Juice Bar

Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art - Barbican Museum

2008-03-30T14:55:00.002+01:00

Anthropologists from outer space set out on a mission to understand life on earth. Imagine that they begin their mission by examining the curious phenomenon that human beings call ‘contemporary art’. What does Art tell them about human life and culture?

Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art presents contemporary art works under the fictional guise of a museum collection conceived by and designed for extraterrestrials. Playful and irreverent, the museum’s collection features some 175 works by over 115 artists, from modern masters to bright new stars including Joseph Beuys, Cai Guo-Qiang, Maurizio Cattelan, Jimmie Durham, Thomas Hirschhorn, Ryan Gander, Mona Hatoum, Susan Hiller, Damien Hirst, Brian Jungen, Dr. Lakra, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, John McCracken, Bruce Nauman, Mike Nelson, Cornelia Parker, Sigmar Polke, Ugo Rondinone, Daniel Spoerri, Haim Steinbach, Francis Upritchard, Jeffrey Vallance, Andy Warhol and Rebecca Warren.

Believing these objects to have a real or functional use, the Museum’s curators deploy an eccentric classification system. They treat artworks as artifacts. The Martian perspective opens up contemporary art to fresh interpretations as well as humorous misunderstandings. In presuming to understand an unfamiliar culture, the Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art parodies the way that Western anthropologists historically viewed non-Western cultures through alien eyes.

Node London Upgrade OSD

2008-01-09T09:28:00.001Z

Documentation from the event is available here

NODE.London link >>

071129 Organisation Strategy & Design hosts NODE.London & Upgrade!

2007-11-21T13:44:00.001Z

This month, NODE.london will be hosted by the Organisation Strategy and Design (OSD) Series at the LSE on Thursday 29th November.

The speakers for the evening will include Michelle Kasprzak from Upgrade! Scotland and New Media Scotland, who will be talking about her experiences in establishing and supporting Social Networks. There will be the usual opportunity for questions and debate.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Upgrade! Scotland is a monthly gathering of artists, curators and others interested in art and technology in Scotland organised by New Media Scotland. It is part of the Upgrade! Network, an international network of gatherings concerning art, technology and culture which is organised in Skopje, São Paulo, Sofia, New York, Salvador, Seoul, Lisbon, Paris, Vancouver, Tel-Aviv-Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Berlin, Belgrade, Scotland, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Brussels/Ghent, Montréal, Chicago, Oklahoma City, Tijuana, Boston, Munich, Istanbul, Seattle, Washington, and Second Life!

Upgrade! Scotland Link >
Upgrade! International Link >

NODE.London supports media arts practice in and around the capital, NODE.London [Networked, Open, Distributed, Events. London] has worked as an open organisation, using consensus decision-making and pooling ideas, resources and even people. It has sought to fortify existing media arts networks and to encourage production and experimentation, whilst assisting in the articulation of such innovative artistry to a wider audience.

NODE.London link >

The purpose of the Organisation, Strategy & Design (OSD) Event Series at the LSE is to build a compelling body of knowledge around the emergence of Design Process as a strategic tool for organisation and conceptual development; in other words, the movement from feelings to action amongst very large groups of people. The series is an open exploration of practice at the intersection of business, culture, community development, education and health. OSD is supported by the Institute of Social Psychology and the London Multi-media Lab of Audio Visual Compostion at the LSE.

Organisation Strategy & Design link >

Web 2.0 - Beyond the Hype

2007-10-28T07:20:00.000Z

Web 2.0 - Beyond the Hype was the theme for a fascinating evening. In conversation were Lee Bryant of Headshift (a company that enables corporate change through web 2.0 applications), James Purbrick of Linden Labs (Chief Development Officer of Second Life), Richard Davis, CEO Vexed (web developers), Justin Rivington CEO of Rivers Run Red (social software developers), James Cooper (Spectrum Consulting) and thirty others.

Whereas most agreed that Web 2.0 applications provide tremendous opportunities, and are the logical evolution of web functionality - there were divergent opinions on the value of these tools within organisations, or the forms that they take. James Purbrick believes that new economies are forming, creating entirely new opportunities for value creation, and that the barriers to entry have been significantly eroded. Second Life is providing a virtual realm in which real people are making real money. The value for large organisations however is unclear, beyond the halo effect of having set up a stall within Second Life.

Lee Bryant takes a different view. His company believes that the social relations of production have been significantly altered by Web 1.0 and that Web 2.0 offers tools for communication, collaborative work and decision making which makes these changes explicit. The new economy is the knowledge based economy and it is challanging and redefining the traditional boundaries of organisation, private, public, commercial and government.

What became clear was the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Although a term invented by Tony O'Reilly it helps use to understand the direction the web is evolving. Whereas Web 1.0 was about constructing infrastructure and enabling vast numbers of people, businesses to interact and contract online (shopping), Web 2.0 is taking linking, communicating and playing together to another level. The barriers to entry for people to establish highly sophisticated organisations are continuing to fall. Web 2.0 is a neat term that helps us understand what the next wave of internet functionality will enable us to do together.

Paul Bennun stays indoors for a week

2007-06-14T10:13:00.000+01:00

Paul Bennun is locked up in his flat until the 19th of June and is disallowed any kind of contact that does not come over his internet connection. This is for a BBC Radio 3 programme about virtual communities and how relationships therein differ from physical ones -- a programme to be broadcast in November. During the week he is interviewing many of the most important thinkers in the field, as well as (most likely) going gradually nuts.

Read more >

MARJETICA POTRC - Forest Rising - Barbican

2007-06-04T11:50:00.000+01:00

The Curve
Marjetica Potrc - Forest Rising
24 May - 2 September 2007

Acclaimed Slovenian architect/artist, Marjetica Potrc, is renowned for installations that present socially driven architectural projects in a gallery context. Working at the interface of architecture, art and social science, Potrc is concerned with the fundamentals of human life; our need for shelter, well-being and community.

In this, her first solo exhibition in the UK, Potrc has created a dramatic new work for The Curve. A powerful evocation of Amazonian life in the twenty-first century, Forest Rising, is an ‘island community’ floated on some 40 trees, including a field, pier, helicopter platform and a school, complete with solar panelling and satellite dish .

In focusing on a commendable local response to de-forestation and rising water levels, Potrc’s commission inevitably points to the dangers of globalization, climate change and unsustainable urban growth. However, firmly imbued with an aesthetic of hope, Forest Rising shows how rural living can offer a model for the future; a vibrant community that is both self-supporting and globally connected.

Most positively of all, Potrc finds a commonality between the utopianism of the Barbican, with its high-walks and monolithic raised dwellings, and the inspired strategies of a community on the other side of the world.

Marjetica Potrc is currently based in Stockholm and Ljubljana. Her work has been exhibited widely in the Americas and Europe.

OSD: Craft, Design, Economy

2006-12-07T15:02:00.000Z

GARRICK: The context for this event is that a great number of conversations were begun last year with various people involved in design projects in development situations. We thought it might be an interesting idea to get various groups together and begin a conversation about what it takes to be successful, and indeed what is the definition of success in these situations.

TOM BARKER: I'm Prof of Industrial Design at the RCA. What we've been doing for the last couple of years is we've been taking students overseas for a couple of weeks to work with crafts people locally, and then we bring them back to London to complete the design process. The first project we did was in China. It was a dry run, but we didn't actually make any products. Last year Garrick and I put together a project in Thailand. The difference was we wanted to take it to the next level and create projects.

Our learning is we really have to find the strengths and weaknesses of any country. Initiating these projects is easier than its every been, but you really have to conclude and getting out it as difficult as its every been.

This is a map of the fastest growing countries in the world.

This is a map of the countries with the fastest growing tourism.

We spoke to the Thai's (TCDC) and

A map of countries with the most shops.

There were very good reasons for collaborating with Thailand. It was the most optimal location for establishing a production / sales base in the coming 5-10. Thailand is ranked as the the 3rd most attractive FDI locaiton in Asia and the 9th most attractive location in the world for the next four years. Has no paperwork, very friendly, relaxed attitude and a mixture of work and pleasure can be a plus and a minus.

The comparison between Thailand and London is interesting.

There are lots of compelling reasons to work with London. We identified a trend called Masclusivity – the art of creating very low batches of custom products, for people who had disposable income who wanted to to differentiate themselves. This is what makes Thailand distinct from somewhere like China which is based on an engineering and manufacturing competitive advantage.

ASHLEY: The project aims was to take 21 RCA students and 8 designers to design, manufacture and sell a range of Massclusive products. This was part of a Thai national strategy for the survival of their craft and making skills. Thailand can’t comopete on infrastructure, number of workers or labour rates. One of these things is to develop a modern Thai design language.

The outcomes of our projects is that our products were used as case studies by TCDC to show how design helps business. Factories developed new making skills. Some of the objects made by factories hadn’t changed in 100 years. It was also a proving ground for Go:Global.

The unexpected stuff that happened was concept creep. The stronger ideas got better and the weaker ideas dropped out. A good evolutionary approach. During the manufacturing stage the weaker ideas didn’t have champions. Factory courtship was interesting – most of the meetings were about establishing relationships. Some of the people couldn’t read drawings. Which meant we had to rapidly prototype ideas in London – which were then shipped over to Thailand.

A lot of the decision making process was consensus driven. The assumption was that everybody had to be involved in the design decisions.

These are our final products – the Ka -Tin collection.

KATE BLEE:

I’m a designer. I was approached out of the blue to get involved in a programme in South Africa. It had an emotional start without much research. Having said that all the designers who were getting involved had a great deal of experience. We weren’t students flowering out, we were all fairly experienced.

It was started in 2001 and called LOSA (London-South Africa). It cam out of the Sisisizwer Turst and the Khumbalani Crafts based in Johanneburg. They were working with woman with aids and a great deal of problems. The knowledge of the people and the links with the communities were fairly developed.

The point of it was to pick on the crafts skills which existsed, run workshops which could build on the skills and see if we do some development that could build products that could be lifted out of airports shops and placed on a the open market. A very ambitious project.

