FIONA RABY: Do you want to replace the existing normal? – an error message from Microsoft word

FIONA RABY (Royal College of Art, Dunne & Raby)

“Do you want to replace the existing normal? this is a piece of poetry when it pops up on the screen unexpectedly. And its very interesting as it is exactly what we have been specialising all our time through what we attempt to do in design. Design sits entirely in the normal, the banal, the popular, the trivial, the norm is the starting point for every project. The norm is always there to keep as a point of reference no matter how strange the project might seem.”

Fiona opened the conference with an insight in to the way that design tries to sit itself in the tangibility of the everyday. This was an interesting lead into describing the design for debate approach that deals with the implications of science and technologies in our everyday lives through using design as tool to enable provocation, stimulation and most importantly discussion and reaction. Fiona continued to give an overview of the various designers who have taken this approach in their work and how that has been evolving over the past ten years and how some of the outcomes from a variety of design practitioners has culminated into the recent exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind, curated by Paola Antonelli at the MOMA in New York.

With this introduction she lead on to give an summary of the collaborative workshop between the various designers and social scientists that has occurred via the New Sciences of Protection Designing Safe Living research programme at Lancaster University. Emphasizing the fact that this collaborative experiment has been about broadening the way designers ask questions and consider dilemma in society.

Workshop 4: Tower Hamlets Freestate CASE STUDIES __THE FATE INSTITUTE

Workshop 4: Tower Hamlets Freestate CASE STUDIES __TOWER HAMLETS NUCLEAR TRUST

Workshop 4: Tower Hamlets Freestate CASE STUDIES __INSTITUTE for ETHICAL LIVING

Workshop 4: Tower Hamlets Freestate CASE STUDIES __ARK INC

Workshop 4: Tower Hamlets Freestate CASE STUDIES __EXTREME GREEN GUERILLAS

Workshop 4: Tower Hamlets Freestate CASE STUDIES: ___LA BOUCHERIE

La Boucherie’s most popular dish: The MRI steak.

The Chef at La Boucherie select the most beautiful anatomy from the original animal with which to work.

An image showing the process of production. A mould is made and different meat cultures sampled from various location on the master animal are grown inside, to form MRI steak.

An example of the contemporary state of main-stream in-vitro meat production. Unsatisfactory, bland food.

An illustration expressing how we are loosing our connection with the original animal.

Workshop 4: Tower Hamlets Freestate CASE STUDIES __BIOPHILIA CLINIC

Workshop 5: Extreme Green Guerrillas by Michiko Nitta

Michiko Nitta graduated from the MA Design Interactions course at the Royal College of Art in 2007 and presented her recent work of the Extreme Green Guerrillas (EGGs).

Her starting points for this work came from the fact that environmental damage is extreme and the ordinary green people are in fear from upcoming disaster but the extreme green people are activists who use fear yet still are locked into the consumer cycle. The current green solutions are not working and we are only making tiny steps forward: they are hypocritical green solutions. The EGGs try to go beyond human consumerism and create their own amateur self sustaining collective. Extreme to save the earth, enjoy good quality of life.

Workshop 5:New Organs of Perception by Susanna Soares

New organs of perception

Download Susanna’s presentation> new organs of perception

Susanna Soares is a recent graduate form the MA Design Interactions course at the Royal College of Art, She is currently a researcher/lecturer at Syracuse University in Upstate New York. Susanna’s work explores the current and the future implication of nano, bio and genetic technologies and how it is changing our perceptions of evolution.

‘Design and Futures Thinking’ by James King

The MRI Steak: The Meat of Tomorrow

Nanofilter: Fossil from a Nanotech future

‘Design and Futures Thinking’ by James King (designer)

Check out his presentation here

Dressing The Meat of Tomorrow

There is a real technology that allows us to take a small sample of animal tissue and encourage it to grow, separate from the original animal’s body, to form a piece of ediblemeat. Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, who are two artists working with this technology call this food “disembodied cuisine”, but is also known as Lab-meat, Semi-Living Meat, In-Vitro Cultured Meat, and perhaps most importantly for vegetarians: Victimless Meat.

