A project concerned with meaningful exchanges bargains respect and social capital.

The project that I am currently working on will be the first self initiated brief as a part of unit 10 of my degree. I have not made any more progress on my previous work, but I have decided to put that on hold because I am incredibly interested in this project, and I don't think I can do much for the 'science book' at the moment.

 The basic principle and the inspiration for my project is how to transform uncomfortable or unwanted social interactions into rewarding and meaningful ones. When I was 15 I was in Los Angeles and as I was walking into a McDonald's a beggar asked my cousin for money. I cannot remember whether she acknowledged him or ignored him but she did not give him anything. It struck me as curious I asked her why did she do that. She told me something along the lines of 'he's only going to use it for drugs '. At that time I was living in a kibbutz in Israel and this was one of my first encounters with a person in  such a situation. Nevertheless, since that experience my attitude towards such requests from beggars was pretty much in line with my cousin's.
While studying for my dissertation I came across the notion of social capital.  I made a connection between two observations in this field. The first is that the more individual members contribute and support their community the better the community becomes. Or in other words, that just because you help to somebody else in your community the chance of somebody entirely different would help anyone else who needs it is increased.  The second observation is that when people interact socially, they  form some kind of agreement, a social bargain. So friendships for example is a kind of 'be there for me and I'll be there for you' type of agreement.
I had a realisation that relationships and interactions which I deem meaningful all make me feel I am getting something out of them. I then started thinking of relationships I did not rate meaningful which is where the beggar incident popped into my mind. It was almost funny to find myself in a situation where I am thinking 'what can I get out of a beggar? '.
What can you get out of somebody who has no material possession? Who is so desperate that he is asking me for money… Up until that point my reason for not giving money to beggars was that they might use it for drugs, or that I do not know what no use it for. So I started asking beggars for that information, but  in order to make it meaningful even if they are lying I would video their response.

Traded £1 with a homeless so he'd tell me what he'll do with it #BeggingBargain @camdenTalking https://t.co/doJXyUXxXD
— Gilad Visotsky (@v_gilad) August 19, 2013

Suddenly, I was 100% okay with giving the money. It's almost like it didn't matter what they would do with it because they did something for it and therefore the money is theirs.

 To tap into this kind of conditioning in my brain and to manipulate it felt pretty amazing.  I introduced a tiny change to an existing occurrence, and since my outlook of people has transformed. Because I now look at beggars as individuals with  something which is potentially personally valuable to me.

 for my project I want to use this premise and create something, I don't know what, that is engaging and nonjudgemental. I don't really have an opinion as to what needs to be done about the homeless people, beggars and the likes. But there are real steps that if taken (judging by my own experience) can change the way that we look at other (marginal?) members of society.

Designing my quantum book.

I am in the progress of designing a kind of book which produces pages for the reader to observe without disclosing information as to the coming page's content. To achieve this the book will allow the extraction of desirably one page at a time.

Side view

Bottom view

Side view of the internal mechanism

I am planning to use wood and foam to create the book. paper can then be inserted into the box. I am confident that there are issues I am not taking into account. These may have to do with how paper reacts to foam or how narrow the bottom opening is, as it may be too narrow for pages to be extracted or so wide that pages simply fall through. I hope that by producing a prototype I can better identify and address them. My chllange now is o find the time and figure out how to produce it.

My not-so-amazing mock-ups for tomorrow

For my first Unit 10 project, I need to come up with a design for a book based on Quantum Theory. Inspired by the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment. I want to make a book that produces pages at random based on input from the user. In such a way, one cannot know which page he or she will read next.

My paper mockups

The 'Smint' book, produces a page at random when a button is pressed

The sphere book, contains multiple rolled up pages to be pulled out at random

I am not entirely happy with my mock-ups but I hope that after tomorrow I will have a better idea how to proceed! Fingers crossed!

My dissertation's final presentation

The design on the box

The side view showing Cat's signature

Inside the book

Endpaper

A twist in a box

Here are images of the final piece I submitted for Unit 9.

Cover

End paper - featuring some of the contributions to my work

The box which was designed by Catriona Robertson according to my specification

Thank you Cat!

Integrated design for my dissertation

My dissertation is on the subject of crowd sourced visual art. I have made the choice to produce a printed and bound version of it where each page is designed by a different individual.