We all arrived and met at the airport for the first time. We brought a variety of ideas, and communication tools. We went out to Kwazulu Natal – and the aim was to have a show in Sotheby’s alongside the contemporary decorative arts show. We had a year. We put on a good exhibition, we had a great deal of quality press. Things developed very quickly. We had retailers interested in the stuff. Julia has experience in product development and employed to do the brave job of working in the communities and demand quality. There were also a lot of things to deal with people who were ill. We also had a master-craftsman project to enable us to identify good skills.

It was incredibly rural. It was very basic. No electricity. In some instances it was very basic. We were frustrated that we weren;t necessaryily going to get out a product that could sit on its own with other products free of being “made by a poort person”.

The negatives were it collapsed. We feel tenuous about it. We had 900 crafters involved, but its collapsed. It was cited in South African as being a shining light. It was taken into a stratospher which didn’t have a basis in the reality. The links in the chain were strong – purchasers, crafts people and designers – but we had management who were flailing around having to deal with the press, which were inflating the ideas before they were ready. We had money coming in from all kinds of people, lots of money promised on the basis of various things happening. And the Londoners were not being communicated with and were’nt were being consulted with.

The sad thing is just sort of melted away. Although the skills that were transferred and are still being used. A lot would have happened in those communities that wouldn’t have otherwise happened. We didn’t achieve sustainability. I have a few images of the products and of us working in the field.

Baba Oscerbie, Katy Beal, Julia Leaky, Tom Dixon, Natalie Hambro and Jessica Rose.
SIMON FRASER

Central St Martins MA in Jewellery Design.

Our students work with craft and artisan communities. From our experience, we have to be particularly careful as people coming in from the outside (London) into the politics of other countries.

Working with students who are working in their own countries, we see them bringing design identities from Europe, which may be not welcomed or viewed with suspicion. I think we have to be careful about working with very small or micro communities. If you work with Oxfam or working with people

The Zandra Rhodes woodblock project in India, was interesting and difficult. Everybody made shedloads of money and then went bankrupt which had very difficult implications for the families and communities involved.

We got involved because our students
I had some experience of working at the National Institute of Fashion and Design in Delhi. You have to make a commitment to people and you end up with an other familial type of responsibility. Its been interesting with people working inside their own cultures with new ideas it can be different. A designers input may be read in a certain way. The reverse is also true if you come in from a different culture. These perceptions have to be negotiated. In this can be some tremendous opportunities as well.

We are interested in engaged with economics. Speaking as a maker, we have material cultures that chime inside cultures. You look for bridges and areas of discourse where you can have engagement. This can be as simple as colour.

MAHANA CHESNY working in Pakistan and Delhi BRUMPTAN FROM Delhi who have been working

ANDY GOODMAN and ADAM THABO

We’ve created a product called SNAPSHOT. It’s a tool for facilitating Group learning. We both went to Thailand. We experienced the design process. The design process was called LOOK, we then went into a Concept Generation Phase, we worked through a matrix. We had two groups, one set developing designs and another looking at concepts that would inform the design.

The most interested things has been language barriers, communication and facilitating problem solving when it breaks down.
We’ve isolated the bare bones technology for communicating and solving problems together – very simply. A pen and a piece of paper – moving onto a collaborative project.

One barrier is the gap that exists between the workshops and the subsequent interaction and collaboration. Sometimes we use a WIKI which engage workshops beyond when they are together.

How can we facilitate communication across time and distance.

WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS?

Katy HOlford: I was working with a factory hands on. One of the biggest problems I have is communicating with my host in Thailand who only uses the mobile phone – not the web or email. Communication was the biggest challenge. How do you communicate across time and distance? I don’[t want to lose momentum. They’ve put the ceramic into production. They were launched at the Bangkok international gift fair in October – but I ask the questions and don’t get the responses.

Ray: I have two similar projects in Bethnal Greens – around bringing making skills, crafts and music to teenagers. I’m wondering is how do you define craft? Do you have to go overseas? I’m getting involved in Dott 07 to use design to regenerate the local economy.

This is very interesting – why does it have to be the other side of the world. There are so many problem – cultural differences, communication. And there are communities that can benefit dramatically from the similar approaches.

Tom: These are questions of globalisation. The modes of communications are very different. The proliferation of modes, in someways makes it harder to communicate. If you have mashed up communication you start getting surprises. This can be a problem in the design process. Each time it gets less painful and you get smarter at it. The techniques.

We are interested in the Wiki, but it only works if the manufacturers understand it.

Does long term success require collaboration, as opposed to consulting?

Or do people have to stay on the ground in order for it to be successful/

Katy: My belief if that you need to have someone on the ground. The Christopher Farr project in Turkey (making carpets) has a very reliable chain. It’s a network of trust.

It started out at by a prof at university who was worried about the collapse of traditional making. He wanted to rekindle the interest in the product. Its very gender related – woman weave, men dye. Its very village based. It was setup as a big cooperative.. The chain started with identifying the master craftspeople, they made the product, the reputation grew through their product, their was a training programme which passed on the information in an organic manner. It stayed within its size. It didn’t get political.

Simon: We’ve found is best to keep the politics out. The successful projects become victims of their own success and get appropriated by various politicians. Funding bodies want to be associated with the success. We’ve had some projects where an aid agency has taken. You have to look at who we are and what are we doing in that situation in the first place. We have to be honest about whether we’re doing production or political.

Dierdre Figuretti projects with Diaspora projects in Birmingham are very interesting. Which we don’t see – because its nots aimed at us – its for the communities.

The question of design to culture, community, ethnographic appropriation has to be our first question.

I agree. You first have to understand first the people and the culture.

BOLIVIA; My project is involved in Bolivia. Climate change is causing people to go to the cities. These people use Cactus in their own communities. They grow in semi-arid regions and could work better. It has great qualities which can be used to create different products. This can be used to sustain livelihood in their communities. Working with material in the habitat. They’ve made products – We discovered the properties of cactus. I wanted to develop something rustic. There is no community making the products yet. We need to money to make something happen.

Its about respect.

INDYPAUL: What worries me is the fickly design community with communities – building bespoke non-diverse supply chains – if something happens to the supply chain can have a devastating effect on the other side of the supply chain. We need to build resilience into the ecologies of supply chains on both sides.

SIMON: There are ethical considerations about health and safety.

ADAM:

DoiTung came into communities did health first, then agriculture and then education.

TOM: The Gates Foundation are getting involved in Africa. Within the department we run we believe in the benefit of design to enable economies. We get in return networking, a good research opportunity for our students. These are on a small scale. If the Gates sling a billion dollars at a country – that can have a massive impact on the economy. Dyson was talking about building fortress Great Britain. Previous collaborations. If you are making yourself part of the economy in the host country maybe you need to be there for the long run.

KATY: I think its important that everyone understands from the outset – that its openly win-win from the outset and together we can do something – something openly give and take.

Next events

2006-11-08T07:00:00.000Z

Organisation Strategy & Design Seminar Series

4th December - Craft Design & Developing Economies

7:00pm - 9:00pm

When it comes to designers and crafts people working closely
with people from developing countries to create opportunities and links with international markets, there are many stories of great courage
and determination, and stories of failure despite the best and
most noble of intentions.

The seminar will bring together designers, artists and craftspeople, economists, development experts and anthropologists - all of whom have been involved in such projects to tell their stories, learn from failures and successes.

This seminar is being conducted in conjunction with the Crafts Magazine.

The cases include projects in Thailand, Afghanistan, South Africa and Algeria.

The guests include Prof Tom Barker (RCA), Ashley Hall (designer), Tom Dixon (designer), Kate Blee (designer), Joanna Gibbons (Architect), Simon Fraser (Central St Martins), Prof Jo Beall (DESTIN, LSE), Garrick Jones (LSE), Caroline Roux (Editor Craft Magazine).

Arts & Ecology

11th December - Arts & Ecology - Taking on the Design Challenge of the Stern Report: A Practical Designshop for Pragmatic People

George Monbiot has responded to the Stern Review in the Guardian with a ten point plan for implementing the recommendations.
Gerge Monbiot article

John Thackera takes the plan further, by outlining the Design Challenge and the role of Designers in implementing such a plan.
John Thackera's design challenges

We will be hosting a probono event during the Arts & Ecology Conference being held at the LSE No Way Back? which we've decided to call Taking on the Design Challenge of the Stern Report: A practical designshop for pragmatic people in response.

No Way Back? Conference

It will be a two hour designshop. If anybody would like to volunteer to be on the Design Team please let Garrick know.

Organisation Strategy & Design Seminar Series

20th November - Exploring Graphic Facilitation and Visualisation Tools

7:00pm - 9:00pm

Graphic facilitation is a set of techniques and skills that are increasingly being used by large groups to understand complex situations and to chart their positions within the context of ideas both present and in the future.

Graphic facilitators respond directly to large group conversations. They create models, illustrations, maps, relationships and visual metaphors that enable groups to make sense of complex discussions and situations. The skill of their craft allows complex ideas to be simply rendered. Their work is often used to communicate ideas beyond the decision-making group.

This seminar will be both an exploration of these techniques, led by skilled practitioners, as well as an opportunity for all participants to hone their abilities.

limited places RSVP

OSD 24.10.2006: INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL STATEMENTS FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED ENTERPRISES (SMEs)

2006-10-26T15:40:00.000+01:00

The purpose of the roundtable was to begin a discussion exploring the requirements for an Intellectual Capital Statement in a UK context.

The hypothesis is that Innovation and know-how are the foundations of dynamic and thriving economies. Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) are hotbeds of innovation. The particular forces that shape them require constant improving, changing and improving. The intellectual capital within SMEs is usually difficult to identify, transmitted as forms of embodied and tacit knowledge, but that it is the valuable knowledge that drives competitive advantage.
European countries, such as France, Germany, Spain, Poland, UK, and Slovenia are increasingly recognizing the need to capturing intellectual capital for innovation and progress; however, efforts are usually minimal and bureaucratic. The InCaS project aims to look into intellectual capital for SMEs, without the bureaucracy, and seeks to establish a platform for the development of Intellectual Capital Statements over the next few of years in these countries.

The discussion at the Round Table was kicked off with a presentation by Lara Quelch, from KPMG’s Intellectual Property Service, , of research carried out by the consulting firm KPMG into IP and SMEs. Following this conversation the participants explored what kind of institutions are necessary for interviewing and bringing into the InCaS interviews.

