Situated Design

Hibar Arbide

Image from El Cugatenc by Laia Coronado Nadal

Hibar in his lecture talked about the hard difficulties related to the immigration process occurring in Europe in recent years and how people are being managed, and treated by the laws and bureaucratic institutions that surround mainly immigration points of transition from one place to another. It is not a novelty that Europe has been dealing with an immigrant situation it has been some years, from two separate visions within society, some believe that it is a needed process, where diversity, opportunity, and more jobs boost the economy, and even from some countries, correct the birth rate deficit as in Germany. But for some, immigration represents the danger, of job competition, and most of the time a xenophobic discourse that would corrupt and change the cultural landscape, as a conservative and not-so-sure vision of reality.

During his presentation, Hibair quoted the hypocrisy and difficult process of being an immigrant and how unhuman people from around the world are being treated by countries and nations that consider themselves respectful, with high human standards and living conditions that create a dystopia vision of where the future is directing itself to. Concentration camps are nothing new, and unfortunately, a reality way older than we think, but now with new technologies such as drones and AI a new version of this unhuman reality is being constructed, with places using hyper-vigilance systems to predict possible riots and control people that are just searching for a better opportunity in life without even having the possibility to get a legal process.

However, this dystopic reality doesn't look like it is getting closer to an end. With NGOs being prohibited in certain countries and right-wing parties covering most of the political spaces around the planet, the world is becoming more conservative, segregated, and, in those situations, less visible to sustain an image of what those countries aim to sustain worldwide. With another important example, Hibair quoted how men are being affected considering their stereotypical role in society, where women and kids had to be cared, but even in those conditions, men are forced to work without even having the possibility to think twice about the choices in a chaotic reality. This lecture quoted the importance of words, how they are used how media and news are promoted, and how important is to unveil a reality that lies above the eyes of a "fair, free, and just" society.

Llobregat Delta

Within an expected journey, the Llobregat Delta visiting day was marked by

Ben Ditto

In his lecture, Ben tried to be very concise, and objective but open to show her works, projects, and mindset that triggered him to develop his identity through different kinds of media and tools that he approached over the years. Within a very inspirational and motivational discourse, Ben started to explain a little about his origins in London, and how his life was molded by the subculture movements emerging during his process of transformation, something that could truly be seen by his works that defy the normativity imposed by media, society, and the majority culture some years ago.

In sequence, the creator introduced his first works to show how his past influenced the construction of his attitude as an artist, with a constant evolution that followed a master's degree at the Royal College of Arts in London, but without quoting too much the works he had developed during his academic journey. As a result of their path taken, a showcase of his most recent project integrating different kinds of technologies and professional collaboration with each other marked the peak of his practice was presented to the class, which integrated Louis Bags with genetically engineered bacteria with Cripsr-CAS9, video clips and a whole identity for one specific album developed by the band 1975 experimenting AI in their first years of development and even production made with Kylie Jenner.

However, even with a successful career, Ben didn't focus too much on those accomplishments, but more on the spirit that led him to certain choices and brought those opportunities integrating a behavior that didn't want to please anyone else, but to be your true self without the worry to be judge and being afraid of the consequences that could originate from your actions. Within this spirit, Ben commented through the things he enjoys working on by understanding a situation and constantly hacking it to stay true to his ambitions, even if it's necessary to create more than three Instagram accounts with the same objective that were banned by the platform, again and again. At last, Ben Ditto seemed an artist with an ambition to project his thoughts who managed his practice to integrate into the market, with networks and contacts built along his personal and professional journey.

Reflection / Positioning

During the Situated Design seminar, we had the opportunity to hear and talk through different situations, contexts, and approaches made by local and creative individuals or groups. Encounters that made me rethink the understanding of certain environments and how individuals and groups deal with them depending on their background, intentions, and purposes to achieve a different kind of reaction or consequence to trigger transformation by using various media, tools, movements, and social actions to hack the establishment.

The name "Situated Design" clearly assembles through the lectures the concept of situating yourself, trying to understand your surroundings, members, and objects and how they are organized together. Something that assembles questions that resonate with MDEF projects and spirit, "How to hack your reality? For what purpose?".

This approach reminds me of the essence of anthropology and research design, to understand a culture, a societal organization, and its systematic interactions to identify specific patterns of behavior between comparing experiences and references that could lead us to new perspectives to approach context. Within the seminar, the research turned out to be not exclusively theoretical but practically presented to us between the difficulties of changing the status quo and the consistency of acts to enhance and sustain a new perspective in that situation.

Is the purpose to conserve what we already have, as the Llobregat Delta farms, or maybe to break what it became, as the Instagram algorithms that force us to adapt to a technology to make a better acknowledge of our actions? Within this mixed reality, what is a good intervention considering the high majority of people that define its landscape, and why should we consider the majority if most are included in the herd behavior effect that guides our daily lives with blinded eyes?

"Social media made the common sense realize they are the majority."

- Luis Felipe Pondé | Brazilian Philosopher

As one of the most inspiring references presented for me, Ben Ditto argued during his lecture the importance of consistency and practicing your work independently of reactions to the context, as the will to repeatedly project your thoughts to the world, without the necessity of being aware of your consequences, which linked me the idea of screaming, being noticed, and not adapting yourself to something, but reinforcing your position independently of external judgment.

This can be related to different artists and celebrities online, but it truly relates to your inner will to be vulnerable to the world, as a mindset reflecting your self-essence and not necessarily projecting what the world is asking. It truly relates to the Rogers curve, where you can take advantage of a movement and a group that would defend your ideas as a mirror that relates to what certain individuals consume and promote, reflecting a part of what they truly are.

During the last months, my position sustained the idea of understanding the "game" and the context we are subordinated to manipulate and achieve our ambitions to promote our ideas by understanding our own/community identity and how its actions not necessarily preserve, but create an intervention between a new perspective and what is already established by the system rules.

To hack culture and society, it is important to situate yourself and understand its behavioral patterns, but not necessarily let the herd guide you by the majority of people who imagine a different reality through a common sense already distributed as the average opinion. The situated design practices implicitly rely on the importance of how influence early adopters and dismantle the late majority of people situated in a specific context, technology, and social direction, within the struggles to change reality within its players.

One example of these struggles deeply relates to the field of biodesign, as an emergent field with the continuous development and understanding of biology, the movement ideas within its technical and scientific-driven mindset have difficulty engaging with common sense. Besides trying to connect its benefits to the ecosystem, considering the big social movement to assist the planet's health from global warming affecting all human race, the system we live in prioritizes individuality and how our particular selves relate closely to our lives directly by engaging with our deepest constructed identities formulated by the culture and society we experience.

This means a prioritization of something that affects us fast, physically visible, and psychologically felt, something that can be seen through the industry of music, like the alternative rock band Muse, which even if talking about technological evolution, doesn't have any close audience comparison to the huge herd effect that follows artists who trigger the common sense, with love, sex, and empowerment, as references in which we can compare ourselves to.