This fall I was in a writing seminar with Anne West. I have started a thesis draft which can be downloaded below. This is the first time that thoughts have started to come together in writing. Let me know what you think. I independently wrote this paper although Melissa and I will be merging our writing spring semester. Any interesting ideas of how we might attempt this collective authoring would be greatly appreciated. Oh and little update. Our audience is no longer just kids. It felt too limiting and our language not tailored that specifically.
December 07, 2008
October 31, 2008
Dissecting Lewis Hyde
Circulation. Distribution. Contribution. A second look at Lewis Hyde’s book, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (after putting it away for almost six months) lead to me pull out these three categories in his writing. Circulation was already a word that had clearly stuck out to me. The Gift Cycle was directly inspired from the idea of strengthening community through the circulation of gifts. However, a closer read lead me to discover other ways gifts can move within gift economies. I discovered distribution and contribution. I pulled out passages from the book that seemed to directly correlate with the categories I was sensing. From there, I turned to the photo database from this summer’s trip. I began arranging and manipulating the photographs to express the three categories through a design vernacular rooted in my own personal experience. After the photo collaging, I began writing my own personal response to each category based on the corresponding text.
In the category of circulation, I realized that the circulation of gifts is a place in gift economies for the embracement of self to take place. And by that, I don’t mean embracement of ego. I mean an appreciation of what you, as an individual has to give to the world. You celebrate your ability to give...and your giving is from within. Distribution lead me to education, a place of great interest in my thesis. What I learned was the value of the student’s student. It may seem like an obvious discovery, that’s what education is all about, right? But it is something I have not thought about as much in my work as I can as I begin to think about how to educate both parents and children on issues of sustainability. Is the gift I give easily “regiftable.” Finally, contribution brought out a bit of a manifesto in me. I envied science’s role in the book as being this field where it is respected to “contribute” to the greater good (this is not always the case obviously and maybe less so since this book was written). I want design to be the same. In addition, I’m particularly interested in creating a product in which the original creative material is contributed by viewers.
////////////// Circulation ////////////////
Selectioned excerpts from:
The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic LIfe of Property
by Lewis Hyde
Chapter 1: Some Food We Could Not Eat
pgs 13 -17
The Kula is the ceremonial exchange of the Massim peoples who occupy the South Sea islands near the eastern tip of New Guinea. Two ceremonial gifts lie at the heart of the Kula exchange: armshells and necklaces. Both armshells and necklaces circulate through the islands passing from household to household. The kula gifts, the armshells and necklaces move continually around a wide ring of islands in the Massim archipelago. Each travels in a circle; the red shell necklaces (considered to be “male” and worn by women) move clockwise and the armshells (“female” worm by men) move counterclockwise. A person who participates in the Kula has gift partners in neighboring tribes. If we imagine him facing the center of the circle with partners on his left and right, he will always be receiving armshells from his partner to the left and giving them to the man on this right. The necklaces flow the other way. Of course, these objects are not actually passed hand to hand; they are carried by canoe from island to island in journeys that require great preparation and cover hundreds of miles. The two Kula gifts are exchanged for each other. If a man brings me a necklace, I will give him in return some armshells of equivalent value. I may do this right away, or I may wait as long as a year (though if I wait that long I will give him a few smaller gifts in the interim to show my good faith). As a rule, it takes between two and ten years for each article in the Kula to make a full round of
the islands.
Circular giving differs from reciprocal giving in several ways. First, when the gift moves in a circle no one ever receives it from the same person he gives it to. When I give to someone from whom I do not receive (and yet I do receive elsewhere), it is as if the gift goes around a corner before it comes back. I have to give blindly. And I will feel a sort of blind gratitude as well. The smaller the circle is—and particularly if it involves just two people—the more a man can keep his eye on things and the more likely it is that he will start to think like a salesman. But so longs as the gift passes out of sight it cannot be manipulated by one man or one pair of gift partners. When the gift moves in a circle its motion is beyond the control of the personal ego, and so each bearer must be a part of the group and each act of donation is an act of social faith.
My Response: (this is a bit of a weird one. keep in mind that my text is describing the gifts in the image below if its confusing...a painting of a girl sleeping, a plush veggie dog and a film about a boy that fall in love with his bicycle.)