SME’s making Intellectual Capital Statements: The consultants (KPMG’s) View

How can intellectual capital be captured without getting in the way of SME innovation? There is a need for exploring tacit knowledge and the intangible assets within SMEs and how the intangible may become more tangible. If possible, could SMEs go to banks to raise finance based on their Intellectual Capital statement?

Even large enterprises have trouble capturing intellectual capital; therefore, how may small and medium size enterprises do the same? SMEs face many challenges in producing an intellectual capital statement. First and foremost, lies the dilemma of conceptualising what this statement involves. Is it a financial statement? Or, is it an innovative advertisement about the company, set forth in leaflets?

KPMG categorises intangible assets along a continuum from “hard“ tangible marketing-related, customer-related, artistic-related, contract-based, technology-based assets towards more “soft” intangibles as you move towards assets such as customer-supplier relationships and trade. Tangibles can be protected by law (i.e. patents, registered trademarks), which is what usually impresseses City businesses.

Based on a KPMG’s survey, innovation most often arises out of SMEs, but how it is really thought of is quite vague. So, how can an intellectual capital statement for innovation be approached in an effort to to manage and maintain IP? KPMG believes that the strategy should involve infiltration into different areas of the business, which involves enforcing, creating, acquiring, valuing, exploiting, protecting, and managing IP.

The SME must look into ownership issues. Who are the intellectual capital creators? There may be R&D issues and discrepancies. Once you set the parameters on how to capture the intellectual capital, you need to value it. Are you exploiting it? It’s important to exploit it, not just externally, but also internally, by sharing knowledge across the organisation to work together and not repeat the same research that has already been done.

Moreover, when hiring people, clearly highlight to new hires that their intellectual capital is valued and prized by the organisation. Try to avoid situations where employees try to hide and protect their own intellectual capital (i.e. China- There is a need to create a culture of awareness). Therefore, SMEs need to value intellectual capital as well as the processes that SMEs use, which are a value in themselves.

KPMG & Microsoft sponsored research on Innovation in SMEs- August 2006 found that innovation is hard to protect. Different forms of protection include: registered design, trademarks, patents, confidentiality agreements and copyright. The most significant form of protection across UK, Netherlands, Germany and Spain was the use of confidentiality agreements. In Germany, however, the use of patents was more popular than in any other country.

Nevertheless, the dilemma still remains as to what needs to be included in an InCas? Is it a numerical figure on a statement to partners or customers? What could ultimately be included in such a statemnent that is both valuable on a tangible and intangible level of knowledge? (i.e. Patents have been captured, and although these are more tangible forms of evidence for City companies, perhaps we need to move forward into a new form of intellectual capital with regards to the intangibles of innovation.)

Questions raised by participants

What is IP compared to Intellectual Capital?

IP:
inventions, protected by patents, copyright (i.e. song lyrics etc.)
brands, logos, registered trademarks and designs (i.e. Coke bottle)
Confidential information/ trade secrets
Perhaps more of the legally protected “box”

Intellectual Capital:
when the organisation is organized, processes are controlled within the organisation, what is in the employees’ heads, what people learn from working day to day, the “know-how”

Intellectual Assets
Can be your best practices, as well as “know-how”

But…Is there consensus on these definitions?

Intellectual capital involves an “idea,” so how can one protect it? Using confidentiality agreements? If it is in people’s minds, it is very difficult to exploit it. Therefore, how can one retian this knowledge withing their minds and enable it to be extract at the same time? If you can exploit it, you will do well, especially if you do it before someone else does. Nonetheless, keeping things a secret is very difficult.
i.e. Like other vacuum manufacturers in the market, Dyson had to change its strategy to adapt to the market.

Do we have the intellectual capital, such that we can exploit the intellectual property? Perhaps as long as the employees work for you, you have the intellectual capital working for you, but you don’t necessarily have the intellectual property working for you. The Intellectual capital is when a company could have value, if they knew how to exploit it. Herein lies the problems when consultants come in to a company and try to describe all the things they perceive as intellectual capital. So, they have to show how they could generate value from this. Consultants and internal employees may have different views on what are the intellectual capital opportunities for property exploitation.

Importance of intellectual capital is that it can vanish very easily. Imagine a company goes bankrupt, there goes the intellectual capital. Therefore, InCaS focus is to determine ways to avoid such loss, and to increase the value of SME sectors, so as to “make themselves better,” and increase opportunities for third party investment.

In some companies, everything you do is intellectual capital, therefore we need to sketch out what isn’t intellectual capital.

Intellectual capital doesn’t have value until you learn the means of exploiting it. Once sharing it, it begins to have value, and feeds back to build more intellectual capital, yet perhaps more intangibility. Learning as you go along makes things more tangible but perhaps more intangible at the same time.

It is so important for people to document their ideas and write them down, so that when they leave someone else can benefit. However, are people that unselfish? Perhaps not!

Also, it is not enough to have all the tangibles, you also need the intangibles that are embodied in the employees, their experiences, their thoughts, their ideas. These are what fuels innovation and further advancement in an area of expertise.

Further Work
The group agreed that an Intellectual Capital Statement is a good idea in principle however a number of key definitions need to be agreed, the implementation must not be onerous, a means of documenting tacit knowledge was important.
It was also agreed that further interviews need to be conducted with national accounting boards and other regulation and standardisation bodies, as well as banks and credit

FUTERRA - ART & ACTIVISM

2006-10-16T19:19:00.000+01:00

Futerra have been working as a communications design agency focussing on climate change. Ed Gillespie spoke about the research that supports climate change. His big question is how do we get people involved in climate change in a way that changes behaviour. Futerra asked themselves this question and place a great emphasis on cultural channels to change attitudes to climate change.

Ed challenged us to ask our MPs to make policy change.

The Big Ask - ask your MP

Ed highlighted some of the things that environmentalists get wrong.
He talked of blowing away the myths

Environmentalists create fear without agency - challenging habits of climate change communication

Have to forget the climate change detractors - don't give them the oxygen of publicity

Be careful about the assumption that there is no "rational" man - we need to make sure that we're not just relying on rationality and think about emotional reactions

Be aware of the impacts of cognitive dissonance - attitude is everything, we don't want to compound existing behaviours

Audience Rules

We want to make climate change a "home" not an "away" issue

Raise the status of climate change mitigation behaviours - people who hung out their washing on the line in the US we thought to be more likely

We need to use transmitters and social learning - using people to talk about the issues, rather than high profile ad campaigns

The map of the discourse

The alarmist reportoire - the end of the world

The optimistic reportoires
awrrkwesin , british comis nihilism

Style Rules

We need to use emotions and visuals

Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness
Urban pollution in China is focussing peoples attention - for example in Chongquin (32 milliion)
Crisis = danger + opportunity (the Chinese symbols)
There is a huge opportunity to work with the challange. Although there is no magic bullet.
How do we engage people's hearts and their minds.
The cultural channels are so important because we need to touch peoples hearts.

"Human history is a race between education and catastrophe." HG Wells

Climate change is increasingly going mainstream. Rover are offering to offset the Carbon on a Land Rover.

Did Shakespeare write of climate change 400 years ago in A Midsummer Night's Dream

Art as a channel for challenging peoples perspectives. The artists, Damien Hirst, had the idea of bottling all of his C02 emissions for a year. The Cape Fear tour took a number of artists on boats to the Antarctic. Anthony Gormley made a snowman! Its hard for Art to deal with environmental questions in a positive way. Art likes doom and desolation. however this can make the people do less. Because Art like the apocalytpic. The weather project at the Tate Modern felt like it was all about climate change. I'm not sure everyone would have had the same reaction. Similarly Martin Creeds lights going out and on also reminded me of impending crisis - but this may not have been everyone's interpretation.

Interpretation of specific works can be subverted. The Haywain launched English Conservation, an unintended consequence. The famous blood head by Mark Quinn was parodied by the creating of an ice sculpture of Tony Blair. But do these interventions actually make a diference. Do they make us change our behaviour?

There are also opportunities for major public sculptures. The Wee Man showed the amount of electrical equipments we dispose of in our lives. Its very impressive. How are we able to adapt these ideas to enable us to think about climate change.

Mark McGowan left a tap on in a gallery which caused an outrage. He parked a car in a gallery in Peckham and ran his car with a pipe to the outside world. These subvert our ideas about what things are going on everyday.

When the Carbon Trust went to an advertising agency they came up with an atom bomb which totally scared people - the wrong idea.

The metaphors are going in the wrong direction. Melt = life. Frozen = death. These are not clever about the messages.

How do we make the invisible visible?

Richard Box put light tubes in the ground under the magnetic fields of a powerline - which made the energy field visible.

Where are the provocations? Where are the situationist artists for climate change. A herd of Jersey Cows were kept on an estate for a week "the Udder Way".

More complicate subjects - Michael Landy's Breakdown took place in the heart of Oxford Street. He destroyed everything he owned in the world, an anti-materialist message. Other interventions include "Buy Nothing Day" - a shop with no products, empty shelves, an empty bag, and environmental messages on the till slip. A shop full of bewildered people.

Simon Starling create "mission Art" - a hydrogen fuel celled bike which he rode across the desert and after wards used the emissions (water vapour) to create a painting of a cactus.

Posters can be used to satire public information posters. Campaiging organisation sometimes get it wrong. "The Day After Tomorrow" was sensationalist and didn't get people to change their behaviours.

How can we use alternative approaches to get people to think differently about big challenges.

Poussin painted rising images of alternative futures. Where are the utopian images of our climate adapted future. Who is reflecting our desires for a climate adapted lifestyle - the new ruling aesthetic. We tend to do the dystopia. We have a real oopportunity to do something different.

If Martin Luther King had stood up and said - I have a nightmare. Would we still be talking about his speech today. What he did was say "I've got a Dream". This encapsulates the Futerra approach - people will run toward a climate secure future.

Negative scenarios don't appeal to many.

Its about a postive vision and motivating.

Rules of the Game

which provided the evidence base for the UK's National Climate Change Communications Strategy. The first 'Rules' were about communicating for attitude change, these new Rules are aimed at communicating for behaviour change. The two documents are designed to be used in parallel and are complementary.

