The mind map seemed like an interesting idea to explore, as we couldn’t find any existing ones online. We thought that if one could create a personal mind map on a website by setting a topic and writing down one idea in the middle, it could then be saved to a website and other people could pick it up and respond by video, text, images, drawing and sound. We also thought about tracking, as all of these ideas could be potential memes. Even though the core idea itself is an altruistic meme; to pass on knowledge and experience to others. But we liked the idea of being able to track these ideas, in terms of authorship, duration, how long an idea can stay alive etc, all at the same time. That led us a little away from the mind map idea (at least in terms of looks), as we started to look at all these ideas as little particles, or stars if you like. We imagined an online interface where all these particles would float around in the same space, each one would be someone’s core idea. If someone had a new idea, they could simply click an icon; set a topic, write some lines/post an image/video, include some keywords, and just deploy it. New ideas would vibrate or pulse, so users would see if there was any activity. If a user clicks a floating idea, it will stop, and expand to show something similar to that of a forum post, docked to the particle. This will contain the core idea, and the responses. The users will have the option to respond by text, image, video, sound or drawing. Each post has a potential lifespan of one week; whenever a user responds, the time is renewed. This will keep pressure on authors to encourage response on their idea, as well as keeping the concept of a crit alive – where you have a certain amount of time to present your idea to the others.

As for the social aspect of it, we know that literally no-one wants another social networking account, so this will be more of a tool with some social networking attached to it. We thought that people could use Facebook Connect to log on, which will allow us to display their names, and location, and include these in a search function too.

We will also have a quarterly publication for sale (free to members). It could present the finished result of selected ideas, or articles on selected topics that have been popular on the site. Further along the road we will host annual exhibitions and/or talks.

Response to Sadhna:
The project focus lies in sharing and exchanging knowledge and experience, thus creating progress and breathing new life into our network. In terms of what concept we are exercising with this, it is first and foremost altruism; “Helping a friend in need will result in that friend appreciating you more and wanting to spend more time with you. By doing so, he will imitate you more than his less helpful friend, so your helpful meme will spread to him. He will become more helpful to his friends, and so the meme will gradually spread.” According to the article Share To Make Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky, “Creative professionals should take every opportunity to communicate new ideas broadly, seek feedback, and develop a sense of accountability.” From a more general memetic view, especially when it comes to online memes: this tool lets us track the origin and the lifespan of an idea, and potentially how long it takes before it “dies”. In terms of testing out research, it will be an ongoing process from when the whole thing is live. As none of us are programmers, we are looking to create a proposal explaining all the features and aspects of the website. We are, however, checking the possibilities of creating a small light-weight version of this, maybe letting people deploy an idea into a “pool” and respond to other peoples ideas by text only. We will also design the publication, and include documentation of the process there. So we are looking to create: a proposal for the site, a light-weight version, and a publication.

*****TLDR*****

Idea:
A platform for exchanging knowledge, ideas and experience, in the form of an interactive website. An intuitive forum that also serves as a meme-tracker. It will let the user browse ideas that are floating around in the same space, interact with them in terms of response as well as to deploy new ideas and getting feedback on them. Potentially this could draw links between professionals and students – a social network for ideas.

Design:
We imagine this as a cluster of particles or stars, floating around in the same space. Each particle/star is someone’s initial idea and when clicked, it will expand to show the whole post, with the other users individual responses. Every new post can be tagged with keywords. Peoples responses automatically contain the same keywords, as well as potential new ones.

Possible Features:

• Discussing ideas
• Hint and tips on technical aspects of design (software, type tips etc)
• Hint and tips on other aspects of design (how much to charge etc)
• Logging on through Facebook
• Posting via e-mail
• Responding with text, video, sound, images and drawing
• Tracking ideas by keywords
• Tracking activity by adding orbiting objects around the core idea/particle
• Tracking duration/lifetime. Ideas fade as there isn’t any activity, so after awhile they will be completely gone and moved to an archive (good ideas never die).
• Viewing “dead” ideas, and the possibility to revive them and sending them back into the system
• Tracking newly added
• Tracking where people are
• Lunch webcam meetings?
• Priority system
• Ideas attract each other according to keywords, as well as clicking on them.

So we thought about possible rules in the evening and further thought what could be the brand of the club.

Our tutorial with Sadhna brought up the morals of a club like this. Main points were:

Like the freemasons clubs, the idea of the club was romantizing something that wasn’t sound.

The university is a multi cultural place, why just base it on the british.

“Shaky”

Our final feeling was that we should drop the “upper class” english idea.

After a short lunch we broadened our idea to present to Patrick, we said we are going to form a social club, where by the people for St Martins can join and remain in  contact, A club where by events can be held annually to bring these people back together and to remain part of this network.

