TheDunneThing

Nokia Workshop: Rationality in Recycling

2009-10-21T14:51:00.000-07:00

Today, I had one of the most inspiring days I can remember so thought I should write something down.

I took part in a workshop with Nokia and Seos (a Helsinki design firm) at the Aalto Design Factory in Otaneimi, Helsinki.

We were challenged, in the space of one day, to come up with concepts that would help in "Liberating Old Mobiles".

A representative from Nokia's sustainability dept./board/something came along to tell us what was already going on. I was appauled. It was all so rational and boring. Wow, okay, you got somebody to put a nice graphic on a cardboard box...great...but who cares...who knows about it more to the point?

Only 3% of mobile phones are recycled. 50% of people are unaware that phones can be recycled. 75% don't know HOW they can have their old phones recycled. All our phone and the precious materials inside them end up tucked in a draw somewhere and forgotten about - "just in case" you might possibly need them. This is little better than ending up in a landfill site - which also happens regularly. And they stick a cardboard box in a shop somewhere.

I was comforted somewhat to find that Nokia were actually trying to deal with some of the waste they excrete. But how can they justify such dull solutions - "And this poster show three hands come together and make recylce shape...". Uhuh...uhuh...

Oh did i mention that they also give out Nokia branded USB sticks made of bamboo?

Recycling and Advertising:
Buck-up the lot of you

This rational, pragmatic and downright boring approach to encourage recylcing strikes me as extremely apathetic: the whole thing reeking, to me, of token-gesturism by a large, fumbling, clunky organisation trying to quantify, to itself at least, it's green credentials: green-washing in both external and internal communications.

There's a bitter irony here that I believe came out in some of our concepts, and that is as follows:

Companies, large ones like Nokia, invest millions, collectively billions, on advertising. This investment is ploughed into creating ever more creative and tantalising ways to entice the consumer. The advertisements in this battlefield, far from appealing to rationality, seek-out our deepest, inner-most dreams and anxieties to provide the target with a means of expression and construction of identity through consumption. We are the Brands. We live the Brands. We transcend this world that we are slowly destroying: constructing our own identities in a mash-up of billboards and TV spots.

Ask these companies, however, to promote recyling of their products and suddenly, they're out of ideas, they're out of resources: they simply don't have the budget for this. Thus we find ourselves here, attempting to "save the planet" with some heavily branded cardboard boxes.

Despite my blind rage I must give some credit Nokia for being involved in this workshop today at least (i'm suffering only partial blindness). The day was really constructive and I think we showed them what-for with some of the concepts presented. Getting the students to do it is, more often than not it must be said however, just a money saving exercise.

The lesson that I extracted from this mess was simple: in terms of the promotion of sustainability, we can't tackle irrational behaviours with rational ones. Our fetishism for the Product, for the New, for the Brand - values that can be held largely responsible for our current problems - were constructed in irrationality and must therefore be tackled in irrationality. Fight fire with fire. Fight fetishism with fetishism. Capture the Consumers' imaginations and souls as you have been doing so convincingly for the last century.

Of course, this opens up the nasty debate about the Green Movement taking on religious connotations and the implications of this but at this point, at ten to two in the morning, I will leave that for another entry.

More to come about Nokia "afterlife" on my website very soon!

SaloneSatelitte2009: Still in the making

2009-04-20T16:27:00.000-07:00

Day got off to a great start with an envigorating jump-start push for the minibus - i took the photos this time however. After a rather time-consuming drive to the Salone we g0t cracking again on the stall. We definetly worked better yesterday in a trance of exhaustion. Despite being a little less productive for us, the Satelitte in general seems to be coming to life - both of our neighbours arrived today - on japanese set on turkish - both of whose stand spaces we had been using previously as extra workspace. I didn't take a lot more photos - largely because they're was little improvement on yesterday. We did however allow ourselves a small smug grin in being a stand that, at the moment, is really sticking out for both quality and originality. Can't wait for seem feed back from the masses on "Design Beyond Furniture".

