Belonging & Belongings

Final results

Geke van Dijk — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 16:49:49 +0000

On the final day of the project each group presented their edited videos, together with a plan for a video installation to be hosted at Chelsea College in January 2011.

Project Blogs

Geke van Dijk — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 11:17:20 +0000

All the groups are keeping notes on the progress of their project on a blog. See the links below.

Group 1 (Azza, Ji, Ines, Koanna, Zijiang, Dhruti) - http://group1magdc2010.blogspot.com/

Group 2 (Masafumi, Jieun, Xiao Lei, Julie, Dimitra) - http://www.tsui-tsui.com/Chelsea2010/ON_OFF/

Group 3 (Mina, William, Miriam, Joe, Ying Ji) – http://myinternetpersona.tumblr.com/

Group 4 (Emma Katherine, Nikoletta, Yu Syuan, Zimu, Camille, Stella) – http://webelongbelonging.blogspot.com/

Group 5 (Jon Andres, Alexis Dominik, Chih-Hsiong, Elisa Fabia, Yeung Lai Ho, Anna) – http://www.5upergroup.blogspot.com/

Project Brief

Bas Raijmakers — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:25:34 +0000

Belonging & Belongings

Project with Chelsea College of Art & Design MA students, Nov-Dec 2010

General context / overall B&B research question:

How do people express their multiple, online and offline identities through their physical and virtual belongings (e.g fashion and communication technologies)? Each study in the B&B research programme addressed a specific sub-question within this overall area of interest.

Focus area for this student project:

Explore people’s online identities. How do they cope with creating and maintaining their online identities? How do they relate these to their real-life self? How important are the similarities or differences between their various identities? What are their routines, motivations, preferences, passions and/or concerns?

Key trigger: How do people enjoy the differences they can create between their online and offline identities?

Aim: Identify challenging and exciting design opportunities and explore the best way to communicate these.

Design research briefing for student project:

Work in groups of 5-6 people.

Choose and explore a specific sub-question within the context of the overall B&B research question that includes the expression of online identities.

Use ethnographic methodologies (observation, interviews, co-creation, probes, …)

Document every step in the research process (pictures, notes,..) on a project blog.

Express data and research findings in a video installation.

Present video installation at final crit on 10 december.

Consider the spatial representation of the installation and how people will experience this.

Make a brief written statement to frame the video installation for the audience.

The video installation (including the statement) should be able to stand on its own.

Upload all the research materials to the project blog by 10 December (video, statement, making of,…)

Some pointers / suggestions:

- Create your own video material

- Make use of existing video material (e.g. BBC Virtual Revolution, or other stuff that can be found online)

- Make use of other materials such as photos, audio, graphics, screen captures, …..

Actively involve the participants in the filming

Dates:

23 November - lecture by STBY on design research

24 November - workshop to discuss start up phase of group projects

7 December - preliminary crit to discuss progress of group projects

(based on documentation of research process and rough edit of video work)

10 December - presentation and final crit (based on final video work and presentation)

Contact:

Geke van Dijk, geke@stby.eu, 077 9905 0677

Bas Raijmakers, bas@stby.eu, 077 8733 4123

STBY, 25d London Wool & Fruit Exchange, Brushfield Street, London E1 6AA

Researchers & collaborators

Geke van Dijk — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:44:02 +0000

The research programme of Belonging & Belongings was conceived by three scholars from different backgrounds.

Dr. Geke van Dijk, Strategy Director at STBY London/Amsterdam. Specialised in cultural studies and multi-channel social research. PhD in Human-Computer Interaction (Open University, Milton Keynes 2007).

Dr. Daijiro Mizuno, Lecturer and Researcher at Critical Design Lab in Kyoto. Specialised in fashion design as a social object; Investigating how designers/wearers dress, behave and create their own multiple identities. PhD in Fashion Design (Royal College of Art, London 2008).

Dr. Bas Raijmakers – Creative Director at STBY London/Amsterdam. Specialised in using documentary film as an analytical and practical means to conduct ethnographic research. PhD in Interaction Design (Royal College of Art, London 2007).

The inclusion of such mixed disciplines provokes new approaches to the ways we can understand the complexity of people’s identity in contemporary culture.

Acknowledgements:

Kyoto fieldwork, publication and video: Naoto Kobayashi

London fieldwork and publication: Anniken Gjelseth, Jenny Lam, Malia Baker, Melanie Baerlocher, Wing Hong Wong, Frank Cartledge

Video interviews: BBC Digital Revolution, used under the BBC Digital Revolution Licence (www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution)

Brochure: Kentaro Nakamura, Toshiyuki Nakaie

Study 003 – Kyoto and London

Geke van Dijk — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:41:01 +0000

The most recent study in the Belonging & Belongings research programme focusses on using video to explore and communicate people’s socio-techno styles, in combination with interview material from the BBC Digital Revolution rushes, made available under a special licence.
The mash up of voice overs from experts on social uses of technology and the creation of (online) identities with the video recordings from home visits in Kyoto triggered new considerations on socio-techno styles. In addition to multiplicity and particularity, the importance of empathic communication for constructing ones identities, and the vulnerability of this process emerged as recurring themes.