ORGANISATION STRATEGY & DESIGN SEMINAR SERIES : ACTIVISM & ORGANISATION : 16.10.2006

2006-10-12T11:10:00.000+01:00

The first seminar of the continuing series for this academic year will take place on Monday 16 October at 7pm in A316.

The purpose of the series is to build a coherent, compelling body of knowledge around the emergence of Design Process as a Strategic Tool for Organisation and Conceptual Development; In other words, the movement from Feelings to Action. The series is an open exploration of practice at the intersection of business, culture, community development, education and health.

Each event features a speaker or group presenting projects they are involved in. Questions are taken, and time is spent working in smaller, inter-disciplinary groups, tackling questions raised by the presentation. These are then discussed with the larger group.

The speaker for the seminar on 16 October is Ed Gillespie from Futerra, a sustainability communications company that uses innovative, creative and strategic ways to promote sustainable development, and the seminar topic is: Social/Organisational and Environmental Sustainability through Creative Multimedia.

Background: Ed Gillespie is Creative Director and co-founder of Futerra. In a varied, complementary career Ed has taught in Jamaica for a year, worked for the Survival Natural History Film Unit, as a marine biologist in Australia, New Caledonia and Orkney and was environmental manager for London Transport. Ed has Masters degrees in both Marine Conservation and Sustainable Development. At Futerra he co-writes and produces short provocative films on social and environmental issues, develops multimedia educational materials, and runs training workshops amongst a host of other media related activities.

More information on Futerra can also be found on:

Futerra

and information on the seminar series can be found on:

Social Psychology News & Events

THE GREAT LEARNING - CONFUCIUS

2006-08-12T10:07:00.000+01:00

In conversation with China expert Kerry Brown, he mentioned that The Great Learning by Confucious had much in common with The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith (1723 - 1790). The chapter titles of this classic are:

Part I Of the propriety of action
Part II Of merit and demerit;or, of the objects of reward
Part III Of the foundation of our judgements concerning our own sentiments and conduct, and of the sense of duty
Part IV Of the effect of utility upon the sentiment of approbation
Part V Of the influence of custom and fashion upon the sentiments of moral approbation and disapprobation
Part VI Of the character of virtue
Part VII Of systems of moral philosphy

Here then is the text of the Great Learnng.

The Great Learning

By Confucius

Written ca. 500 B.C.E

What the great learning teaches, is to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence.

The point where to rest being known, the object of pursuit is then determined; and, that being determined, a calm unperturbedness may be attained to. To that calmness there will succeed a tranquil repose. In that repose there may be careful deliberation, and that deliberation will be followed by the attainment of the desired end.

Things have their root and their branches. Affairs have their end and their beginning. To know what is first and what is last will lead near to what is taught in the Great Learning.

The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.

Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy.

From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides.

It cannot be, when the root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well ordered. It never has been the case that what was of great importance has been slightly cared for, and, at the same time, that what was of slight importance has been greatly cared for.

Cedric Price - The Fun Palace

2006-08-05T11:10:00.000+01:00

CEDRIC PRICE (1934-2003) was a visionary architects who built very little, but through his teaching, writing and forthright views, influenced architects from Richard Rogers to Rem Koolhaus and Archigram. His ideas have been said to have been a "lateral approach to architecture and to time-based urban interventions" .

He believed that architecture should be "enabling, liberating and life-enhancing" and his Fun Palace an unrealised project of 1960-1961 had deep influences on public spaces such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Kulturhuset in Stockholm.

{Price’s reputation is chiefly based on the radicalism of his un-built ideas. His 1960-61 project, The Fun Palace, established him as one of the UK’s most innovative and thought-provoking architects. Initiated with Joan Littlewood, the theatre director and founder of the innovative Theatre Workshop in east London, the idea was to build a ‘laboratory of fun’ with facilities for dancing, music, drama and fireworks. Central to Price’s practice was the belief that through the correct use of new technology the public could have unprecedented control over their environment, resulting in a building which could be responsive to visitors’ needs and the many activities intended to take place there.

As the marketing material suggested, there was a wide choice of activities: “Choose what you want to do – or watch someone else doing it. Learn how to handle tools, paint, babies, machinery, or just listen to your favourite tune. Dance, talk or be lifted up to where you can see how other people make things work. Sit out over space with a drink and tune in to what’s happening elsewhere in the city. Try starting a riot or beginning a painting – or just lie back and stare at the sky.”
Using an unenclosed steel structure, fully serviced by travelling gantry cranes the building comprised a ‘kit of parts’: pre-fabricated walls, platforms, floors, stairs, and ceiling modules that could be moved and assembled by the cranes. Virtually every part of the structure was variable. “Its form and structure, resembling a large shipyard in which enclosures such as theatres, cinemas, restaurants, workshops, rally areas, can be assembled, moved, re-arranged and scrapped continuously,” promised Price.
Price eventually put these ideas into practice in a reduced scale at the 1971 Inter-Action Centre in the Kentish Town area of north London. The building constitutes an open framework into which modular, pre-fabricated elements can be inserted and removed as required according to need. Central to his thesis that a building should only last as long as it was useful, the centre was designed on condition that it had a twenty year life span and was accompanied by a manual detailing how it should be dismantled. For Price, time was the fourth spatial dimension: length, width and height being the other three." © Design Museum}

Here then are some of the building blocks for the foundation fo a radical architecture, that places the structural elements clearly in the hands of the public, that is able to be redesigned very quickly, without too much techical support, that can be reconfigured on an as needed basis, and within my frame of interest becomes a place where people are able to organise their environments for playful decision making.

BIOGRAPHY
1934 Born in Stone, Staffordshire.
1955 Graduates in architecture from Cambridge University and enrols at the Architectural Association in London to study for a diploma.
1956 Invited by Erno Goldfinger to assist – together with Victor Pasmore and Helen Philips – to construct the Group 7 installation in the This is Tomorrow exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. There, he meets Frank Newby, a member of Team Ten, as well as Alison and Peter Smithson. Attends lectures at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and befriends Reyner Banham.
1958 Becomes a part-time teacher at the Architectural Association, where he will teach for six years. Also employed by Maxwell Fry and Denys Lasdun
1959 Meets and befriends the visionary US architect R. Buckminster Fuller.
1960 Founds Cedric Price Architects and starts to develop The Fun Palace with Joan Littlewood.
1961 Collaborates with Frank Newby and Lord Snowdon on the Aviary at London Zoo.
1962 Joins the ICA Exhibitions Committee and teaches part time at the Council of Industrial Design as well as at the AA. Collaborates with Buckminster Fuller on the Claverton Dome and designs an art gallery for Robert Fraser in London.
1964 Unveils his radical vision of a modern university as a catalyst for economic regeneration in the Potteries Think Belt.
1969 Publishes Non-plan, a radical rethinking of planning orthodoxy, with the planner Sir Peter Hall, the critic Reyner Banham and Paul Barker, editor of New Society magazine.
1971 Completes one of his few finished buildings – the Inter-Action Centre in Kentish Town, London.
1971 Founds Polyark – Architectural Schools Network.
1984 Presages the London Eye by proposing to construct a giant ferris wheel on the River Thames opposite the Houses of Parliament.
1997 Presents the Magnet scheme of ten reusable structures.
2003 Cedric Prices dies in London.
2005 The Design Museum presents a retrospective of Cedric Price's work in collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.
© Design Museum
FURTHER READING
Cedric Price: Works II, Architectural Association, 1984 republished as Cedric Price: The Square Book, Wiley-Academy, 2003
Cedric Price: Opera, edited by Samantha Hardingham, Wiley-Academy, 2003
Re:CP, by Cedric Price with Arata Isozaki, Patrick Keiller and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Birkhauser Verlag AG, 2003
A Critic Writes: Essays by Reyner Banham, Centennial, 1999
Addition, Andrew Holmes + Cedric Price, Architectural Association, 1986
An Alternative View of Kew, Cedric Price, Architectural Association, 1982

What is the Value of Artists in Business? A lunch and conversation

2006-07-06T03:08:00.000+01:00

I had the pleasure of Chairing a lunch and conversation convened within the context of an Artists Placement Programme, to discuss the question "what is the Value of Artists in Business?" A dodgy question in difficult territory, of course, sailing as it does between those who believe that artists are subversive and those who believe they are instrumental. Nonetheless it provided a springboard for a lively and open discussion. The guests, coming from as diverse backgrounds as artists, or businesspeople, or the media, had experience and forthright opinions. They included Barbara Steveni of the Artists Placement Group (APG), Dick Penny of Watershed in Bristol, Paul Gerhardt of the BBC Creative Archive, Gordon Knox of the Montalvo Arts Centre in California, Prof Tom Barker, and the artists Ansuman Biswas and Vicki Bennet.

Can Artists add Value to Business?

The definition of Art and Artist has shifted dramatically, the 21st Century Artist has skills and abilities which are valuable in domains outside those traditionally prescribed for artists. These domains include Business and Government.

This is not to say Artists working with Business is not problematic. The experiences of people who have bravely embarked on this journey are full of difficult stories.

There is a realm in which Artists are working which goes beyond Corporate Collections.

Artists work outside of the Context of Business, and thereby call Things into Question. Is there a role for the Artist in the Boardroom?

Artists possess tools for looking at situations, which call Things into Question

Artists may subvert existing structures and forms

Artists may problematise a situation simply by their presence

Artists may provide perspectives from alternative worlds

Artists may conceive of possibilities

The presence of an Artist may act as a “strange attractor” of new ideas within a Business Domain

How does an artist deliver Value, in a tangible manner to business?

What about the clash of cultures?

What about the indescribable question of Language and Languages?

What about independence? What about the Artist resisting definition, or positioning or pigeon-holing.

What about the rise of Creativity within Management Theory?

Are there any examples of where Artists have unquestionably added Value?

Ansuman insists that as an Artist, he will remain outside of the Context, working from the outside of a system, to understand and to question.

Barbara Steveni suggests that Context is half the work - motivation is primary - Artists are Carriers of Culture.

