Digital dump

What would happen then if we had a digital dump?

The idea would be having a computer application that could connect everyone's trash with a common garbage repository on the internet.
It could be made by building a "recycle bin" that would basically stay close to the one commonly used, and where people could choose to put their trash in order to share it with the community.
An other option, but the twos are not exclusive, could be creating a warning that every time you dump something will ask if you want to share it or not.

The repository would be an internet resource miming what also happens for real in the design recycle process, that is basically reuse something that the society labelled as useless and try to give life to it again.

Recycle design in general, is maybe not the most productive solution for the environment problem, but it's in my opinion a huge statement regarding society and its attitude of selecting the right things to buy, choose, leave and be.
Who said that thing was useless? Who will be able to criticize the end result of those processes? And why things are actually thrown away?

This are some of the questions that are, among others, coming out approaching the topic:
Is everyone dumping the same kind of material? What does this material look like? What is it about?
Can we find connections between what we dump and our lives? Our way of thinking? Our opinion on society?

I have the feeling more are going to come!

Small presentation

-Slides group critique-download-
Group critique presentation.
(main ideas at page 13, for design ethics, and 17, for digital recycle)

It can go even further!

This doesn't just fix aesthetic problems(guess you noticed the bald head), but more alarming is the difference between the picture from the Italian and from the English magazine in matter of message communicated. Already the title can explain how things are going in italian journalism: "La grande offensiva" Vs. "Feeling the heat".

Photoshop warnings?

Photoshop can have a social responsibility too. It seems nobody can renounce to the perfection you can gain using this amazing tool, specially fashion scene and advertising.
This is actually building a world made of as unreal characters, whose fame is leading to unreachable beauty ideals for generations of teenagers that are more and more relying on cosmetic surgery.

So far the retouching issue interested just in the gossip magazines, but the social consequence of this banal manipulations recently extended into the political debate.
Specially in France and UK is growing the idea of warnings that should clarify how much the image has been retouched.

[Above: Kim Kardashian, Keira Knightley]

BP - Emerald Paintbrush award

The prize was offered at the company for its great attempt to greenwash its brand over the course of 2008(nice brush homage too), in particular Bp, invested millions of dollars in an advertising campaign announcing its commitment to alternative energy sources(with very strong claims too).

The realityis of course different, since we are speaking about an oil company. Greenpeace found the way to get internal company documents, which could clarify the real intents of the company, that was of course still investing more than the 90% of its investments just in oil and gas.

more at http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/bps-wins-coveted-emerald-paintbrush-award-worst-greenwash-2008-20081218

This is definitely beyond the line that divides ethics and money, or it isn't? Is design meant to be that cynical?

Design ethics

[>information design >design power: show the power of design advertising wrong stuff, show the power of infographics through several graphics interpreting the same data giving different results(maybe recursive on design ethics), several small projects spread in the internet (see the eye-coffemachine story).
>design ethics >design for all: machine that can check how much ethic in the work(make it good or simply say how much)
>photoshop: kind of WikiLeaks but with originals of photoshopped pictures]

Recycle design

Deepening in recycle design/open source/cultural centers area.

[>open source >new collaborative methods >programming >new design tools
>cultural center: with no building, physically moving from place to place, virtual and actual network, graphic design+programming+crafts
>recycle design: product design from rubbish, fashion redesign, computers dump(what do people throw away?)]

What do you recycle?
stuff that can be used many times
that you'll never use again
that you don't need anymore
crap
free stuff
stuff that you have in large amount

*Common internet dump?










What would happen if we had a digital dump?
Would people dig into it like they do in other design fields?



































Could be interesting to actually build a common internet repository for digital garbage, and see what people would do with that.

From this point some questions:
How far should I go once I have the repository?
- Shall I analyze the data?
(it would be nice to analyze the people's garbage and visualize it)
- Shall I do something with the files I’ll get?
(I could try to do something with the files, building myself a creative process after them)

Personal analisys

I just found this application called Daytum that allows you to analyze your activities, time's data quantity and quality that should give a different perspective on the selected issue.
At the same way it can be seen as a time analyzer too, and as a tool to change your self-consideration and visualization of time. For the moment I'm trying this out just in order to see how different it is thinking about the day.
I find very interesting the information graphic wave that made many designers expressing themselves through "life-visualizations", one of my favorite are Nicholas Felton's ones which are probably also the first ones I've seen around in 2006.
You can monitorize his freak analisys through daytum too.

Time planning/personal visualization

This map is the enlarged version of the first one, where I elaborate on the branch about time and visualization.
[> time/planning analysis : how people visualize time in their minds, questionnaire/icastic drawings collection
>personal visualization: chandler project, daytum, feltron eight, count the lenght of email in personal mail account and professional ones, see in both how many times there's a replay]

I've found myself fascinated by the idea that our mental visualization of things, specially abstract things like time, has to be different for each of us. Of course it should be connected with common visualizations and environments, for sure it has something to do with what we are used to see as the visualization of the object in question, but it must be also very unique since it's something we never really share or communicate with others.














I didn't find much about the issue yet, apparently it is something connected with cognitive psychology (I'll try to dig in the book "Visuo-spatial working memory and individual differences" by Cesare Cornoldi and Tomaso Vecchi), but this collection of drawings from people trying to express their inner idea of time is amazingly surprising.


"La Stampa" Imagery: we can see without eyes
The research about the brain function of imagery has developed just recently, and it mainly focuses on whether this activity, that is often explained using words that are connected with the eyesight, is actually connected with visual perception or can be treated as a function by itself, more related to memory processes of inner reconstruction.
Studying the relation between the sight and imagery, and imagery in blind from the birth people, it seems possible that our ability to see is actually not necessary for mental images.

Interests map

First overview.