When you are a participant in a circulation of gifts you agree to gift blindly. The receiver is unknown so the gift cannot be constructed in a way that is personal to the recipient. When you choose a gift for a friend’s birthday, you never really know what they want, but you have an inkling as to the things they enjoy. From that base of knowledge, you select or create a gift with a vision of them in mind. Here. I will make something for you even though I don’t know you. Do like sleeping? Do you like the color mint with a dark mustard yellow? Do you like finding hidden imagery in the folds of your sheets? Maybe I’ll make you a painting of a girl caught in slumber; her dream images etched in her wooden sheets. Maybe you have a great sense of humor. You’re a funny one. You would like a plush animal, but not even an animal, but a plush piece of food. And not any plush piece of food because you must be vegetarian, at least I’m assuming, lot’s of people are these days.Surprise! It’s a plush veggie dog. I sewed it myself. It’s a veggie dog that you can curl up with and squeeze all night and you can’t eat it so it’ll be with you when you wake up. Maybe you love your bike so bad that you want to make out with it. You actually want to take your bike on a date to a restaurant and feed it bites of chocolate cake. No big deal. That’s why I filmed a movie about it for you so you could always remember. Basically, it comes down to the fact that I don’t know you and I can’t assume. The only thing I know is what I like and what resonates with me. So what I can give is only but a piece of myself. To gift blindly is to give from ourselves and it is the truest offering we can put out into the world.
////////////// Distribution ////////////////
Selectioned excerpts from:
The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic LIfe of Property
by Lewis Hyde
Chapter 5: The Gift Community
pgs 74-75
In the early 1950’s Lorna Marshall and her husband lived with a band of bushmen in South Africa. When they let they gave each woman in the band enough cowrie shells for a short necklace, one large brown shell and twenty small gray ones. There had been no cowrie shells among the bushmen before the Marshalls gave their going away present. When they returned a year later, they were surprised to find hardly a singly one left in the band where they had been given. “They appeared, not as whole necklaces, but in ones and twos in people’s ornaments to the edges of the region.”
This image of the seashells spreading out in a group like water in a pool takes us from the simple, atomic connections between individuals to the more complicated organization of the communities. If we take the synthetic power of gifts, which establish and maintain the bonds of affection between friends, lovers , and comrades and we add to these a circulation wider than a binary give and take, we shall soon derive society or at least those societies —family, guild, fraternity, sorority, band, community —that cohere through faithfulness and gratitude. While gifts are marked by motion and momentum at the level of the individual, gift exchange at the level of the group offers equilibrium and coherence, a kind of anarchist stability. We can also say, to put the point conversely, that in a group that derives its cohesion from a circulation of gifts the conversion of gifts to commodities will have the effect of fragmenting the group, or even destroying it.
My Response:
The distribution of the cowrie shells among the bushmen is a beautiful story of generosity. However, the interesting part is not only that these women gave the gifts away. It is that the gifts were passed further and further away such that the women couldn’t have possibly have made all those journeys themselves. New recepients became gifters. Education can be seen as the distribution of gifts therefore, teachers are, in a sense, distributors of gifts. Good teachers devise ways of disseminating their knowledge so that the knowledge can be redistributed. The measure of a teacher’s success is not how she distributes knowledge to her students but how her students distribute knowledge to their students.
////////////// Contribution ////////////////
Selectioned excerpts from:
The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic LIfe of Property
by Lewis Hyde
Chapter 5: The Gift Community
pgs 80-81
We should now face the question of exactly why ideas might be treated as gifts in science. To answer it we shall be obliged to speak first of the function of the scientific community. Let us say briefly that the task of science is to describe and explain the physical world, or more generally, to develop an integrated body of theory that can account for the facts, and predict them. Even such a brief prospectus points toward several reasons why ideas might be treated as gifts, the first being that the task of assembling a mass of disparate facts into a coherent whole clearly lies beyond the powers of a single mind or a single generation. All such broad intellectual undertakings call for a community of scholars, one in which each individual thinker can be a wash in the ideas of his comrades so that a sort of “group mind” develops, one that is capable of cognitive tasks beyond the powers of any single person. The commercial of ideas -donated, accepted (or rejected), integrated- constitutes the thinking of such a mind. A scientist may conduct his research in solitude, but he cannot do it in isolation. The ends of science require coordination. Each individual’s work must “fit” and the synthetic nature of gift exchange makes it an appropriate medium for this integration; it is not just people that must be brought together but the ideas themselves.
