Emotional map, Dale i Sunnfjord overview map 2010

Place Nr. 1 – Yksnebjør/ Økenberg
Yksnebjør/ farm, where I grow up in another time, from the war period and beyond, along with parents and four siblings in the common effort to obtain the necessary for a living. But there was energy left to play both on land and the sea.

Place Nr. 6 – Klokkargarden
Spare time was spent in this area. Various form of activity.

Meaning for me: Means friendship,
unity and development of creative times.

 

Identifying climatic qualities

Heat, coldness, dryness, wetness/humidity, light, darkness, wind and calmness are all climatic qualities of the human environment. Our psychological perception is influenced by subjective factors like memory, experience, preference etc. making the perception of places a highly individual matter. In this workshop we want to explore which climatic qualities are being experienced in Dale and we want to create personal visualizations of specific climatic qualities by single use cameras. The result of the day is situated and individual observations making a sketch like description of which climatic qualities are being experienced in Dale. This information is put on the blog as well as samples of the individual visualizations of specific qualities. The aim is to raise reflections and further social exchange. It is a qualitative perspective which can be developed further by including more people and more places. As an example it is interesting to reflect upon whether a group of women would experience the same qualities as the men did, that is – whether a gender difference exist in perceiving and evaluating climatic qualities.

Instant cameras for different climatic qualities / warm, cold, humid, dry, open, closed, windy, calm, bright or / and dark.

Place Nr. 8 Church Warm, humid, windy, calm, bright, open, closed.

Place Nr. 10 Bridge Cold, humid, windy, bright, open.

Climatic spots in Dale / Dale in Sunnfjord overview map 2010.

 

Rights through Making
by Ambra Trotto

Rights through Making is an international research project, which started in 2007 and whose founders are the Eindhoven University of Technology, Department of Industrial Design (the Netherlands) and the University of Florence, Department of Technologies of Architecture and Design “P. Spadolini” (Italy).  The scope is to promote a new way of thinking elicited by products that empower people towards the realization of the values expressed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By bringing together designers from different cultures, the communication about the declaration through doing, i.e. designing together, is enhanced: we believe in communication through working together. Words often divide, work unites. Improving communication is also about culture, in this case the culture of doing. We are rapidly losing essential design craftsmanship, saper fare. By using these skills in the context of the newest technology they acquire a new dimension that will safeguard their survival, and indeed, guarantee their expansion. This experiment aims to explore and validate the Rights through Making approach in a virtual collaboration.  Instead of inviting designers to work together in a same place, we propose that the design process happens online and everybody contributes to it, by submitting his point of view to a common design space. This minimizes discussions and maximize constructiveness.

27 participants from 10 different nationalities, with completely different professional backgrounds, bravely accepted to participate to this experimental Rights through Making workshop. The online workshop is an experiment that started Monday May 3rd and finished Saturday May 8th 2010. The theme was “Design a wearable means dedicated to elderly people, which empowers people towards the values expressed in the article 26 of the UDHR (rights to education)”. This workshop was the start-up of the project Longer Participation, part of Transplant, Ideal Lab.

Rights Through Making online platform

The Story bracelet, a concept of Rights through Making
by Ralston & Bau

The bracelet is a wearable that can be used  by seniors and young, men and women.

It could be used as:
– A longterm “ticket” for public transport on which is included a GPS probe so that the person wearing it can be tracked if “lost”
– It could have a LCD screen and be a receiver and transmit short texts with the latest cultural events in the city: event at the library, expos, theatre, when squeezed. This would inspire for more cultural consumption and ultimately more open-mindedness.
– A game between old and young: On each bracelet there is printed the start of a story: “I was scared….”, “It was a sunny day….” on gives the bracelet to the other and the receiver should continue the story using its memories or fantasy. This way the two generations get to know each other better and knowledge and experience is shared in a fun, equal and natural manner. The story chosen direct the story told making for a genuine collaborative process.

The bracelets can be worn and cherished as one remember the stories told and moment shared.

Game= Transport of knowledge
Bracelet= Transport of emotions

Photo by Sissel Myklebust 2008.

 

Mature
by Erwin Olaf

Erwin Olaf is a commercial photographer who assesses the many forms of advertising and substantiates the way he feels about societies need to illuminate the “perfect image”. His commercial photography pushes the boundaries in promiscuous ways where the advertising world find ironic with satirical messages usually concerning themselves. Olaf puts a division with his own personal and artistic photographs, taking the viewer on an emotional roller coaster while his advertising represents ambiguity and evocative presumptions of the world. He tends to find “beauty” in the most unconventional ways and this can be seen in many of his photographs as he questions, “What is beauty?”

His methods, which equate his understanding of beauty and the perfect picture, come from his continuous work for the advertising industry. “He continually inverts the usual concept of what is ugly, what is wrong. He confounds anyone who equates beauty with purity” (Silver) In the perspective of a man who sees the conventional “beauty” everyday Olaf tends to think outside the box and his attitudes towards societies narrow mindedness about crucial topics, such as these makes him irritated. It was clear to see in Mature that even in old age there are different forms of beauty, which people are genuinely attracted to. The message he tries to convey is that beauty does not always have to look perfect rather it can be found in other ways. 

 “Is it internal or external?” The women are in focus to suggest how humanity can change their views on beauty instead of being focused with the traditional beauty that we see everyday in magazines and billboards.

 

Afterlife
by Aguer and Loizeau

There are many perspectives and beliefs on what happens to us after our lives in this planet come to an end.

