Like human body, the earth has an amazing capacity to heal itself. An outstanding example of this occurrence last century. In the 1883 the Indonesian volcanic island of kraktau (Krakatau) erupted in a gigantic explosion that was heard almost 1000 miles away. Nearly five cubic miles of the matter was hurled into the sky, and two third of the island disappeared under the sea. Nine month later the only sign of life was a microscopic spider. Today the whole island is covered by exuberant tropical vegetation, which is host to hundreds of species of birds, mammals’ snakes, and insects’ .No doubt this recovery has been abetted by the protection the island enjoys as part of ujung kulong National park. Human damage can also be undone .Given time the earth can heal itself. The question is, will men give earth the respite it need? Probably not. But there is someone who is determined to let our planet heal itself (the one who create it).God never intended for men to ruin the earth. He told Adam to ‘cultivate and take care’ of the Garden of Eden(Genesis 2:15)
The Air and Rail tycoon, Branson come up with his genius idea in publish Friday, 9 February 2007 on the bbc website,offering 25 million for those who can come up with the best idea to remove carbon dioxide (CFCc) from the atmosphere. Sound like a good idea to me, but I personally not worried that we will suddenly remove too much CO2 from the atmosphere. Whereas my biggest concern is that even a very modest effort like this would be used as an excuse to keep burning coal in the filthiest way possible and actually make things worse.
I think that as designers we can do ‘a little bit more’ than a piece of furniture that would ‘satisfy’ only one out of a billion.
Now is your time to think.
If you care to adopt an orang-utan out of around 600 living at the centre, here's the site: http://www.savetheorangutan.co.uk/diary/
This is a little home movie of my tortoise Tedward in the garden. As you can see, he wasn't particularly impressed by the tomato's involvment in his 'natural' habitat.
When I saw the video that Emily Hartern posted in the blog (Tuesday 10th March 2009, link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sb6RmRMbBY)
and even if the speech was written by an adult, a lot of what that girl was saying to a whole UN audience was what I felt when I was that age. Talking about the earth she says to them: If you can’t fix it, so stop breaking it. It sounded strange, a kid telling older people what to do with anger. We should definitely give the word to people that never have the chance to talk. Maybe for some reason they have been silenced. A friend of mine went traveling to the Amazons, I am not going to go into details, but he said he cried when going further and further just finding deforestation, forest depleted, invaded by machines, everywhere. Another friend told me the same, she found her way into a closed community separated by a stream. She liked it there, the locals received her and taught her about the place, she did not see ‘westerners’ for about six months until her father got worried and went to find her. It was a little community, I believe no more than 100 people she said, trying to keep the same traditions they had from before the colonization period. She said that they believe that western culture is an infantilized culture, that we live for our childish desires without respect of the environment.
Then coming back to Emily Hartern’s posted video, I see that maybe this community in the Amazons is right about our way of living, and that kids have to become adults because adults are ‘playing’ like children.
I found the blog’s entries very interesting, particularly those who talk about personal experiences.
Let’s cite Hannah (blog entry 12th march 2009), she said: design “for the other 90%”… of course, I do not like the fact that “other” is a key word in this statement.
Again, if we talk about ‘the other’ we separate ourselves, as designers we should feel part of that we are going to design for. Then Hannah continues: The work I am doing in India now is only the result of the close relationships that I formed there (…)
the best thing I can do is just try to listen to what people tell me about their lives and their needs, and start from there.
I thought her entry was genuine, full of hope even if working within a slum is such a difficult terrain.
I remember going with my secondary school friends to a slum in Buenos Aires every weekend to give classes of mathematics and reading to kids without any access to schooling. By then I could imagine the realities of those areas. Being there was a different matter, it completely changed my views to talk with the people, to see how the pavement disappeared behind a portal made with wires in the middle of the city, into somehow another city, not far from my house, where we had to enter with a man that was part of a political party, there was no other way to get in to the place safely they said. We were probably used by that party to say they were doing something for the residents of the slum. However, no political party interested us, we were using them to get inside anyway. Of course the kids needed more than mathematics, reading and writing classes. Most of them were not accepted at school because of their home address, so they felt outsiders. They were so exited to share with us their places, their songs, somehow they could feel more integrated. We learned a lot there, I cannot describe how it changed my world, but I can say the impact of these relationships were very important. When Hannah says in the blog that the work she is doing is the result of close relationships she formed there, it makes me think that that is probably one of the best ways to design for society, to act locally and to learn from others.