My Response:
Like successful science, successful communication design cannot not happen as an isolated act. We can think alone in our studios, but we cannot communicate in isolation. We cannot assume we know how best to communicate to someone when we are sitting at our cubicles and not creating conversation. It is a narrow-minded way of designing and is not communication. Opening ourselves up to the community to invite creative contribution can only help us. We don’t just want to speak more loudly, but more effectively.
I'm feeling that a merging of these three categories could result in a gift economy model for our thesis. Perhaps...
Circulation of content > designer arranges content into a message >
Distribution of message > Circulation of message to friends who contributed content > inspiration for new viewers to create content > repeat.
I need a word for this model...and a sweet graphic. It's not a revolutionary idea I'm sure, any examples that follow this model that you can think of?
Bike Write!!!!
Bike Write was a project I created for my independent study with Nicole Juen this semester. Essentially it was critical mass style bike ride with a typographic bike route. The first ride we spelled "Yes We Can." "Yes We Can" support Obama and "Yes We Can" support alternative transportation. We hit three distinct neighborhoods: the east side, downtown and the south side. We wore yellow shirts that said "Vote Obama" on the back. We were a huge yellow highlighter in the streets. I thought maybe 15 of my friends would show up but 50 people came. The mayor just "happened to be riding by" and asked what we were up to. He was so excited that he decided to join and he led the ride the whole way. It was pretty much the best day of my life. And I'm not joking. The second Bike Write was passed over to the leadership of Jill Peterson from the Industrial Design Department. She designed the route to spell "Hope." It was really cool to see that the idea could live sans my hands. I have video from the events (including an interview with the mayor talking about Obama and sustainablity!) I intend to create a short documentary of the events which will be included in 1+1=3.
Here's the flicker group of everyone's photos.
http://flickr.com/groups/yes_we_can/
October 30, 2008
Introduction to my thesis
This is my blog to help me unveil my thesis. The writing is not refined or eloquent but a way for me to collect my thoughts. I guess that’s why its a blog. I guess that’s also why its taken me so long to get this up. It’s hard to put unrefined stuff out there...anyway...I hope this helps introduce my ideas to you and I would love any feedback.
I am doing a collaborative thesis with my Gift Cycle riding partner Melissa Small. Much of how this thesis has developed came from our discoveries on the road. Prior to school, I worked as a designer and art director for three different communication agencies that adhere to values of sustainability: Green Team in NYC, egg in Seattle and the Bellwether Group, also in Seattle. Not all of the work, but some of the work I did for these companies was advertising for green consumerism (need a better word to insert here). I support green consumerism even amongst all the greenwashing that is currently evident. I see it as a jumping off point for many people in a long process of shifting lifestyles. As many of us who are savvy to living sustainably, we know it is not always easy. Purchasing green products, even if it is a sustainable cotton t-shirt from the Gap, will at least plant a seed to start thinking. The question is what’s next? (great read on green consumerism from the NY times last summer if you get a chance http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/fashion/01green.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all). I became interested in steering my design work away from sustainable advertising for a while, to see where a tangential move may take me. That is essentially why I came to graduate school. I am interested in how I, as a communications designer, can inspire a shift toward sustainable lifestyles. So let me turn that into a question.
First shot:
How can communication design effectively inspire lifestyle shifts that embrace sustainability?
Second shot:
Can communication design inspire behavioral shifts toward embracing a sustainable lifestyle?
Third shot:
How can communication design encourage behavioral shifts towards a more sustainable lifestyle?
Any suggestions are much appreciated. All wording but I’m just not there yet.
In the spirit of the Gift Cycle (giftcycle.org), I left for the summer with a proposal to explore the role of design in gift economies. Though my focus has morphed, much of the thinking in my original proposal has helped launched my new version. Here is my proposal from my thesis seminar with Hans Van Dyke from the Spring 2008. It offers an elaborate description of my background for those curious.