When faced with our own mortality or that of a loved one, notions of what the afterlife may hold; whether it be in a spirit world such as heaven or reincarnated into another body or form, spiritual faith can offer great comfort and reassurance. Science and reason though have started to undermine these traditional belief systems as we strive to find logic and meaning in our existence. This scientific research has yet to offer any tangible proof of continued existence, after death. So in terms of comfort and reassurance what then is there for the grieving atheist?

Afterlife scheme

Scenarios
Where to put the battery is an extremely personal and emotive choice. During a lecture by Auger & Loizeau about “Afterlife”, participants were asked to propose what they would do with an afterlife battery charged either by themselves or their partner / family.

Daniel Charny
I would support the research into a development of a multi chargeable battery – so that you could collect a whole family charge chain recognised by it having the names inscribed on the case of the battery. The inscription tool would be powered by the battery charged with the energy of the previously deceased…. thus after some generations you would have a nomadic family vault. (Voltage would increase with every addition…)

Eddy Bundy
Considering myself a romantic and a fantastic lover in life, I ask myself “Why should the fun stop when I die?” I would like my Afterlife battery to be placed in a vibrator for several acts of love after I’m gone.

Jack Schulze
If my father passed away, this is how I would use his battery. I would power some kind of electrical bird warbler. To be left in the garden, a unique noise though, formed from bird sounds common to Cheshire and rural Wales. It should not warble constantly, it should be around breakfast. This is because my father – early in the morning – can often be found out in the Garden (having pissed on the compost) in pants and vest, whistling along with various birds, for extended periods. It has to be said, he is pretty good.

Noam Toran
I want it observed in my will that my family (my partner Marloes, my three children Moses, Julius and Maurice) will be forced to stare at 3 illuminated bulbs in a small case placed above mantelpiece powered by my battery which reads “NO HARD FEELINGS” until said sign dies out. Only then can they receive their entitlement.

Onkar Kular
I imagine, like many other people, upon my deathbed I will hold a number of small regrets relating to things I should have said and done during my lifetime. Fortunately, the Afterlife Battery offers me the opportunity, in the form of my Last Will & Testament to live out my short but rich electronically mediated future afterlife.

Tom O’Brien
Why an aeroplane? Why a Spitfire MK1?

I don’t feel the need to be remembered as an object. I’d like my energy to create an act. Since a child flying has fascinated me, not sure why, just does. I have always wanted to fly but have never completely felt at ease enough to think I could manage it without killing myself. I still intend to fly myself in one way or another but just in case I don’t this will ensure it.

Very rarely man creates an object that connects with the human soul, anyone who has witnessed a Spitfire and especially the MK1 in flight will have felt that connection. It looks, sounds, functions and is just ‘right’, it is perfect. The curve of the wings, it’s proportions, it’s functionality, it was also fitted with the Rolls Royce Merlin which without exception, before, after or at anytime in the future is the greatest four stroke engine ever produced.

Mike Michaels
A regular event in my family life is the argument over the control of the TV remote and the programmes that we will collectively watch. There is a complex process of negotiation that involves give and take, selfishness and selflessness. I would like to be memorialized in an evocation of this process, not least because I want to be remembered in relation to mundane technology (one of my academic specialisms), as a typically contradictory human being, and as a loving partner and father who was intent in bettering his family (my preferred genre was nature documentaries) while being chronically silly.

I would like my Afterlife battery to power a small speaker mechanism (much like the sort you find in a singing birthday card) integrated into a remote control. Whenever the TV is switched on by the remote, a recording of my voice is played to say either: “It’s my turn, so I’m going to decide what we watch” or “I really don’t mind, it’s your turn to choose.” Given how fragile and contentious everyday familial memory is, these two phrases should appear at random. Alternatively, and slightly more subtly, I’d like my Afterlife battery to power a circuit that makes the TV remote select very occasionally, automatically and unpredictably a channel showing a nature documentary. The channel cannot be changed for the duration of the programme, and the television can only be switched off at the mains.

Afterlife object “No hard feelings”

Afterlife object “Shine on dad”

 

Shroom
by Ralston & Bau

Inspired by a Norwegian village and its relationship with citizens, Ralston & Bau designed a line of rural intelligent objects supplying dedicated lights for specific moments as walking, seating, waiting in large sense moving in a rural space by foot, cycle or car. The Shroom light will guide and follow you smoothly and spare energy when you don’t need it.

Fjaler Municipality commissioned Ralston & Bau to design a park and a series of urban lighting: Shroom, which has been awarded by the famous Red Dot Design Award prize in 2013.

 

Age of the World Pyramids
Mathieu Lehanneur

“The Age of the World pyramids” of the populations of Fjaler (Municipality Norway), Norway and Europe , are modeled in 3D. Mathieu Lehanneur is using the population data of 2008 to determine the shape of his “Age of the World pyramids”, the resulting contoured shapes then communicate the state of living in a given country…

Statistics quit charts and graphs reincarnated in a curious set of containers, jars or urns, creating a radical representation of our human bondage to this world. Birth is the base and death the apex of these enameled terra cotta pagodas, whose contours change in phase with the age rings that translate life expectancy. From bottom to top there are 100 strata, shaped in solid or void, but the top end is always a sharp tip. What we have here is a fascinating twin-scope view of the state of living, a look at our own life-span in a sculptural surround view. Can you find yourself in the pyramid? What level are you at neighbor? Where have you been all this time honey?

The “age-pyramids” are 40 cm high x 40 cm wide. The “age-pyramid” of Fjaler is manufactured in CNC production by Shape in collaboration with Transplant. The “age-pyramids” Norway and Europe will be visualized in 3D and produced as an printed image in their original size. See more at www.mathieulehanneur.fr

Europe

 

Fjaler