Paul Gerhardt that the question of Value is problematic, there are many different types of Value, beyond Business Value and Public Value.

Dick Penny, understands how difficult it is to work with Artists in an Organisational situation, but that an understanding that bringing Artists in is an invitation to question.

There is a difference between Art that works in the Social Realms and Art that produces Products.

Vicki talks of her experience with Archive material, and finding new and interesting things, through a Creative Process that ignores the titles, and digs into content. She remarks how seldom she has received feedback on her work in the past, from the people who have sponsored her work.

Tom Barker asks whether we are the dawn of a new Enlightenment - Enlightenment 2.0 - where we will see the rise of Patronage as never before.

Peter Day of BBC Radio 4 "In Business" queries the old models, and asks whether the rise of the Internet and the Social Technology provided by new applications enable instrumental creativity on a global scale.

Gordon Knox asks for, and provides, an extremely precise definition of the Artist - "anyone who has a critical engagment at the very edge of the envelope of change, who has a lifelong commitment to this endeavour, and who is engaged with the Humanist Project".

I summarise that "to question....is the answer!" I wonder if we've heard that before somewhere?

ORGANISATION STRATEGY & DESIGN SEMINAR SERIES : AGAIN FOR TOMORROW PART II : THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK : 26.06.2006

2006-07-06T02:32:00.000+01:00

The Future of the Book network joined with the Organisation, Strategy & Design Seminar to listen to and discuss two very different projects. The first Macmillan Publising's eLearning English Campus and the second, a development of a Book with USB interface that enables online interaction through electronic ink, designed and developed by Manolis Kelaidis of the RCA's IDE.

After hearing from the two presenters, the group divided into smaller groups to discuss various the topics.

Macmillan eCampus

Manolis Kelaidis
For my last project at the RCA I'm looking at books; both as a medium for experiences and information, as well as an artefact whose functionality and shape (the codex) have largely remained unchanged in human consciousness.

In an era where the e-book is trying to find its way onto our shelves, will the book retain its appeal and qualities? Is there space for new design approaches in activities like reading, writing, exchanging, storing or making books, that would give them added value?

RCA 2006 Final Show - Generation

Future of the Book Network - Blog

The Institute of the Future of the Book

Artists creating spaces for participant engagement, discourse - An Incomplete List

2006-04-22T10:13:00.000+01:00

ARTISTS WHO CREATE SPACES FOR PARTICIPANT ENGAGEMENT, DISCOURSE AND MANIPULATE CLIENT EXPERIENCE

Artists who create Spaces for different forms of interaction - open spaces for development, detournement include

Jeppe Hein - invisible labyrinth

Olafur Eliason - Weather Project

Liam Gillick - Discussion Platform

Rikrit Tirvanija - The Land Project

Lia Perjowski - Centre for Art Analysis

Utopia Station - Not just one artist

Mike Nelson
Nelson builds large scale environments - theatrical, yet seemingly real, elaborate and intensely engaging. They are also enormously time consuming to construct. This installation was built over two months and filled an empty 2,600 square feet space with 16 rooms, a mezzanine, and 190 running feet of corridor...

Gelatin
Gelitin is a group of four artists working together in Vienna - Tobias Urban, Wolfgang Gantner, Florian Reither and Ali Janka. They met in 1978 and formed a partnership in 1993. Gelitin have shown in many international exhibitions including "Dionysiac," at the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the first Moscow Biennial, both earlier this year. In 2003 they were commissioned to make a performance for the first Frieze Art Fair, London, and in 2002 they made events for the Gwangju and Liverpool Biennials. Gelitin represented Austria at the 2001 Venice Biennale. Later this year they will appear in the first Performance Biennial in New York and the Art Sheffield 05 citywide forum opening October 28th”. Gagosian gallery

"to feel like a humongous implosion, sucking you into deep and profound chaos, instability, joy and pure wonder. It offers visitors a chance to relax, paddle and freak out. Fresh clean waterfalls, slimy sofa islands, bridges of fear and beauty, all these miracles are made from leftovers of living and provide the terrain of the 'Sweatwat.'

Steve Willats - Multiple Clothing - MESSAGE INTERACTION EXCHANGE

2006-04-20T07:45:00.000+01:00

'Multiple Clothing' presents a selection of clothing-based works by British artist Stephen Willats', spanning 40 years of practice. Willats began his project 'Multiple Clothing' in 1965 as a strategy to engage directly with the fabric of society, exploring clothing as a very basic externalising of the self. Made up as kits, the clothing designs were created out of many small units that zipped (or later Velcroed) together in various formations to make multiple garment types - including simple shift dresses and jackets. The self-determining nature of acquiring and assembling these kits to each wearers' specification was essentially an amplification of the notion of self-organisation, a key principle beginning to emerge in the politics, philosophy, science and art of this era. The modish, geometric primary-coloured panel designs of Willats early costumes recall the geometric stylistics displayed in early avant-garde ballet and theatre designs in their clean, functional sense of modernity, as well as embodying a spirit of the Sixties with their use of contemporaneous synthetic fabrics. A defining element of Willats wearable artworks was the 'thesaurus' of words that were available to be inserted into the clear plastic pockets, either by the wearer, or by other people that the wearer interacted with. The selection was chosen by the artist from words that describe human thought, mood and behaviour. Over subsequent decades Willats has developed and transformed the look and nature of garment-based works into many alternative situations, including a key period in the early to middle Eighties when he made a series of collaborations with the subcultures of London's thriving club scene. Performances involving the works have continued throughout the projects' lifetime, including influential stagings at the ICA, London, and Daniel Bucholtz Galerie, Cologne. SHOWstudio

DON'T PANIC

2006-03-17T20:45:00.000Z

DON'T PANIC

Posters are part of a city’s skin, like temporary tattoos they parade attitude as much as content. Whether advertising for commercial opportunities, cultural events or political protests, this medium has won its place as a new template for social engagement and sometimes even recognised as a new branch of art.

The credit for this is attributed to Jules Cheret, who pushed the lithographic process to enable the progress of the posters as a modern medium of expression. With his help 19th century club promoters with an artistic inclination commissioned the likes of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec to design the Moulin Rouge promotional posters. More recently, but certainly in this tradition, Don’t Panic, a small advertising publisher started by club promoters, has produced over 90 posters in the last 6 years, designed by emerging talents and established masters of the art.

Don’t Panic usually set a theme or interest for the designer. As they declare in their mission statement their desire is to “encourage dialogue and communication, raising and addressing issues that affect contemporary culture with mind to bring change to the industry and global society.” Themes often relate to social interests and protest, such as environment, war/bush, social participation and creativity. The disciplines that are invited to partake are diverse and include photography, fine art, graphic design, graffiti, copywriting and model making all constrained to the A2 format.
The exhibition will display 90 posters by known (and not yet known) designers and will include work by:

James Goggin, Banksy, Neville Brody, Pentagram, Kerr Noble, Pete Fowler, Kitsune, Airside, Neil McFarland, Andrew Rae, Elliot Thoburn, Kam Tang, Kid Acne, Shepard Fairey, Jon Burgerman, Will Barras, Stanley Donwood, Kai and Sunny, Jamie Reid, State, Michael Gillette, Zip, Blue Source, Iwantdesign and others

Exhibition curated and designed by Daniel Charny

Gallery Director: Zeev Aram

The Aram Gallery,
110 Drury Lane (near Aldwych), Covent Garden, London WC2B 5SG.
www.thearamgallery.org

ORGANISATION STRATEGY & DESIGN SEMINAR SERIES : AGAIN FOR TOMORROW : CONTEMPORARY ART EXHIBITION RCA : 16.03.2006

2006-03-10T09:42:00.000Z

The next event in the series - 16th March - the Organisation, Strategy & Design Seminar Series will be attending the Royal College of Arts Curating Contemporary Art Interim Show Private View 7:00pm - 9:00pm.

The show, entitled AGAIN FOR TOMORROW, examines ways in which artists select and use experiences from the past as the impetus for projections into the near future. The works' very particular relationships with time and history encourage active reflection and engagement, excavating the past to consider new perspectives and potentials. This is not a nostalgic journey. Freed from the restraints of a traditional sense of time, the works gathered here suggest that the past can be used to inform and transform our present situation.

Artists include Martin Boyce, Ulla von Brandenburg, Gorka Eizagirre, Christoph Keller, Joachime Koester, Chris Kubick and Annw Walsh (Archive), Matts Leiderstam, David Maljkovic, Missingbooks, Alex Morrison, Adrian Paci, Phillippe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija, Lia Perjovschi, Mai-Thu Perret, Trama.

The show runs from 16 March to 9 April.

A list of events, lectures and artist happenings associated with the show is to be found at

Again for Tomorrow Events

ORGANISATION STRATEGY & DESIGN SEMINAR SERIES : CAREY YOUNG : CONTEMPORARY ARTIST : 02.03.2006

2006-02-28T09:06:00.000Z

ORGANISATION STRATEGY & DESIGN SEMINAR SERIES
CAREY YOUNG : CONTEMPORARY ARTIST

The presenter this week is the renowned contemporary artist Carey Young

Carey Young (born 1970) is an artist, working at the intersection of culture and contemporary work.

Born in Lusaka in Zambia, Young is a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London.

Much of her work as an artist is related to her previous work for a leftist thinktank and as a management consultant. In Nothing Ventured, she had visitors to a gallery ring a call centre, where the people manning the phones gave the caller a range of generic information (Young's name, a list of previous exhibitions, influences and so on).

In 2003, Young was shortlisted for the Beck's Futures prize. One of the works in her contribution to the show, entitled Non-Disclosure Agreement was represented in the show by a non-disclosure agreement contract signed by a representative of Beck's, which agrees that the piece will not be shown, creating a parallel with privatised corporate art collection, whose works are also often removed from public gaze whilst used to further the brand worth of the corporation.

More recently her work has shiften into an interest in legal language and systems of thought, with 'Disclaimer', an exhibition at Henry Moore Institute and IBID Projects, London, examining the disclaimer as a form of negative space. In 2005 she showed 'Consideration', a series of works exploring the connections between contract law and performance art at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York as part of the PERFORMA05 Biennial.