Workshop 5: Presentation, Documentation + Mediation

Two exhibitors from the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition, Michiko Nitta and Susanna Soares, will be presenting some of their work at the next Safe Living workshop at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster University. This month’s theme “Presentation, Documentation and Mediation” is being organised by Cindy Weber and will include a variety of speakers over two days from Thursday 13th -Friday 14th march. For more information please visit the Institute for Advanced Studies website.

Design and the Elastic Mind

If anyone happens to be dropping in to New York over the next couple of months be sure to pop in to MOMA and check out the new exhibition: Design and the Elastic Mind. It has been curated by Paola Antonelli,, who previously put together the Safe exhibition in 2006, and has much inspired this Designing Safe Living research programme at Lancaster university. As cited in the exhibition text “Design and the Elastic Mind explores the reciprocal relationship between science and design in the contemporary world by bringing together design objects and concepts that marry the most advanced scientific research with attentive consideration of human limitations, habits, and aspirations.” I was overwhelmed by the intensity of information and the plethora of objects, photographs, video, visuals and text on show which demanded my time and concentration. There is no way any could summarise or spin this into an easy bitesize review and give it justice. So if you dont get to go to MOMA , just make sure you spend 30 mins per lunch hour reading through the online exhibition.

The Meetings

Workshop 4: Protocols, Procedures & Institutions

Read more about the Protocols, Procedures and Institutions workshop here>

The Tower Hamlets Unregulated Zone

A CONFIDENTIAL MEMO discussing the IF-POLITICS membership and duties of the Lancaster University Expert Assessors of Tower Hamlets Unregulated Zone from the UK Government Regulation Office, Division 3496723. Source: ANON

Nanonoia by Jessica Charlesworth

This project is entitled NANONOIA and was presented at the Proximities workshop in November 2007. In this presentation I will discuss its development by highlighting my process and design decisions and ending with further space for explorations.There are two phases to this project:

PHASE ONE: Influences

First phase addresses my influences, research and initial questions. The second phase further explores the complexities of my scenarios: raising more questions. My initial influence was from an article discussing the current applications of nano technologies in commercial organisations. The article discussed the future impact of hand held nano sensors that could indicate whether the parson you are sitting nxt to on the bus has flu or whether the street you are walking down has a high carbon monoxide count or the salad you are abotu to it has a bacteria that will cause food poisoning. This hyper awareness of our immediate future health raised question of paranoia + future phobias and implication this tech will have on psycho somatic disorders.

This lead to the question what of this paranoia were to escalate and begin to affect interactions within our relationships and environmen?

My visual research: detection + protection. How these products/systems already affect relationships and environments.

Acute sensitivity: what if protection/detection became biokleptic:ie borrow biological processes from immune system and manipulate them to enable physical manifestations into more meaningful signals.

Health supplement provides individual with a sixth sense by boosting and augmenting the immune system.

Could supplement provide individual with a sixth sense? Offering a new code of reference: PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION

Each physical manifestation illustrates the individual’s reaction to their surroundings. Each symbol translates into the individual’s probability of contracting a virus from certain contagions.

These illustrations created more questions: how would this biokleptic acute sensitivity be provided to an individual?

PHASE TWO: Who is the service provider?

This second phase explores further complexities of this scenario. How would a service create further implications to society? The 6sense health supplement that enhances our immune system.

Is the service publicly run, privately invested? Designed various touch points that provide further questions and future scenarios.

Would the service provider offer….?

– Inductions and starter packs?

– DNA tests?

– Tailored treatment + applications

– Could one could learn to read themselves and translate their symbols, a dictionary for themselves

– A manual that offers various tips on what to do in an emergency?

– (code of conduct/charter) (who and how is support structure exist in your life, subscription?)- nicorette style

– Similar to diabetics, 6sense members have own inconspicuous ways to gain access to certain areas and public services. Private members clubs

– Depending on location, provided with various maps identifying nearest quarantine zone (food and water and treatment safe house) (casa segura, humane borders projects)

– Own individual proxemic contingency chart, Indicates minimum distance 6 sense members need to be to reduce risk to disease level.

This service provider and the various products they offer raise further implications in society and the interactions individuals have in environment and between relationships. Does it increase hypochondria cases?, somatic syndromes, obsessive compulsive disorders/phobias

What might be the propaganda poster campaign? E.g. NHS tissue. Underground politeness/terrorist warnings; use your senses

READ MORE about the future of the 6sense health supplement HERE>