Cybernetic Self / Week 3 / Nick Deakin

Idea generation was the main theme of this lecture. I was shown a large variety of designs that relate to the internet and my topic of cybernetic self. It was interesting to see where designers have gone with this idea to communicate different messages and which media channels they have used to do so. I have selected designs that intrigued me the most and what I could take parts from for my own research and elements for my project.


Rafa Alvarez

I was introduced to a design by Rafa Alvarez that illustrates the false perception that can be seen through the camera of a Skype user. It is a design that celebrates Skype's anniversary and how it positively impacts relationships. You can see in the illustration a girl has tidied up her room to connect with her partner through her tablets camera. The light of the screen illuminates the room in a pink colour to portray the emotion of love and reveals the clean and tidy part of the room. This illustrates, the ability to connect through Skype not only blossoms a relationship, it helps people get their lifes together and improves how people present themselves. This relates to my cybernetic self project and relates to the theme Network Self. If reflects the idea of false perception and what you see through the internet is sometimes not what it actually seems. Sometimes it can be for the worse, with anonymous profiles pretending to be someone else.


Kessels Kramer / Budget Hotel

Hans Brinker Budget Hotel - *Not Included from KesselsKramer on Vimeo.

http://www.kesselskramer.com/system/files/112013/5280fe3ce60d8137ab0000c4/fancybox/ecofriendly_elevator.jpg?1384185432

http://www.kesselskramer.com/system/files/112013/5280fe50e60d8137ab0000c5/fancybox/posters4-1_copy.jpg?1384185433

I was shown the Kessels Kramer's advertising designs of Hans Brinker Budget Hotel and how they used social media as a platform to vastly distribute the ironic ideology behind the design. Hans Brinker Budget Hotel is a really bad hotel and the advertising Kessels Kramer has used is blatantly honest, stripping away all of the luxury items and having only the bare essentials remaining, at a push. For such a bad hotel, it actually does really well and brings in quite a few guests. It is because the designs are unorthodox and intriguing it has gone viral after being photographed and shared through social media. This intrigues a large amount of people who want to see what the hotel is actually like to stay and people all over the world come to visit this ironically iconic place. I chose these posters to represent the advertising of budget hotel. Along with the whole ironic ideology behind these posters, I love the composition of the type and image. The strong white and green type impact powerfully on your eyes, against the grey-scale background. The colour of the environmentally friendly green and white appear all clean and crisp, however the grey-scale background creates the impression of gloom, filth and an unsanitary way of living. The way the type and image are laid out could be an idea of how I could build my final design for Cybernetic Self.


Instaboobs / Joan Cornella

This short animation by Joan Cornella is a demonstration of false perception on Instagram and the tricks people play to get attention. In an unrealistic manner Joan creates cartoons to exaggerate the things people do to get attention. By pretending to have what the majority perceive as attractive when browsing through social media to gain likes on a post. In the cartoon, the result at the other side of the post ended up being a man, pretending to have features of a woman in short snaps of himself. Linking this to my project, the animation is a good way to illustrate the false perception on social media and is a clean and comedic way to illustrate the dangers of how criminals can use anonymous profiles to engage victims to fall for these tricks.


Avant garde design



Basically, this video is about how to generate ideas and make out of the ordinary designs, in an unorthodox way. The idea behind Avant-Garde design divides the design world into two areas, above the couch and below the couch. Above the couch design is made to be co-modified and is primarily and economic vehicle for the designer and the collector, often the overall concluded and refined product. Below the couch resists co-modification through its aesthetic appearance and is often referred to the base and the ugly side to the design. From what I make of this video, the below the couch area encourages a bizarre way of working at the development stage of a design to create intriguing designs that challenge the norm. I believe I have been shown this to express, if there was ever a time to be radically experimental, it would be now.