Here are some process photos:

Cover design

Forward and first page

Spread

Credits

Designing the endpaper

Page from the reading version ( I appropriated the colour system from the integrated version)

Today's set of outcomes

Look at these beautiful results from I got from 2nd year BA Graphic Design Students (CSM):

Vaewwan Tangtrongsakdi

Louis Grosperrin

Damiaan Melis

Michelle Pang

 These are pages of my dissertation designed by the crowd

New template for the dissertation

Im working on another Photoshop template for theose who will help me design my dissertation

I am inviting the crowd to design my dissertation (it's about artists and designers who let the crowd generate content for them)

Today was the first time I let a group take part in the design of my work. The idea behind it is that in order to justify having others generate content for me I have to share the results back with them, give them credit and it seems also do a hell of lot of work!

Designed by Sandy - a first year BA student CSM

I have the result of this first attempt here (PDF)

and if you want to participate please visit bit.ly/CrowdDD

Spiked drink

Baby suicide

Work with 8DIX

I have been working for months with Luca Marchetto, a fashion designer, as he created a new clothing brand by the name of 8DIX (pronounced ottodix). The Brand's website is finally online and the first collection 'SYCOPHANT' is featured there.

Everything form the patterns to the red buttons on the trousers is considered and intentional.

Conceptually the collection is completely Marchetto's brain child. It is an amazing experience to work with him and adhere to a visual style so other than my own. Using Luca's sketches, together we acquired, manipulated and produced high resolution, 'cheap' seeming but incredibly considered visuals.

My own moment of pride - that's my hand holding the toilet brush.

Wikipecker

I have started a wiki page where anyone can add their drawing of a pecker.

Why Penis? Because pecker drawings are everywhere and anyone can do them.

Creative biker missing

Portfolio for an interview

I designed this mini portfolio for a potential new job opportunity.

the final result

putting the guillotine to good use 

sugar paper for a nice tactile finish

shockingly, hands are a theme

Working on a new A5 portfolio

One of the spreads from the booklet portfolio I am working on

Already submitted - update

On Monday, I finally finished  painting the board with the final touches some of them needed.

I put all of them in bags, which looks so nice I will probably sell them in them.

I have begun designing some kind of packaging solution, which I hope to perfect by the time they go on sale.

The boards are ready

I worked until 21:00 last night but finally they are ready.

It was not easy to get there.
In the last couple of days I struggled to get all prepared in time for tuesday when they are assessed.

I have misjudged the time required for final touches and fixes. as a result the boards look much better from a distance than from up close.

I think the lesson here is that if I had to do this again, I will not paint the borders. The idea is nice, but I think that with the tools at my disposal they bring the overall look of the products down towards hand madness. The other thing I will do is carve the letters deeper as  there were a lot of roller accidents, where the black paint got into the letters.

Not magnetic.

Yesterday, I purchased a magnetic surface primer.

It was disastrous from the beginning. First, I opened it too close to some of the boards I removed the masking film from. It splattered over them and kind of ruined 3 of them. Which means more spray paint work.

 

I continued by experimenting with the primer on MDF with layers of blackboard over it.

Sadly, the oily nature of it seems to mess with the effectiveness of the blackboard paint. As a result, chalk used on the board does not come off very well. It also seems to prevent the blackboard paint from staying on the surface, it comes off when I wiped the chalk.

The magnet primer has a very weak pull on the magnet I tested. 

It was a valuable thing to experiment with , and I'm glad I tested the amazing possibility of a magnetic blackboard. But I believe that it reduces the effectiveness of the blackboard in favour if a minimal magnetic feature. So I am now, more than ever, convinced I should stickto 'plain' blackboards.

Good investment

Yesterday, while out for pre afternoon tea shop, I decided to enter a nearby hardware shop.

I was hoping to find the kind of paint roller brush I use for the blackboard paint. On a hunch I asked about paint masking sheets, and was suggested a carpet protector adhesive sheet.

I got it and tested it today. It made it possible to mask all of the boards in less than two hours. What I expected to accomplish in a day was done so quickly that I was able to start spray painting the entire stock of boards.

By the end of the day, all of the boards have been sprayed at least once with several already sprayed in colour.

Romi photobombing my studio shot

Tomorrow and Wednesday are heavily scheduled with assessment and other coursework related meetings. I hope to complete spraying the boards so the later part of the week can be dedicated to blackboard painting and portfolio preparation.