Going back to previous years entries on the blog I found this entry (Ryan Mulchrone 12th march 2008): Our economic situation puts us in a position of responsibility for others but we must also learn to lose the superiority complex we have about poorer societies because we have just as much if not more to learn from them as they do from us.
Another entry says (Ruth 3rd march 2008): Perhaps it is time we took some of their practices and reflected them into our culture.
I think this is already happening, and hopefully in the exchange we will find better solutions.
I think the educational system should be one that allows us to move into different towns, countries and continents to help us with the process of understanding. Understanding goes way further when we have the opportunity to experience.
I believe governments have a great responsibility in education, citing Katka (blog entry 12 march 2007): When it comes to slums however, is it not also the politicians who become the designers? The ‘designers’ of peoples’ lives?
I come from a mainly agricultural country (Argentina, in the south of the Americas.) However, I did not realise it until I went to travel because I was raised in a big capital city, Buenos Aires. On my travels, mainly in the countryside and little towns in southern Latin America, I realised how the lives of other people were interconnected with mine, directly or indirectly, how I affected them and vice-versa. I also found how vast naturally developed spaces were affected by machines and human pollution. I came back to the city after about a year of traveling, to study at the local university there. I started with the feeling that I should thank infinitely all those people working in the countryside, transporting goods, working at the factories, constructing, writing and designing books, without forgetting other living species for giving raw materials and food to allow me and a small bunch to study whatever we wanted. It sounds as though a whole system is there to support us in doing what we are doing. I think the least we can do is to show respect. In the type of economy we live in we are all interconnected in a way.
Of course there is a responsibility if we do not want to make our clothes, grow our food, build our houses, kill the animals we eat, etc. and there are other people there doing these things for us. We have the opportunities not just because of our parents, but other people we may or not know. I would prefer to work hard for them, because they deserve it, we owe a retribution to them, them is us, the same with natural resources, without them there is no us, we are not separated, we are part of them.
It is interesting how we may perceive the world, citing Ben Barker (blog entry human/nature, 5th march 2009): In fact we know that we are gods, wielding the power of technology and bestowing pitiful benevolence on other inhabitants of Earth.
The problem then, our intelligence means we draw a line between us and everything else. We struggle to connect ourselves to nature. We are technology, retching forwards, morally confused and born into a world that is not ready for us. Is there a way to actually care about Earth, to connect to nature (beyond ourselves) and truly feel it, or would we just be kidding ourselves?
So if we are gods, then, gods have never been so confused. If we talk about pitiful benevolence and ask ourselves if we care about the earth, or it is really just about us, we could continue finding refuge in excuses and continue with the delusional.
I assent with Jane T (blog entry 21st March 2009): we are now ignorant to the influence that we have over our planets delicate structure and the consequences of our behaviour that will inevitably impact us. Insects are the stitches that hold together the very fabric of our planet.
The economic system has become so big and complicated that it is difficult to comprehend. It is easy to feel like we are little ants and that the best they can do is to follow the crowd. It is paradoxical because in the present time our society does not believe in crowds or groups, but in the individual. You have to be outstanding and unique, but follow the crowd. Advertising and media created the belief that this schizophrenic way is best for survival. In the mid time the rulers, the big companies, collide in their psychosis, seeking more profit, more power, they are also trying to survive. As I see it, big entrepreneurs and powerful companies have developed a psychotic economic system where there is no remorse for all the damage caused in the name of profit, and we, the followers, are replicating it. Nobody seems to care much about anybody else, so we can consume anything at all without guilt. If we feel guilt, we feel powerless anyway to do something. And so many entries in the blog confirm this.
Objects have the power to shape social imaginaries and engage sensations, we have a social responsibility and should feel empowered. How do we balance the cognitive conflict between individual vanity on the part of a designer and institutionalized pressures of the produced material world?
