The Virtual Revolution

A great documentary series about the way the internet has affected everyday life for the past 20 years. The third program of the series is the most appropriate for my project as it talks about what people actually "pay" for when they are getting free services from companies such as Google & Amazon. Just imagine what it would be like if the web was never free...

Brazil

Just finished watching Brazil, I was amazed by the amount of retro future objects & machines in it & the amount of detail to make the world seem real. The thing that appealed to my project the most was the fresh air kiosk, it just sums up the dystopian world in one object. I love the whole feel of the movie (especially the restaurant scene) , even though the story was quite hard to grasp first time! I need to incorporate some sort of humour into my project to make it seem more believable & approachable...

Brains & ...

Braun! I really love the work of Braun, especially when Dieter Rams was the in house designer. I would like to take references from these great industrially designed products & use them in the design of my object - nice clean lines, good use of product semantics & a limited range of colour.

The Lives of Others/Stasi Objects

I was recommended to watch the film "The Lives of Others" for the style the observation unit that I will be making, & found it very inspirational - both in the objects & the story. I want the user of the product to build a deep relationship with the content via the interaction of the object - starting with an ordinary, even obligatory usage to developing an emotional bond with the machine, letting them live out someone else's life through it.

After watching the film, I want the object to look very functional & serious - harsh lines & no curves, with an array of different, but identical looking buttons & dials, so the user has to learn how to manipulate the machine (creating the first step to developing a bond).

Here are some pictures of German Stasi (Secret Police) surveillance objects from the 1980's - just through the way they look, they feel cold, calculated...

Mass Observation Project

As I want my project to be about studying & recording people, my lecturer told me about The Mass Observation Project:

"The Mass Observation Project (MOP) is a unique UK-based writing project which has been running since 1981. It exists to:

• Provide a structured programme within which “ordinary” people can write directly about their lives in the knowledge that what they send in will be archived for posterity and used for social research
• Create a resource of qualitative longitudinal social data with an emphasis on subjectivity and self representation which will contribute to our understanding of everyday life in the late 20th and early 21st century.

The MOP differs from other similar social investigations because of its historical link to the original Mass Observation and because of its focus is on voluntary, self-motivated participation. It revives the early Mass Observation notion that everyone can participate in creating their own history or social science. The Mass Observers do not constitute a statistically representative sample of the population but can be seen as reporters or “citizen journalists” who provide a window on their worlds.

The material is solicited in response to “Directives” or open-ended questions sent to them by post or email three times a year. The Directives contain two or three broad themes which cover both very personal issues and wider political and social issues and events. Over 4,000 people have taken part to date, many of them corresponding over several years.

The collection comprises in-depth accounts (both opinion and experience) of everyday life: stories, memoirs, lists, letters, diagrams, drawings, maps, diaries, photographs, press cuttings, confessions, reports on people, places and events, across a wide variety of topics."

This seems to be the perfect outlet for my product - a tool for the studying of society. I just need to alter my rationale to fit in with this type of activity...

Being John Malkovich

Another great example of viewing something you shouldn't in a very wierd way.

Noam Toran

I really like the work of artist Noam Toran, especially one of his collections - Desire Management:

"Desire Management is a film comprising five sequences in which objects are used as vehicles for dissident behaviour. In the film, the domestic space is defined as the last private frontier, a place where bespoke appliances provide unorthodox experiences for alienated people"

I want my work to have this strange quality about it - to highlight people's obsessions & to create a new, tailor made experience using references from existing objects.

Origins

I got my initial idea, "Peeping Tom", from the front door to my flat - for some reason there are two door viewers on the outside of the door, but only one on the inside - which raises the question: if there are two peepholes & I can see through one, who is looking through the other one?