Her work has been included in the 'British Art Show 6', which is currently touring the UK in 2005/6.

ORGANISATION, STRATEGY & DESIGN : SOCIAL PROTOTYPING & SERVICE DESIGN : GARRICK JONES : 13.02.06

2006-02-20T11:56:00.000Z

ORGANISATION, STRATEGY & DESIGN
SOCIAL PROTOTYPING & SERVICE DESIGN : GARRICK JONES : 13.02.06

The value of an inter-disciplinary approach was highlighted in the conversation that was sparked by this presentation. The discussion was enlivened by a diverse group consisting of architects, interaction and communication designers, social psychologists, public policy researchers and business analysts.

Garrick presented research being developed in conjunction with the Service Design Group Radarstation

Radarstation

The team are working on synthesising a systems ecological approach to Social Prototyping. Their approach not only recognises the requirements for understanding and navigating the labyrinth of social and technical systems, they also seek to develop outcomes from a user perspective. Rapid iterations of hi-fidelity prototypes, coupled with flexible learning infrastructures enable teams to understand user requirements on a large scale. The case studies applied were looking to deploy service changes in organisations of 60,000 or more employees, servicing millions of customers.

QUESTIONS
Key questions underpinning the research are:

- How to conduct a customer centric, service led initiatives at that scale?
- How to organise a user-centred approach that enables implementation within very large communities?
- How to do so in a way that keeps risk low, costs low and enables large organisations to effectively learn by doing?

"For the truth of our world is that there are as many languages as there are communities, activities or kinds of knowledge...there is a multiplicity of language games." Alain Badiou Infinite Thought p35.

TERMS

Systems Ecology

Business Design a definition - the application of design processes, tools and techniques into the strategic development, research and innovation of operational processes of Business.

Social Prototyping forms a component of the Service Design approach.

Service Design

A number of shifts can be identified that support the emergence of these processes:

- the shift from informal to formal support infrastructures for continuous organizational learning and development
- the shift toward partnering, and creation of services through aggregation of services provided by multiple stakeholders
- the shift toward the prototyping of services and systems within the business as a means of managing risk and ensuring successful implementations
- the shift from process transformation to business systems design as means of enabling business change
- the increasing use of design craft skills alongside business analysts
- the tendency to create bespoke spaces for this work – sometimes called Innovation Centres, Design Labs, Solution Centres or Hothouses – to enable continuous rather than ad hoc learning and development of services which act at the margins of the business
- the creation of sophisticated problem solving environments such as Flexible Learning Environments within the business
- a commitment to parallel prototyping and testing of the systems (people information, technical, process, social), organizational design, measurement, outcomes – an approach sometimes called Social Prototyping.
- Establishing formal organizations to support these endeavours within the business

We identify these shifts as symptomatic of a larger trend in Business - the move from controlling Superstructure to enabling Infrastructure.

Just as the Design of physical artefacts are honed through iteration, prototyping and user feedback – it becomes vital to test all the systems that support and enable new Services, offerings and products in a safe environment. Such an approach mitigates risk, and builds solutions from the customers and employees outwards.

Environments that demand large scale solutions requires this work to be organised and sequenced in particular ways.

Social Prototyping seeks to simulate the implementation of a vision, through small, live, controlled processes. Teams are established who seek to deliver the new services and products to customers in as live a situation as possible. The idea is that rapid feedback and cycles of learning enable the services and customer experience to be honed to the point that the services meet the qualitative, and values requirements of business, as well as the cost, systems and operational capabilities.

Through processes of constant enquiry, feedback and problem solving, the things that work well with customers are quickly identified and amplified. Services and offerings are implemented along growth and learning trajectories – that is the entire system is grown as a means of implementation.

Inter-disciplinary teams enable more powerfully considered solutions at every stage of the process. The craft skiils we identify as being useful for these approaches include Service Design, Interaction Design, Communication Design, Experience Design, Organisation Design, Strategy Design, Systems Design, Business Analysis, Information Systems Design, Programme Management.

CASES

Disaster - Credit Card implementation and the jailing of a UK customer in Japan.

Disaster - Settlement of new arbitrage instrument disaster – tax implications, and customer experience

Disaster 0 New postal delivery products introduced without thinking about processing capability of the system, carrying volume of door to door agents, evening post products sold to clients, without understanding the entire system constraints

Success - New car hire service designed prototypes leading to successful business
Success - Airplane launched with licensing on both sides of atlantic and built with customer input

PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS [NOTES]

- emergence of outcomes, superstructuration and interstructuration
- emergence - where entity, structure, concept arises from existing material - emergence is both ontological and epistemological
- emergence is linked to superstructuration - superimposition of the emergent level on the pre-existing and intrastructuration intra-position of the emergent level within the pre-existing one.
- in Marxist terms high-order agencies set the boundary conditions for for operation of lower-order conditions
- however higher-order agency may also include materially constructured infrastructure, which enables collaborating groups to both establish the pre-conditions for emergence of outcomes, and experience the outcomes within time
- mind/body dualism is negated through a constructivist approach where individuals act with intentional agency through construction
- against reductionism
- models play a central role through the semantic view of theories Nancy Cartwright "most articulated and well illustrated by the German structuralists, that a theory is not a set of claims as the Logical Positivists maintained but rather a set of models (Balzer et al. 1987). In opposition to laws some authors are explicit in arguing that the models that constitute theory and that satisfy its laws are not the models that proide our best descriptions of the world (Gierre1999; Cartwright 1983; Cartwright et al 1995; Suarez 1999). The theory is at best a foundation from which more accurate models are built, by improvement and correction, models that in the end no longer satisfy the laws. (Cartwright et al 2005)
- the ontological forms of physical environment
- visualisation
- constructivist approaches

ORGANISATION, STRATEGY & DESIGN : THE PURPOSE OF THE SERIES

2006-02-20T11:28:00.000Z

THE PURPOSE OF THE SERIES

To build a coherent, compelling body of knowledge around the convergence of Design Process as a Strategic Tool for Organisation and Conceptual Development. In other words, the movement from Feelings to Action. The series is an open exploration of practice at the intersection of business, culture, community development, education and health.

Each event features a speaker or group presenting projects they are involved in. Questions are taken, and time is spent working in smaller, inter-disciplinary groups, tackling questions raised by the presentation. These are then discussed with the larger group.

CONTACT

Daniel Linehan (Manager, Institute of Social Psychology, LSE) d.p.linehan@lse.ac.uk
Garrick Jones (Institute of Social Psychology, LSE) g.a.jones1@lse.ac.uk
Evelyn Wilson (LCACE) e.wilson@qmul.ac.uk

COLLABORATION

The seminar series is an inter-collegiate collaboration between the Institute of Social Psychology, LSE – Industrial Design & Engineering, Royal College Of Art And Design – London Centre for Arts & Cultural Enterprise (LCACE)

ORGANISATION, STRATEGY & DESIGN : SUZANNE STEIN MAPPING THE WORLD : 23.01.06

2006-02-20T10:58:00.000Z

Suzanne Stein from Nokia talks about her approach to mapping the future and taking the temperature of the world of ideas - techniques for navigating into the unknown.

Suzanne is a member of the Consumer Vision team within Nokia Design's Insight & Innovation Group. She is exploring foresighting techniques for design and business strategy ends. She is also a core participant in Nokia Strategy's WorldMap project, which studies emerging trends and identifies new business opportunities created by disruptive technological and market developments.

Suzanne has also been a core Faculty member of the new technology division, Habitat, at the Canadian Film Centre, since its inception in 1997 and has been a Mentor for the Interactive Project Lab that joins the CFC with other innovative technology institutes across Canada (since 2002).

Previously at Sapient Corporation, a business and technology consultancy, Suzanne was the Discipline Lead for the Experience Modeling (XMod) group in London, where she created and managed this group of diverse social scientists. She was also a Director in the User Experience Group, overseeing Creative development and articulation as well as the Research offerings.

Prior to this, she was the Director of Insights and Director of Project Management at X Corporation Unlimited, a communications and design firm.

Tropicália - A Revolution in Brazilian Culture

2006-02-18T13:26:00.000Z

‘Stop, listen, walk, see. It costs you nothing. It just costs you your life’ Gilberto Gil
‘Why not?’ Caetano Veloso

It was 1968 and the people of Brazile responded to the shifts in thinking taking place around the world, and to their own military junta, with an incredible surge in creativity across all the arts. Some of the names who emerged from this period include Caetano Velloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Ze, Helio Oiticica.

A major festival of art, music, film, theatre and dance celebrating Tropicalia - the cultural revolution that re-defined Brazilian art, music and fashion in the 1960s and beyond.

read Anna Dezeuze's article on Helio Oiticica - Tactile dematerialization, Sensory politics: Helio Oiticica's Parangoles - Art Journal Summer 2004

ORGANISATION, STRATEGY & DESIGN : DESIGN SOLUTIONS FOR AN AGEING POPULATION? : 09.01.06

2006-01-12T11:36:00.000Z

Phil Bartlett – Director Business Design, Department of Work & Pensions (DWP)

Phil Bartlett in his position as Business Design Director for the DWP employs a unique approach in order to prototype new ideas, test and solve existing systems problems, as well as building and communicating solutions into the Department.

The approaches rely on Solutions Centres and events, Design led approaches and Multi-Media Artefacts created by users and staff and workspaces designed to enable forms of “social prototyping”.

He defines his background as 10 years of turning strategy into action within a context of championing the elderly, the pensions crises and assisting the current generation to fulfil their hopes and aspirations. This Pensions department has approximately 15 million working age customer and administers approximately £60billion of taxpayers money. They have reduced their staff from 20000 to 14000 in the last 3 years and are intending to halve that. They have shifted their organisation from 400 local offices to 20 call centres.

A component of their work is not only to enable the shifts in the organisation, but also introduce new products. The Pension Credit has been introduced in 2.7 million households. They have redesigned the state pension product to enable it to be processed in 12 minutes rather than 60 days.

These are clearly change processes that take place on a large stage and require serious navigation through complex scenarios.

Phil takes a process view of the organisation and talks of the importance of making time to dream first in order to understand the problems or opportunities, then defining the outcomes. The Solution Design is created only after they are clear about where they’re wanting to go. They next rigorously build business cases and demonstrate the future before testing, building and deploying.