Put another way, designers are a product of the material society we all have constructed. If designs expose perceptions of reality, we are creating a cultural identity as well. If the future is being planned via certain institutions, are designers visualizing a future that has already happened? If this is the case we then have the hope and privileges of uncertainty.
It is important not to dismiss the power of our actions, and to empower people. By designing for people that 'nobody seems to care' (however this is not true), we are caring about them, making them relevant, giving them a voice.
Structures like this are simple, and in need of improvement. This building may look ugly to the eye of some, but mean a lot for the people leaving there, is a place where they can gather, feel part of a community that previously has been displaced and devastated by the effects of our economy. We need to find ways to integrate those people in some sort of system, they need to be given a voice, to become confident again about themselves. We designers can help to do that.
Marxist cultural critic Mike Davis tackles the global problem of slums, mainly exploring the subject through other books and documents, lacking a sense of his own experience and ‘the local’, that could reveal us more of the diversity of the problems in shanty towns.
He paints for us an overall idea of the situation and is good to keep us ‘informed’ and ‘alarmed’ but at the same time these statistics /censuses become superficial without the account of particular situations. This is personal view, I often feel that I do not trust statistics that make gross generalizations, like the ones generated to mass-produce. Instinctively I reject information given in such way.
If we talk about ethics we can start by analyzing the way we design words or phrases and how we use them, for example Mike Davis uses of ‘Third World’ and ‘developed’ or ‘developing’ countries. They made me feel so uncomfortable knowing the connotations that they have developed, having been born and lived in places where I think people (and life) deserve more respect. For the ones that, reading this do not understand what I am talking about, it refers at the use of language to accredit power: by saying ‘developed’ you are stating ‘that is the way to follow’, because those are developed and ‘right’ so other countries are following and ‘developing’. The same with ‘Third World’, that’s more obvious. Now imaging yourself being called ‘from the third world’, how would you feel? Empowered? I don’t think so.
So where has respect gone? The question remains as to why tutors in this country – and probably in many others- give us texts to read without questioning this kind of thing? I was surprised that everybody writing and talking about the subject still used those terms without noticing. Even in mainly agricultural countries they also sometimes use the terms, committing to an unconscious and imposed inferiority.
Safety Gear for Small Animals is a project started by Toronto-based artist Bill Burns, claiming to "look out for the little guy", intended to relocate and rehabilitate small animals since they are the ones without protection and in need of support in order for them to sustain they're habitat and stay alive. He does this by creating a miniature series of safety equipment gear, ranging from rubberized work gloves to hard hats and emergency blankets. However the project extends further to cover life insurance and annuities, all being innately human appliances and therefore being entirely useless to critters. http://www.safetygearforsmallanimals.com
The project is intended to raise awareness about how much humans are cared for by having safety equipment designed for a specific purpose or systems in place in order to sustain they're loved ones in case of an accident. The point he is making is that small animals have to get by without all this special attention, and therefore have to literally struggle for survival in an increasingly man-made and urbanised world.
In my opinion the project is a mockery of a serious issue, since the extinction of certain critter species would have a far greater impact that to be treated with such a humorous approach to the subject matter. As explained by Paul and Anne Ehrlich (http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/ehrlich - visited March 26th 2009) the extinction of species would result in a complete shift in nature's balance, causing links in the food chain to break and therefore creating species without a natural counterpart, causing them to exponentially increase in numbers, crushing other links in the chain and eventually bringing the whole system to a collapse.
I would like to think that the general public would have a greater appreciation of this subject matter if it were not presented with a mock-series of objects, simply scaled down from human application and "intended" for use by small animals. The idea to inform about this issue is indeed a positive one, however a more rigorous route should be followed. The approach of using humour to convey important issues is definitely an effective one, however the actual issue should be identified more clearly, not leaving the interpretation of the objects up to the viewer entirely. The obejects are obviously not meant to be used by real animals, they are much rather a reminder of what could be in place for small animals and they're safety, represented by the human equivalent of such equipment.
Essentially the project is trivializing and "humanizing" a very real problem in nature, caused entirely by the human race. In order for people to comprehend the problem, it is made to be seen through human eyes, and therefore failing to really address the issue at hand.
