Future Craft/Love Sounds

The topic I have chosen for my final project, as well as for this week’s task, is destructive/lethal war craft; more specifically so called IED’s (Improvised Explosive Device).

In the Aug 20-27 issue, Newsweek writes:

The U.S. military hasn’t told the public exactly how many soldiers and Marines are killed and injured by IEDs every month in Iraq. Such disclosures would aid the enemy, or so goes the official explanation, though it might also embarrass Pentagon officials who say they have spent at least $6 billion so far trying to defeat IEDs, with limited success. The best estimate is that about one in three soldiers lost in 2004 was killed by an IED. Now it’s more like four out of five. About 50 soldiers a month are killed or injured by IEDs, up from about 30 a year ago.

Newsweek also provides a video called “How IED’s work“.

Another article in Freedom’s Phoenix: THINGS THAT GO ‘BUMP’ IN THE ROAD - How IEDs Work.

Jacob Appelbaum’s blog post regarding IED’s.

I am currently looking into car-free planning - an urban planning and architecture “movement” that focuses on preventing people from using cars in different ways. Car-free days and zones is a fairly new phenomenon.

MIT alum Eric Brende’s book Better Off addresses the topic: What would life be without technology? His answer to the question is reviled in the book’s title. Eric describes the advantages of de-technologizing in the following way:

The very absence of technology is a catalyst for close bonds among neighbors, for several reasons simultaneously. In a real sense you depend upon your neighbor, especially in times of crisis, but also because the work is by its nature communal. People get together not just because they like each other, but because they need each other. There’s a strong incentive not to sweat the small stuff.

Just found out that OB tampons (the ones that I used for last week’s assignment) contain polyester. Among other things, polyester is used to make: bottles, films, tarpaulin, liquid crystal displays, holograms, filters, dielectric film for capacitors, film insulation for wire and insulating tapes. You can read more about polyester here.

According to Urban Dictionary, detechnologizing means:

The act of removing one’s technology (i.e. iPod, cell phone) from one’s pockets before riding a roller coaster.

I found this week’s test really hard. I don’t know why, but I suppose I may have taken the task too seriously. So, somewhere in the process I realized that in order to get anything made at all, I have to do something completely unexpected and wacky (maybe).

This, sort of artistic, material exploration session was inspired by survival expert Bear Grylls. Bear’s advice that tampons are great for making fires (featured on the Oprah Winfrey show earlier this year) made me curious (and scared) enough to put tampons to the test. If you want to see the whole interview on Oprah, with more survival tips, you can watch it here.

For now, find below, a series of burning tampons, both “natural” and “augmented”.

Natural:

Natural - ripped open:

Sprayed with regular hairspray:

Dipped in red wine vinegar (no reaction):

Dipped in alcohol:

This is a comment on Ivan Illich book Tools for Conviviality (1973). In his book, Illich focuses three topics:

• the problems with institutionalized education and knowledge (it leads to an institutionalized society)
• the issue with dominant technocratic elites and assembly line structures in the industrial society (we replaced slaves with machines and robots, but have become “machines” ourselves)
• the need to develop new instruments for the reconquest of practical knowledge by the average citizen

The prophetic aspects of Illich’s text are inspiring. Illich is talking about issues that we know and discuss today, but probably were not that obvious in the 70’s. He criticizes deconstructive forces that burden the postmodern society, where more wants more and solutions cause new problems, and asks for more sustainable solutions. He mentions problems such as energy consuption and the well-being of individual citizens.

The third topic in Illich’s text (mentioned above), the regain of individual and independent power, knowledge and development, makes me think of an old meditation movement called Mindfulness. Mindfulness was brought to the Western academic world by, among others, Ellen J. Langer (Harvard University), who desribes Mindlessness (the opposite of Mindfulness) as:

It is about the mindsets that lead human beings—even the smartest of them—to become stupid and ‘mindless.’ Its power as drama in demonstrating that mindlessness leads not only to the banality of dullness, but to a giving up of life itself.

Ellen Langer’s desription of mindless people makes me think of Illich critic on institutionalisation of societies and their machine-like (mindless) citizens. Surely, there must be a connection there. Personally, I would argue that the life that I have lead so far, as a grown-up (the life that I to some extent is trying to move away from) to a large extent has made me a less independent, less creative, and less mindful person.

I just found this cute video of a play-doh video control.

Play-Doh as Interface from BrendanDawes on Vimeo.

You can read the designer’s comment here.