He said that to follow the tradition of clubs isn’t necessary. and we should look at other practical things to make it work. such as Backing people up with clients etc, hints and tips, common problems in the field, sharing Knowledge and experience, he mentioned other “design clubs” such as Oslo based Grafill and QBN.

We then worked on this idea of forming a club whereby someone can get hints and tips about working on a project and other ideas including : Sharing peoples work, Cross-collabortion network, Seminars could be videoed and shared, coffee break video chats, We then thought about what the main aspects of CSM are.

Hello

We (Alex, Anders & Martin) have decided to team up for our Unit 14. Alex has been researching semiotics of type, hidden narratives & changing behavior through design, Anders has been looking into memes, flocking, language & slang, while Martin has been researching the values of something being made in Great Britain with focus on bespoke tailoring on Saville Row.

We found that our common ground was how to keep the idea of something alive through associations (and passing on memes for my sake). This mind map explains our train of thought on how we came up with our first idea, the gentlemen’s club:

So what is this?

What:
Keeping the idea of something alive through our own approach. Our focus is on British high culture.

How:
Setting up a Gentlemen’s Club, and host events every month.

Why:
Key words are: integration, acceptance, cultural heritage, experiential events and semiotics. All of these words tie in with our separate research.

This made an incredible amount of sense to us in the beginning, especially from a memetic point of view: The idea of creating a community that continued beyond our graduation would be a great way of passing on and keeping alive our “hey-days” at CSM. The idea with the club seemed like a natural way of creating a common platform for us to interact. It also included established memes like language, belonging, acceptance and cultural heritage. The british Culture was something we added to not only give it a  point of view). The british upper-class culture was a way for us to interpret a culture we’ve never been exposed to, as well as doing something fun and creative. It also tied in with the whole “club” aspect of it, as the history of these clubs go long back in time. We came up with this manifesto:

Manifesto

As the graduates disperse with their endeavors, the community which once was breaks down. The Club is a private club set by and for alumni students from the Graphic Design course at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London, UK. The purpose of The Club is to maintain networks within the environment they were formed, after graduation. Like the old gentlemen’s clubs, it serves as a social support network for alumni’s of Central Saint Martins Graphic Design 2010. Through real events based around traditional British culture, The Club will act as a defined social network as well as passing on a culture people may not have experienced whilst living here.

This was our original timetable and plan:

• Flags/Nationality
• Images/Photos from Flickr
• People (leaders perhaps, or icons)
• Institutions (universities for instance)
• Symbols (religious etc)
• Slang

A tag cloud, or something similar will be created for each image, where the size of each tag will be determined by it’s frequency. And maybe something could be visualized further based on this information – if I went with flags, the flags could be ‘redesigned’ based on the tags to create a more accurate representation of the nation.

http://socialcollider.net/

The Social Collider reveals cross-connections between conversations on Twitter.

With the Internet’s promise of instant and absolute connectedness, two things appear to be curiously underrepresented: both temporal and lateral perspective of our data-trails. Yet, the amount of data we are constantly producing provides a whole world of contexts, many of which can reveal astonishing relationships if only looked at through time.

This experiment explores these possibilities by starting with messages on the microblogging-platform Twitter. One can search for usernames or topics, which are tracked through time and visualized much like the way a particle collider draws pictures of subatomic matter. Posts that didn’t resonate with anyone just connect to the next item in the stream. The ones that did, however, spin off and horizontally link to users or topics who relate to them, either directly or in terms of their content.

The Social Collider acts as a metaphorical instrument which can be used to make visible how memes get created and how they propagate. Ideally, it might catch the Zeitgeist at work.

I am currently looking at the term ‘grind’ or ‘grinding’, and how it has become a part of the rap lingo today. Maybe I could build some sort of memetracker (there are quite a few already, but with the right content and within the right context it could be interesting).

The term to ‘grind’ (as a metaphor for working) was first introduced in 1899 by Mark Twain, in his short story ‘The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg’, and possibly made famous by Clipse in their debut single ‘Grindin” in 2002. I am now looking into how this has gotten into the hip-hop lingo by tracing it back in time.

Thought It’d be a good idea to start with a few simple Venn diagrams to explore where some of these expressions come from.

Some of my favorite quotes in a very simple form; plain Helvetica on a black background.

An extremely simple experiment (not even an experiment, more of a starting point), looking at some familiar – and unfamiliar words often used in a hip-hop context. Some words, like “chill out”, “what’s up”, “peace out” etc. have become commonplace within everyday conversation, and even used in TV-shows, films, radio and commercials.