Download thesisproposaldraft_spring08_sandman.pdf
The summer was certainly transformative for both Melissa and myself. In each town where we stayed, we were introduced to and taken in by a new community. Every event we had brought together a new community of artists, many of whom had never met. Finally, a cross-continental community was establish once we completed the cycle. Community. Creating community is important to both of us.
giftcycle.org
To cut to the chase...Melissa and I want to create something that can live beyond our May graduation. We need a thesis with legs to carry on. We are proposing a project which is essentially a webshow...aka program of webisodes housed on our website. Hmm...I’ll get better with this language. The internet connects the most people with the least environmental impact. Obvious, but you know. The webisodes will involve two distinct categories: 1.) animations and 2.) short documentaries of public design happenings...aka the Gift Cycle and Bike Write (which you can read more about later). It functions as such: Melissa and I put out a call for entries around a specific topic relating to sustainability. Some topic examples include alternative transportation, food, energy, other cultures, waste, the natural world and community (community will be the topic we focus on for our thesis as our goal is to complete one fully radical webisode by May) For this first call-for-entries we will tap into our newly establish Gift Cycle community which has around 200 artists. Artists will contribute videos and animations around the chosen topic, let’s say community. Melissa and I will take these contributions (we will be making a lot of them ourselves) and compose a webisode, structuring a narrative with the materials contributed to best talk about community. Oh right, audience. Primary audience = youth 7-12. Secondary audience = parents and teachers. Tertiary audience = young creative adults. One way to describe our project is vbs.tv meets Massive Change meets Sesame Street meets Miranda July meets Michele Gondry. At least that's what we are aspiring to create.
Based on the gestalt theory that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, Melissa and I are calling our project 1+1=3. The name speaks to the incorporation of creative contributions from the community as well as our collaboration. Asking the community to contribute content creates conversation rather than just a “talking to.” We hope that our two minds together will create an exponentially larger thesis than solo style. Synergy will play a huge part in our thesis. Of course there’s our personal synergy by working together. There’s also the synergetic relationship of short documentaries of real world happenings and animations. I think of the short documentaries as the external (as in out in the community) and the animations the internal (aka imagination). These two types of motion are strategically paired to explain the content from two different angles. Our visual style will embrace a hand-made feel in addition to computer generated forms. Our content will be a merging of science and art....the synergetic relationships continue. Just imagine one huge venn diagram.
Here’s a mind map I made. But if you don’t want to download the poster you can see it mini and just read what it says below. Its a good reflection of our style. It feels really “us” if that makes any sense. Sometimes I don’t always make the work I want to make but the work I think I should make. I’m pretty stoked to be honest with creative myself.
MODE OF COMMUNICATION
+ webshow with both animation and documentaries about "public design happenings"
+ viewers are encouraged to add there own
+ much like miranda july’s learningtoloveyoumore website creative assignments will be asked of the viewers
+ melissa and I will then compose a webisode from the contributions
AUDIENCE
+ primary: children ages 7-12
+ secondary: parents
+ tertiary: young creative adults
OBJECTIVE
+ to empower
+ to motivate
+ to inspire
+ to activate
+ to entertain
+ to educate
+ to foster stewardship
TONE
+ clever
+ inviting
+ humorous
+ sarcastic
+ positive
+ hopeful
+ mature (not talking down to)
+ fun
+ realistic
+ empathic
+ simplistic
+ digestible
VISUAL STYLE
+ playful
+ handmade
+ accessible
+ colorful
+ tactile
+ contemporary
+ non-pretentious
+ quirky
+ experimential
+ beautiful
+ d.i.y (do it yourself)
+ d.i.t. (do it together)
MUSICAL STYLE
+ upbeat and non-lyrical like The Go Team
+ melodic ballads as in the soundtracks for Amelie and Royal Tenenbaums
+ atmospheric, calming tracks such as OCS
+ many genres such as hip hop/punk rock/indie rock/classic rock
+ homemade!
MATERIALS
+ fabric scraps
+ bright paints
+ bikes
+ architectural models
+ cardboard
+ colored paper
+ sticks
+ branches
+ stencils
+ string
+ found objects
INFLUENCES
+ Miranda July /// learningtoloveyoumore.com
+ Michele Gondry
+ Sesame Street
+ Yo Gabba Gabba
+ Wondershowzen
+ David Attenborough
+ Planet Earth
+ Huntergatherer /// huntergather.net
+ PES /// eatpes.com
+ Massive Change /// massivechange.com
+ Worldchanging /// worldchanging.com
+ Social Design /// socialdesignsite.com
+ Future Farmers /// futurefarmer.com
