Melt Unreality into Everyday Life

As The Risk Society and The Beyond points out, risks are invisible and lurk in outside of the capacity of human perception. To tell this immaterial risk, giving ‘shock’ to people is a usual way of embodying it. Design like "Dooms Day Clock" gives a ‘shock’ to people with visualised risks. However, people might be going to start to be acclimated to even the ‘shocks’.

Is there the way of telling risks without using ‘shock’? Design for risks can be sometimes hidden and invisible just as like risk itself. One example for it is ‘the preparation for a risk by alternative functions’ and another example is ‘the communication for a risk veiled by humour’.

The preparation for a risk by alternative functions is easier to fit in with everyday life and people will not forget it unlike the place where an extinguisher is, for example. Metro stations in some cities such as Moscow have a function as bomb-shelters for emergency. People do not always have a consciousness for it but they naturally know how to access to the evacuation sites. A folding umbrella is one of the risk aversion objects in everyday life. “Inside out Umbrella”(above picture) can be changed into a bag when it is not used as an umbrella.

The communication for a risk veiled by humour is more attracts people and is less got bored and accustomed to than just shocking communication. Advertisements of insurance companies are designed for telling risks (and letting people join to the insurance).
I have found some.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yuiG78Al3yc

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BFMJ8CNs-7o&eurl=http://yoichi.typepad.jp/blog/2006/11/post_6ce4.html

http://media1.adforum.com/zrIf58670C/A/AL/ALIA_19779/ALIA_19779_0047063W.MPG

They use humour as an effective way of telling risks without 'shock' even though there are some other purposes in the advertisements.

(How much we can ‘laugh’ about the risks and threats might be another topic.)

To embody the invisible risks is necessary to inform them to the people. However, communication using ‘shock’ or object just for “unreal” emergency will lose its impact and message and be forgotten. Design melting into existing environment and to be ‘real’ for our everyday life is needed to address and communicate with the unperceivable risks which might become real tomorrow.

Image:
YANKO DESIGN (http://www.yankodesign.com/index.php/2008/01/23/wet-umbrellas-no-more/)
Reference :
Barbara Adam, Ulrich Beck and Joost Van Loon, eds., The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory (London: Sage Publications, 2000)

Designing Politics

We have to solve a problem for the future, not just for now and for us. If we look at the decision makers and money holders (apart from the private contributors to various issues relating to energy consumption) - we must admit that a big responsibility is on the shoulders of politicians. Although we can and must all contribute to a sustainable world everyday - the decision making instance, also when elected by the public, has a great deal of power. Like it is being discussed in the posts, especially those relating to Panic Buttons and Climate Change, we generally see the government vs. the public and we never feel 'let in on the reality of the situation'. Furthermore many post mention the term ' raising awareness'. Like Anett says in a previous post, people almost need a shock in order to start caring about these issues - I then ask my self if realization is then not actually more about empathy than about recycling - we need to reach the core of people in order to make them feel like it concerns them and not just 'all the others'. How can this be done? 

It can be disturbing to think that government instances do not have a section for creativity when these areas most likely demand a sudden injection of innovation along side with law and sciences. It becomes interesting to think what an influx of designers would do to a political environment.

Shortly before the elections in Denmark I read an article explaining a proposition of one of the more socialist parties, they were suggesting that 'disadvantaged' families would receive a cheque every year enabling them to purchase schoolbags for their children. The scheme was budgeted the same as test-equipment for hospitals to reduce risk of HIV transfer during blood-infusion by 20 %. And to be fair if you struggle to put dinner on the table, this cheque may well be seen as a direct provocation. I then ask myself if this proposal is not a clear example of lack of creativity in solutions? I am not arguing against equal rights for children from different social layers - as it could be suggested in a heated political debate of contra-attacks. I am merely suggesting a new approach. Many schoolbags are disposed of every year, just because one child has lost interest in the Superman icon and convinced his parents to get him a Batman version, does not mean that some other child may not be very excited by the prospect of a Superman bag. A project in secondary school could be for the students to design, build, maintain and empty a "schoolbag recycling container", this will not only improve skills of crafts and creativity but the children will have to deal with issues of empathy, how do we communicate with visuals 'treat other as you would want to be treated'.

I believe there are endless opportunities of engaging designers in politics - not only as a response to political issues, but in the very creation of the agenda.

Danish news articles (Berlingske Tidende)

History of posted blogs

Photo borrowed from Flickr

Floating Waste Floating Life

Strangely familiar may be the term that defines the debate of how we remain ethical and critical consumers even with our constant desire for change. Jonathan Bell (1) proposes that we look at architecture's ability to sustain and suggests we carry these values on to design for everyday life. An experiment that will challenge us to aim for long lasting values and emotional attachment in what we design. What happens then if you look at architecture as the shell we can exist within, the security for us not to be eaten up by the constant changes, and then see 'design for everyday life' as exactly marks of change; a sort of object-diary of our lives and being? It then becomes an even bigger challenge to transfer the sustainability of (some!) architecture to the design of objects. It could be suggested that with a mobile home both objects and architecture may remain for longer as our desire for change can be fulfilled through the changing location we find ourselves at. We will then live a nomadic life, where the search for survival will remain, not in the form of feed for animals, but in stimulation of the modern man. The desire to collect and keep will then be a design task to solve, we can only travel with limited goods but we may wish to know we will remain through the traces we leave behind. It remains ironic that the search for survival can no longer in many areas of our part of the world only be limited to food, shelter and health for us to feel human, when our ethics are now more than ever in bad need for a burst of sustainable realization.

Susan Collis art takes quite some time to discover especially if you don't know you are looking for something - maybe this principle can be applied to design to expand lifetime of an object and maintain interest?

Check the link or her piece currently displayed at V&A South Kensington.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1637_outoftheordinary/artists_detail.php?artistTag=collis

Photo from Living Design - 'Maisson Flottante', designed by Bouroullec brothers

(1) Bell, J. Ruins, Recycling, Smart Buildings, and the Endlessly Transformable Environment. In Blauvelt, A. Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life. Minneapolis

(2) Hinte, Ed van. Eternally Yours: Time in Design. 010 Publishers. Rotterdam, 2004

Constant Consumption?

It seems at the moment that we are surrounded by big companies, especially supermarkets, who have suddenly decided to ‘go green’. Not that that’s a bad thing – we’ve used and abused this planet for so long that it’s overdue for some looking after. But these companies bring up a complete contradiction – we’re encouraged to consume endlessly as long as we use a bag made from recycled plastic to carry all our unnecessary products home.

Whilst the amount of plastic bags in use is clearly an issue and a needless waste of resources, the amount of energy needed to make them is tiny. To produce the more ‘eco-friendly’ bags, more energy is needed, so are they really good for the environment? The trouble is that the majority will buy a ‘bag for life’ but if spontaneously go to the shops the likelihood is that the bag will be lying forgotten in the cupboard at home. So not only is that wasted, but the customer then needs more regular plastic bags to replace it. Maybe shops should start to wean their customers off plastic bags – stop providing them and the customers will have to remember to bring their own…

The new trend for fashion designers to comment on this issue is a good way to encourage publicity and awareness of the subject, but is this just a fad that will die out in a few months? And again we have the same contradiction – surely the most environmentally friendly thing that designers as a whole can do is stop designing unessential products and encouraging this constant consumption?

Images from www.flickr.com