300 pieces of clothes, bags,
shoes and accessories. "We worked until our hands bled from being scratched by
the clothes hangers". A ten-day youth exchange is planned for later in the year.
The site and movies are terrific.
http://www.earthrecreate.com/
NOW MARTI MAKES MEAD
The Catalan artist and ex-designer Marti Guixe Guixe has the art institution La
Panera a centre for the production of mead. He also explores the reinvention of
tradition, and the taming of nature, in "Camp Fire Building" - a nine metre high
structure "for the renewal of socialising spaces, the creation of visual
milestones and contemporary symbolic references".
http://www.guixe.com/exhibitions/2010_Park_life_Espai_zero1/index.html
CULTURAL STRATEGIES AND TOPINAMBOUR
The proceedings of the Forum d'Avignon - whose theme was "Cultural Strategies
for a New World" - are now available. There are voxpops with the French cultural
elite on a train (click on the intro video); there is me pontificating in the
palace of the popes (click on the 21 November videos). But the most talked-about
clip concerns the campaign of Michelin-starred chef Christien Etienne to
rehabilitate topinambour -the jerusalem artichoke. Click on the chef for that.
http://tiny.cc/atdlr
http://www.forum-avignon.org/Forum%20Avignon%202009%20-%20Actes%20FR.pdf
AVOID COGNITIVE CAPTURE
Smaller editorial teams, faster news cycles, and 'access journalism' all
conspire to influence content people in mainstream media. They end up like
reporters embedded in military units, too dependent on their relationships with
influential sources. Blogs and newsletters like this one, being independent,
fill that gap. To avoid cognitive capture, please press the donate button or go
direct to:
http://tiny.cc/rwthn
——
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