Living With Your Own ideas

Course Details

Name: Living With Your Own Ideas

Dates: 28 October to 31 October 2024

Faculty: Saúl Baeza

Prosthetic 'to become the best version of yourself'

I started by trying to figure out what "the best version of myself" would even mean. I set a timer for 10 minutes, put headphone on with some Scottish folk music and just wrote everything that came to mind.

The highlights included:

* caffeine as an energy prosthetic? 
* ⁠⁠balance of striving/action with rest/recovery 
* ⁠⁠ability to download skills like in The Matrix 
* ⁠⁠comfort with failure and imperfection
* ⁠⁠follow through on ideas and goals (which require focus, 
energy, support from others, skills, resiliency to setbacks, and embracing rest)

From there I started thinking about the balance between focus and rest. I started prototyping with materials I had lying around and the following prosthetic is the result. The idea is to have focus for a set amount of time - for example, 25 minutes, as is suggested with the Pomodoro Method - and then to have the visor automatically raise to allow me to broaden my focus and to nudge me to rest from the focus.

Through wearing this prosthetic, I decided I don't think the implementation of this idea makes sense. Putting 'horse blinders' on to focus on an activity doesn't really work, but it can represent the idea of having focus, energy, and commitment to follow through on implementing or testing ideas. It also embodies the idea of rest and changing perspective.

Maithili decided to try my prosthetic to help her focus while reading. She commented that it did help a bit, if you covered the sides. I guess for prototype two, I would need to make sure the sides are better covered so that the tunnel effect actually happens.

Prosthetic 'to become something else (non-human)'

The second prosthetic we were asked to make was inspired by the work of Thomas Thwaites who spoke to our class over video call about his work, specifically about his efforts to become a goat.

For this prompt, I looked back at my previous brainstorm session and decided to try to make a prosthetic to become a network, a community. Taking inspiration from mycelial networks, I thought about creating a physical connection to transmit motion and information between the nodes.

The following video contextualizes the network prosthetic as a visualization of the networks that already exist. Nature has so many networks, from mycelium that allows fungi to transfer information, nutrients, and water to bees that use pheromones to communicate across distance. Humans also have systems in place to communicate with one another across distance, but what if we could communicate like fungi? With visible, tangible connections allowing us to see the influence on those in our community when we pull a tread, what could we learn about ourself and those around us?

In the next video, we can see the affects on a single, centralized node when another node takes advantage of the power each individual has. It serves as a reminder to care for our communities and protect the connections we have.

Prosthetic 'to judge/be judged'

The final prosthetic prompt was to make a prosthetic to judged a certain way. The idea was to dictate how we would be perceived by a detective would be following us for an hour while we did our best to be judged in a certain way.

Detective Work

I am a bad detective, that is what I discovered during this exercise. I started trying to follow 'the subject', Hanna, as she left the classroom, walked to Itnig to get coffee, then walked to the beach. I am not sure exactly at what point she knew I was following her, but probably almost immediately after she stepped out of the IAAC building, if I am being honest. Well, I guess if I want a future as a Private Investigator, I need to learn discretion.

Photo Evidence

14:45 Leaving the classroom	14:50 In Itnig	14:56 Crossing the street
15:03 Crossing Ronda Litoral	15:04 Coffee Finished	15:06 Digging a hole
15:07 More digging	15:08 Putting something in the hole?	15:13 Walking along beach
15:23 Walking back	15:30 Walking back by metro

Audio and Video Notes

15:01 First Audio Note 15:20 Second Audio Note 15:21 Third Audio Note	15:19 Brief Video on walk back

As a Subject

I started figuring out what my prosthetic to try to control how I was judged would be, as I did with the first prosthetic, but brain dumping all my thoughts onto a piece of paper. I divided it into things that I want to be part of the way people see me in my everyday life, real desires about how I want to be judged, and funny or interesting ideas to explore as part of this exercise, but not something I try to perform in my daily life.

For some reason, I kept coming back to the word, 'commodity' from my list. I kept thinking about the idea of our personal data being exchanged for money. I thought about the phrase, “if you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product.” I began thinking about what sorts of 'prosthetics' I might be able to make to steer my detective's perception, as well as my own experience during the hour, towards being seen for what I could do, what I could provide, or what I could give away in exchange for things that might typically only be able to be obtained through an exchange of money.