Phil talks about the importance of catching the Dream and coming at it from the Future – working backwards in effect. They also take time to bring their partners and stakeholders into the Dream. By using techniques that externalise and create a shared view of the problem.

One of these techniques is the creation of media artefacts. Phil showed an example called the Bereavement Journey. A worst case scenario, based on a true story, which takes an emotional perspective of what the Department requires of someone at the time they are in an deeply emotional state. It is difficult to watch as the frustration and despair unfolds on screen. However the process points are powerfully made. What is most interesting about this artefact, though, is that it was made by the internal team, scripted by them, and professional skills only support the creative process. The making of the artefact is as much a part of enabling rapid alignment as it is of creating a useful communication tool.

Those involved in the storyboarding the film included members of the taskforce as well as experts, funeral directors, police, leaders of religious groups. They were challenged with articulating the problem in a which could be easily communicated.

Part of Phil’s technique is to focus on the customer in order to create client-centred solutions.

One of the places where this work is done is in a purpose built Solutions Centre in Glasgow, which has all the group facilities and production support necessary for large teams to work together.

We were shown a film that introduces the Solutions Centre.

Phil listed as key to the ways of working in the Solution Centres:
- a core group sets directions
- use of multi-disciplinary groups
- 6-8 weeks cycle of activity
- being innovative and ambitious
- a ‘can do’ attitude
- robust, constructive challenge
- every person on the team having an equal voice
- transparency and trust
- confidential teams enabling openness of discussion
- working within a technologically enabled site
- strict behaviour codes for core team meetings
- drawing in of external thinking

One of the future visioning projects that Phil is currently working on is called “here4me”. They have created media artefacts which again make the case for change very clearly through acted scenarios showing both the client impact and the impact on work within the department. This project is still in the pilot phase, and their prototyping environments are demonstrating process improvements from 13 weeks to 5 days.

Phil showed another artefact – the story of an elderly couple who have got married, and changed their care status – as well as the status of their carers. A complex situation that was solved by a single call to a single point of access call centre and individual who was problem solving on their behalf.

Question: Why this approach?

PB: We’re so big we had difficulty sustaining the change so we’ve been looking for different ways of working that enable us to accelerate.

Question: How did you manage to convince the rest of the organisation about this way of doing things?

PB: The thing that makes the difference is the showing and demonstrating. Quite often we’ll bring groups into an interactive theatre, in order for them to participate in simulating the solutions. We use storytelling to involve people. The more interactive we can make things the more skin in the game we evoke.

Question: How important is the built environment?

PB: Taking people away from their usual environment has powerful results. At the solutions centre we try to provide a friction free space, where things are easily achieved. Our ways of working are based on facilitated sessions and creating prototyping spaces.

Question: You describe a standard Design Process - where designers create the dream and then attempt to sell it to the implementers. How do you ensure it doesn’t all fall apart in the fabrication?

PB: We do rigorous cost benefit analyses and business cases. We challenge the problem solvers to build viable solutions with teams who will also be involved in the implementation. We prototype and test various solutions before we commit to building and deploying.

Question: How do you prototype your systems?

PB: Our IT systems are mostly legacy systems using old green screens. Agents may need to navigate 13 -36 screens. By prototyping new live screens, and the processes that best support their use, we’re able to determine best practise. We’ve also built internet solutions simultaneously. We are able to bring the business into the centre and trial things there using live data and customers.

Question: How do you get project?

PB: All our projects are sponsored by Directors. We may also do some blue sky thinking that is pure-enquiry we well. We have a culture where an outcome to a problem maybe that there is nothing that can be done to solve it in the short term – but at least we know that – rather than suspect that.

Question: Do you use designers in the centre?

PB: We don’t have designers permanently there – but we work with external organisations and bring designers in.

Question: Do you work with Design Consultancies?

PB: Not with the processes as such, but certainly we work with designers in partnerships.

A fascinating insight into solving complex problems, design led collaborative authoring of media artefacts and social prototyping using a solutions centred approach.

ORGANISATION, STRATEGY & DESIGN : SHIFTS SIDEWAYS : 12.12.05

2006-01-08T11:33:00.000Z

Organisation, strategy and design shifted sideways for a delicious Christmas outing,12.12.05.

Set against crafted, paint-licked wallpaper David Barrie peeled apart his C4 project in the northern town of Castleford. The project, propelled by the icky power of telly, collides the revealing process of documentary with an urge for actually realising change in the urban realm.

Castleford is part of a trickle of a ‘pool of nothingness’ across ex-mining towns in the north, indicative of a series of places whose civic spaces have been absorbed back into the ground. From rotting playgrounds to inaccessible monuments parked in the middle of roundabouts, a withdrawal of investment by companies and government has instigated a lack of trust and ownership by local people. David uses the C4 link gently and aggressively in turns to ‘mercilessly engage people’, to empower them to instigate and take ownership of new public places.

To initiate the process Barrie’s team, acting as a separate vehicle to the camera crew, set up action quarters in an ex furniture shop on the high road. This newly white and delicate open access place acted as an icon to being bothered and reinforced that the project could make a physical difference. An extensive program of consultation enabled local people to directly choose their architects and designers (simple but daring, this never usually happens).
Citing active members of the community as lynchpins, Barrie also supported small ventures, instigating the creation of more communities of interest through offering a vouch from the media to help funding applications get taken seriously both by the groups applying and the funders.

Barrie is audacious. In this project he plays the role of the contemporary architect- the instigator, the one who will be organised enough, persuasive and dogged enough to effect change. And those of us who are trained as architects or planners, urban maestros or public artists, can ask how does this media guy so tremendously infiltrate and lift multiple communities? Will its effects on public place last? Will the communities of interest provoked persist? Media provides a magnetic inroad- it's a verification of cause, as effective on kick starting an urban project as a nativity play.

Taking Barrie’s project as a launchpad, could media involvement encourage councils to communicate with each other? Could shared knowledge between towns and cities in the north struggling with the same problems (Bradford through Burnley to Liverpool) assist projects to exist as a chain, rather than disparate, competitive ventures? These are government funding issues, the introduction of CABE promises more and more projects that flirt with 2% of the budget on developer missions. Developers are forced to cut a slice of their profit into consulting with the community. That's not enough, public space should not be a sideline concern, a political attitude shift is needed. We are all entitled to good public space.

Hats off to David.

Written by Suzi Winstanley

ORGANISATION, STRATEGY & DESIGN : Design Heroine : Play, Business & Design : 28.11.05

2005-11-29T08:29:00.000Z

ORGANISATION STRATEGY & DESIGN
Seminar Series

WHEN : Monday 28th November

TIME : 7:00pm – 8:30pm

WHERE : Robinson Rooms, A316, Old Building, Houghton Street, LSE

Design Heroine – Play, Business & Design
A dynamic young practise, working across disciplines in the UK, US and Japan.
DesignHeroine.co.uk

Harriet Harriss and Suzi Winstanley have built a practise using design processs as the starting point for all interactions with their clients. They work through creative processes to come to an understanding and an outcome with their clients.

Tools, such as games, are built from scratch and used to explore conceptual and spatial topographies with clients and users. The resulting experiences, as reflective processes, in turn lead to outcomes co-created with their clients. The tools also enable them to scale up the numbers they work with.

Suzi and Harriet introduced a number of games they had created for clients - including a multi-dimensional Process Tool - which allows participants to problem solve and make decisions. This game has five levels - pursuit, parasite, pioneer, prompt and people.

They began with a quote of Eric Frohm's that defines creativity as allowing yourself to be puzzled, accept conflict, and your ideas to be born afresh everyday. They described the interplay between business and design, through play as a dynamic set of relationships which build off of each other. They spoke of the tools as being a resource through which we can talk to each other.

They next invited the attendees to participate in another game of theirs "Transformation Story". Without rules, the attendees created a challenge for themselves. Group 1 attempted to solve the problems attending 24 hour drinking and Group Two were interested in making mass produced food tasty.

The reflection and conversations of the groups, having played the games, focussed on the relationship between content and structure - and the processes of developing structure, rules in order to make sense of the situation. The group reflected on the relationship between structure and freedom - and the need for order, the decaying of structure and the mediation of content to enable different modes of discourse.

There were questions concerning whether it was people or the game (even sans rules) which imposes the structure.

Click on Comments in order to post your comments.

the fashion for fusion

2005-07-04T11:24:00.000+01:00

One way or another interdisciplinarity has been bandied about as a cure-all for years now. You know the kind of thing - businesses should use evolutionary theory to step up product development, cultural production ought to be informed by the latest neurological research. If only, the thinking goes, we could develop sophisticated conversations that cross disciplinary boundaries research would be more integrated & more holistic, the world would be a better place.

The logic's impeccable, the practice maybe less so, because Churchill's comment about the US and UK being two countries separated by a common language also applies very much to interdisciplinarity. There is a real danger that when you take insights out of their original context and attempt to impose them in a world with a different mindset what you end up with is not so much a penetrating insight as an irrelevant diversion.

This isn't to say that there isn't real value in researchers from different disiciplines entering into conversations - far from it. What worries me is the increasing tendency to elide two or more disciplines to create a new, supra-discipline as if the same models that constrained and focused its supporting disciplines could be applied to their combination - surely this can be very reductive. These kinds of things are easy to formulate - bio-commerce, neuro-aesthetics, I'm sure you can think of more - but often, it seems to me, it's much harder to work out these 'disciplines' are actually for.

So rather than always focusing on the integrative potential of associated disciplines in interdisciplinary discourse, perhaps we should spend time looking at points of dissonance? Where does their relationship collide and conflict? Focusing on interdisciplianry fusion feels like a tidying up exercise - it may be more convenient, but in the end we simply create new specialisms with their own unique vocabularies..silos within silos.

Putting Contemporary Art to Work - Open Systems at Tate Modern

2005-07-01T00:30:00.002+01:00

Check out this evocation of times past - the systems ideas prevalent in the 1970's were the basis of the work of many artists who radically rethought the object of art.
Open Systems

Check out Donna DaSalvo's essay on the topic "Where we begin:Opening the System c.1970"
Where we begin: Opening the System c.1970

Here then is a great example of great editing putting great ideas into service. Many might disagree with me, however, in my view one of the great roles of contemporary art, curatorial practice and exhibitions is to provide spaces for discourse, criticism and stimulus in society, and especially in business.