In line with the overall research programme, this study explored the interrelationship between technology, society and sartorial appearances. It investigated the interplay between virtual and physical identities, as well as the relationship between identity and possessions.
The resulting films are shown as an installation with the aim to explore how video can be used to provoke considerations and discussion on findings resulting from ethnographic research. You can watch the films on Vimeo too:

Toshiyuki & John Batelle

Kentaro & Dana Boyd

Kazuhumi & Kevin Kelly

Takuro & Tim Berners Lee

Study 002 – Kyoto and London

Geke van Dijk — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:40:14 +0000

In the second study home visits with interviews and visual documentation were made. This study was conducted with students from the Kyoto University of Art and Design, and from Chelsea College of Art and Design.
Personal statements about expressing ones identity online and offline, and visually illustrated maps of their personal belongings were collected and analysed. This lead to insights about the multiplicity of identities, and expression of particularity in socio-technical styles.
The results of these studies were expressed in a series of prototypes of magazines, exploring the way graphical design can support the communication of results from ethnographic research.

Study 001 – London, Amsterdam and Tokyo

Geke van Dijk — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:39:26 +0000

The first study in this long term research programme focussed on observing and identifying socio-techno styles at ‘urban catwalks’.

By critically analysing the ways people carry and use mobile technology combined with the way they dress and carry accessories, clusters with similar socio-techno styles could be identified.

Collaboration with Chelsea College of Art and Design

Geke van Dijk — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:48:14 +0000

From October to December 2009 we worked with students from the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. In this project we took the research to a next level, building on the previous pilot studies. We now wanted to focus a bit more on the motivations of people behind their online and offline presentations. This included interviews and visualisations of the data that will be gathered. We aimed towards the publication of a printed magazine in January.

Kick-off meeting

On 22 October we met with the students for a kick-off meeting. These are the slides we showed and discussed: briefing_presentation_221009

Hand out with detailed briefing

During the kick off meeting we handed out a briefing document that specifies the objectives, activities, time line and deliverables: chelsea_briefing_handout_221009

Workshop to discuss first explorations

On 10 November we met again with all the student groups. They presented their first explorations and discussed their plans for the coming weeks.

Final presentations and competition

On 3 December the student groups presented the results of their project. They all produced a mock up of a magazine. We selected one of these magazines as the best of class. This one was then used as the design for a printed publication that also contained some of the data from the other research projects.

Techno-social styles

Geke van Dijk — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:35:59 +0000

As a theoretical framework for the research we focus on ‘techno-social styles’. By doing this, we position ourselves in the triangle between social studies, style studies and technology studies, as expressed in the diagramme with references to relevant literature below.

We’ve roughly labeled the books, papers and projects mentioned in this part of the blog in three categories: Techno-Social, Social-Style and Techno-Style. The tags in the right column of the blog help to sort our descriptions of the references into these categories.

Fashion, Culture and Identity (Fred Davis)

daijirom — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:19:59 +0000

Topic:
Fashion is a social object, but what does it reflect? And how? This work is an rigourous attempt to critically examine fashion with the wide ranging literature.

Main thesis:

What do our clothes say about who we are or who we think we are? How does the way we dress communicate messages about our identity? Is the desire to be “in fashion” universal, or is it unique to Western culture? How do fashions change? These are just a few of the intriguing questions Fred Davis sets out to answer in this provocative look at what we do with our clothes–and what they can do to us. Much of what we assume to be individual preference, Davis shows, really reflects deeper social and cultural forces. Ours is an ambivalent social world, characterized by tensions over gender roles, social status, and the expression of sexuality. Predicting what people will wear becomes a risky gamble when the link between private self and public persona can be so unstable. (Excerpt from review on Amazon)

Methodology:
Whilst written primarily from secondary sources, this book introduces some interesting points to criticise the easy assumption that fashion is language and thus you can “read” and “communicate” images you want to deliver. Drawn from sociology related writings, Davis attempts to offer “encoding” and “decoding” as an alternative analytical model to understand the meaning of fashion.

Theoretical framework:
French sociologists such as Simmel, Veblen, Bourdieu and Baudrillard are quoted in the work.

Links:
Book page on Amazon

Relevance:
Seems relevant for B+B project in some aspects, in particular how fashion contains problematic as a communication tool. Also the transitory / ephemeral nature of fashion culture is indicated well, flagging its difference from other design disciplines.