Commodity Definition

In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them.

...

Other definitions of commodity include something useful or valued[4] and an alternative term for an economic good or service available for purchase in the market.[5] In such standard works as Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics (1920)[6] and Léon Walras's Elements of Pure Economics ([1926] 1954)[7] 'commodity' serves as general term for an economic good or service.

Wikipedia "Commodity"

I decided that the way to track how I was doing was to give receipts for each transaction I had. So, my prosthetic for influencing how I was judged was a few pieces of paper: four with personal information like my name, date of birth, former and current addresses, phone numbers, and websites and social media and six blank templates for receipts. I figured that giving out information that is essentially public information in exchange for things that might traditionally be exchanged for money wouldn't work so well when making exchanges with individuals. Corporations who have ways to do things with that information will happily exchange their services for details about ourselves, but individuals don't tend to have much need for that kind of information. So, I made fewer information sheets than I did receipts and how it turned out, my theory was correct.

Below are the photos of my receipts and the physical items I collected during my time as a subject.

My Prosthetics and Exchanges

First Exchange Receipt	Second Exchange Receipt	Second Exchange Evidence
Third Exchange Receipt	Third Exchange Evidence	Fourth Exchange Receipt
Fifth Exchange Receipt	Fifth Exchange Evidence	Sixth Exchange Receipt
Physical Things I collected	Additional things I collected
	An attempt at being taught the phrase "where is the supermarket?" in Portuguese (I retained none of the phrase) and the promise of a chance to practice Spanish.

Reflection

This week was an intense week of recalibrating my definition of 'prosthetic' and re-contextualizing my thoughts about design. In particular, the presentation by Thomas Thwaites was a good reminder to truly embrace the first person perspective of design and to commit fully to experiences. This week felt freeing, by pushing me to break out of the box of my preconceived ideas about design and even this program.

The detective game, in particular was really interesting. During my time trying to be perceived by individual people the way corporations perceive me, I ended up having conversations with others in more open ways than I might have in more normal situations. I have been feeling nervous about my lack of Spanish fluency when it comes to interacting with local communities. With this exercise, there was no way that I was going to be able to communicate what I was hoping to with my knowledge of Spanish, so while this was still a point of anxiety, it gave me permission to enter into interactions with humility and a direct request, in English. Additionally, I have been feeling stuck in my head about a lot of the projects for this course as well as getting bogged down in to-do lists and overthinking. In this way, I think this week was very useful at breaking down my inhibitions and forcing me to act without thinking in a valuable way. I think it is ironic that in my brainstorm notes for how I wanted to be judged, I included wanting to be seen 'as someone who acts on instinct/without overthinking' and yet I had a page full of many notes that could easily be considered overthinking. This week, the speed with which we were expected to prototype required getting out of my head and just starting, just creating.

The name of this week's course, "Living with your own ideas" somehow feels ironic in that sense, because it is my ideas that often seem to hold me back. I get so in my own head about thinking through processes, trying to determine the best way to approach things, that I struggle to dive in and commit to actually doing. So, in some ways, I almost felt that this week was about "Living beyond your ideas" in the sense that it challenged me to stop thinking in the moment, but just to create what felt right. Then I was able to go back and consider what I had done, what I had learned, and how I could potentially improve or at least grow from these insights.

The process of creating prosthetics, even if I am still struggling to view them as prosthetics because of my preconceived idea of what that word means, challenged me to think about the ways I already use tools and objects beyond my body to alter how I experience the world or how the world experiences me.

I have actually used my first prosthetic a few times since I made it. It doesn't work especially well, but at moments when things in my peripheral vision become distracting, it has been momentarily helpful to refocus my attention, blocking things beyond where I want my focus to be in a given moment. Additionally, my choice of how I wanted to be judged has led me to many interesting conversations with people both inside and outside of my program about the semantics of 'commodity', access to data and personal information, and has reminded me that often times, asking for things, even if it feels like a silly or unreasonable request, can lead to interesting and exciting outcomes.