Open Systems, one of the great themes of the 20th century, is presented larger than life and available as a springboard for every kind of conversation within business.

Art v. Creativity - Jeremey Deller on the case

2005-05-21T08:48:00.000+01:00

Jeremy Deller's Folk Art exhibition at the Barbican does it for me.

Jeremy and Alan Kane have spent years collating this vast collection of contemporary British Folk Art. The kind of stuff that everyone makes in everyday culture. On display you will find images of Norfolk wrestlers dressed in costumes decorated with flowers by their wives, video of the 14 July Tableau staged outside Maison Berteaux, airbrush work on vans, prison tattoos, a motorbike helmut as a skull. The collection fills the Barbican's Curve space starting with A scarecrow of Michael Jackson and ending with a very large plastic Elephant.

Here then is a critically engaged work of contemporary art, doing what contemporary art does at its best - force us to take a fresh look at the world around us, reconsider our relationship to it and the ideas that sustain us.

Folk Art at the Barbican

Driving Corporate (In)sanity?

2005-05-14T09:46:00.000+01:00

Notes from another Reality.

We were visited this week by the "marketing innovation team" of a top brand three letter acronym automobile manufacturer. It had been a rather strange and wonderful introduction. Some weeks before one of our students had managed to secure a research internship with this company - his remit being to assist them to create the means, methods and capabilities to transfer creativity into the organisation. No small challange! At the same time a friend who has worked with us previously as a journalist and editor put her friend in touch with me. Her friend is a freelancer and was interested in working with the Juice Network. A little later she contacted me, full of pleasure, because she had been given our names by her client to contact us for a totally different reason.

Turns out she is a London Scout for the trend organisation CSCOUT. CSCOUT had been engaged by the automobile manufacturer to take some of their top team to meet and experience the hot trends in London. We are pleased to be on the map - long may it last.

While in London their visit included the BlueWater Shopping Mall, spent time with the Adam Street Club Network SoFlow , visited us at the LSE, visited a management consultancy's creative space EDS-BOX and had a tour of The Hospital The Hospital.

Their questions were about transferring creativity into an organisation, and the documentation of creative events, and networks.

We introduced them to:
- Thorsten Roser - a PhD student working on knowledge networks
- Dr Miguel Imas - Miguel works on narratives, storytelling and architecture for skateboarders
- Prof Patrick Humphreys - Patrick is Director of the Institute of Social Psychology Institute of Social Psychologyl and Director of the London Multi-Media Lab London Multi-Media Lab
- Paul Ashcroft - a partner in the Ludic Group The Ludic Group
- Liz Faber - a partner in Push Digital Push Digital
- Vivien Goldburg - PhD student working on play in organisations
- John Thackera - Director of Doors of Perception and author of numerous books including just published In the Bubble In the Bubble

A lively conversation ensued amongst the academics, we had many questions from the "Marketing Innovators", and of course the experience generated many more questions than it answered. The client was clearly looking for a rational methodology and tool that could ensure creativity (process, content) would flow into the organisation. Is this possible? What about Creative Events? How should they be conducted? Should they be conducted at all? How should they end? What about working beyond just the event? Is this another failed utopia? Can any Creative Process be rational? Can creativity be taught? How can these things be documented? What are the processes that ensure creative outcomes? Are these possible in an engineering, driven, corporate context? What is the definition of Creativity? How does narrative and storytelling drive creativity? What about Creative Environments? Is contextual functionality enough? Isn't the Question that is asked of a diverse group more important?

s l o w d o w n

2005-04-20T22:46:00.000+01:00

The tyranny of velocitation stamps out reflection. Give us back the space between events that capitalism has stolen from us.

Ohad Fishof is on London Bridge on the longest day
Slow Walk for Longplayer

Doors of Perception enthralls, challanges

2005-04-01T06:45:00.000+01:00

Is the Doors of Perception the most exciting, wide ranging, conference on the planet? How does John Thackera and his team of editors continue to pull the goods out of the bag?

For ten years Doors of Perception worked a kind of magic in Amsterdam - bringing people together from all over the disciplines to focus on broad themes such as home, lightness, flow, play, info-eco and speed.

Visit the Doors Archive
Doors of Perception

Designing for the 21st Century

2005-03-28T22:16:00.000+01:00

The AHRB has just announced that it has just launched its first joint initiative with the EPSRC. It is calling for academic-led proposals for the forming of cross-disciplinary research clusters aimed (I think) at inculcating design led research thinking into UK manufacturing. The remit is fairly wide and it appears to be an attempt to develop cross-disciplinary understanding.

See for yourself at:
AHRB Call for proposals

Collective Intelligence Quotient

2005-03-21T13:53:00.000Z

What are the parameters that determine the effectiveness of a community. Are they measurable and, by extension, can we take concrete steps to enhance them?

Collective IQ (C-IQ) recalls the narrowly based IQ test. As such it has limitations - but maybe it's useful as a starting point for thinking about how multi-disciplinary groups perform?

The neurologist, Susan Greenfield talks about the brain as being a 'golden jungle': neural connections extend like vines between the different specialist regions. The level of interconnectivity is the key predictor for intelligence (and, incidentally, creativity).

Taking this as a model for group interaction...how would we promote multifarious interdisciplinary pathways and what is their impact on C-IQ?

Check out the following:
Collective IQ

What do you think of the 6-polar model for Collective intelligence flow based around interactions between...
Reflection
Intention
Competences
Recorded memory
Trusted relationships
Enabling technologies
...within a group?

Government and the value of culture

2005-03-14T16:31:00.000Z

Thoughtful essay from the UK's Culture minister

Government and the value of culture

Proof of the pudding?

2005-03-14T16:11:00.000Z

At the Robinson's Juice session we spoke about the difficulty of communicating and asked whether it was possible to create a shared, cross-disciplinary meta-language.

I thought it might be useful to delineate fundamental characteristics of business, academic and artistic worldviews. I'm focusing here on difference.

Business ideology is delineated by the marketplace. The ultimate value-test is the transaction. Supply and demand cohere around an agreed price and that provides a practical demonstration of value. This means that, for business, reality is rooted in the practical. Business thinking consequently focuses heavily on outcomes, action plans, targets etc. Ultimately it doesn't matter how you get things done. The pertinent question is whether you can advance your version of reality through real, transactional behaviour. Do people buy your product?

In the academic world, the value-test is built upon the foundations of the discipline. This often (though not always) implies adoption of a scientific method. You present a hypothesis, test it through some commonly accepted mode of enquiry, then draw conclusions and present the results. The results are assessed according to various axioms accepted in the academic comunity; the value of the output is judged in these terms (eg peer review, number of citations). Successful academic research impacts on the discipline when it is absorbed by the academic community. What's at stake here is whether you affect the intellectual landscape. The first issue is whether your method & conclusions stand up to rigorous enquiry, next comes the question of whether you are extending or reframing the debate.

The value-test for art resides in the extent to which an existing body of knowledge is problematised. Take impressionism: a great art movement at the end of the 19th century, but this way of looking is now embedded in how we see the world. Impressionist paintings no longer carry the artistic charge they once did, they've moved from being challenging artefacts to chocolate box decoration. I think this is true at the cultural level, but it doesn't describe an individual's encounter with a specific painting. That's another matter and art is deeply personal.

I want to suggest that every successful artwork acts like a nugget of psychological gristle - it burrows away at your psyche, changing you in the process. Work that succeeds doesn't offer answers but continues to throw up relevant questions (the gristle doesn't get digested). So a measure of artistic success is the extent to which the work stays with you, its continuing ability to question (your) accepted views of reality.

How do these different concepts of 'value' and 'success' impact on our use of language?

Something you may have seen before

2005-03-11T15:05:00.000Z

SOMETHING CULTURE

Interference - Radio Cycle Mappings - 10 mp3s to download for cycling
http://www.interference.org.uk/

Christian Marclay opens at the Barbican
http://www.barbican.org.uk/gallery/Marclay.htm

SOMETHING BUSINESS

Fast Company (how smart people work)
http://www.fastcompany.com/homepage/index.html

SlowLab (how the rest of us work)
http://www.slowlab.net/

SOMETHING ACADEMIC

Centrepiece - the magazine of economic performance
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/centrepiece/default.asp

Prof Henrietta Moore chooses three books for Woman's History Month including
Renata Salecl's Sexuation
http://www.fathom.com/feature/122632/

Captain Pinkbeard

2005-03-08T18:19:00.000Z

porkonrye (great name!) offers his take on what happens when three disparate groups get together.

Pirates, gays and the British

Christian Marclay at the Barbican Gallery

2005-03-07T00:31:00.000Z

Seems I’m not the only one who can’t shake my romantic associations with the old LP format. Christian Marclay misuses vinyl gloriously: as a 20ft tower, as the ground for abstract painting, as the starting point for pre-digital image manipulation.

His bodymix series – figurative collages formed by stitching together album covers – yields up an astonishingly rich array of meanings. From the waste up we have (the pre-altered) Michael Jackson stitched to the belly of a black glamour model whose shin connects to a (very white) Roxy Music girl’s leg. Elsewhere, the androgynous Jim Morrison in baby doll knickers, plays with Cat Stevens’ yo-yo. I wonder what the peace loving Yusuf would make of all this.

Everywhere you get the sense that Marclay’s work is deeply relevant, becoming more so. The political connotations seem accidental and the better for that. There's no forced polemic.

Famously, in “guitar drag” he wires an electric guitar up to a sound system, ties it to the back of a pick-up truck and drives it through scrubland. Is this a fierce riposte to the Ku Klux Klan, a reflection on rock’n’roll, the Who and motorway driving or a piece of concrete music?

My eyes never sounded so good. I'll be back for more

Exhibition details

Robinson's Juice

2005-03-06T20:24:00.000Z

Welcome to the juice bar

2005-03-05T23:41:00.000Z

We hope you'll want to post, comment, share experiences here