SaloneSatelitte2009 : The Making of

2009-04-19T14:17:00.000-07:00

Oh man i feel so rough. I'm currently lying in bed with my laptop charging on my knee furiously trying to catch up with things after such a bizarre weekend.

After Hannah having returned home early Saturday morning and traveling through the night from Cologne to Milan I think i can safely say i've had no more than 3 hours sleep in 72. My eating habits were also disturbed to the point of almost complete rejection. Fortunelty i am now i am fed and watered.

I am only prolonging the pain of my exhausting out of a delerious contempt for sleep and a desire to get post on my first day at Salone - a day that most visitors never experience.

Arriving at the Salone directly after a 13 hour journey i was of course a little dazed as we all were - "we all " being a group of students coming to present out school at the internationally renowned design week - but i would describe my first impressions of the Salone as lucidly unimpressed.

The reception we received at the fair was predictable unwelcoming and unhelpful to weary travellers. When we finaly got all out passes and documents together (thank the lord for italian speakers in our group!) we entered the Padiglione 22 to find our stall. I was struck by the ugliness of the hall - something i had not imagined amoungst all the images of glitz and glamour.

The floor, covered in protective layer of plastic assured us that we were here to work. This was no time for posing. At least not till Wednesday.

For those oh you who have never experinced this "pre" Salone let me just reiterate. There is no glamour here. As a person work on a stand you are even assulted by the Satelitte excuse for a CI - a bizarre palette of colours - cream with rich reds and purples- a mischmasch of font styles ranging from bauhaus to bodoni and a scattering of "inspirational" quotations from the icons of design, not to mention giant canvass bird shapes suspended from the ceiling. Normally these inadequete and insultingly poor public space designs are lost, overshadowed with any luck, by much more exciting events - in this case a real showcase of "design". In a still empty hall these eyesores are naked to behold.

I shall look forward to seeing what will spring up tomorrow. From what saw of the Satelitte - that being pretty much all of it - i imagine a lot of groups/indiviuals are leaving their constuction till tomorrow or tuesday. We made great progress with setting up the inital structure for our "Design Beyond Furniture" stall. I can't wait to finish it.

From the very small amount of stalls actually on show today i saw a twinkle of a gem in this years offering from the School of the Art Institute Chicago. I will very much look forward to seeing what an "Object in tha Age of Obama" actually is.

Travel Writing: Koeln to Milano

2009-04-18T18:36:00.000-07:00

Was just gearing up to an entry on Twitter for my 6.2 Tweets blog. As I write, however, I am two hours into a jouney from COlogne to the Milano Salone in a rather tempermental minibus, rlying on pen and paper - writing what i will type up in lieu.

Sitting in the back row of a nine seater bouncing along the autobahn I am starting to feeling a little nauctious haveing already written one entry already.

Although i want to begin with documenting my delving into the depths of Twitter as soon as possible to record the graduation fo the process i think i'll have to have a quick break before attempting to gather my thouhgs on this.

Out initial problems with a doggy battery was only a small glitch in a so far smooth journey.

Could pass the time chatting but am quite content wiring and am now on my second Frank Skinner podcast after one from Time Magazine. Derren Brown on now. Time for concentration i think...

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Hello World Wide Web

2009-04-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

Hello World.

Sam is giving blogging another pop. The unintentional pill metaphor is perhaps not lost on me: Difficulty in swallowing; good, bad or distorting effects on ones health and state-of-mind.

As i was just explaining on another new blog of mine:

http://6point2tweets.blogspot.com/
(tracking my exploits as i awaken to the internet age)

i've tried before and failed miserably just as i have done with journal keeping. Lack of interesting things to write about saw me digressing into existential rants about the moralitly and psycology in blogging.

You might say I've final lost my pretenions. I'm gunna blog, be it morally righteous or otherwise, and everyone will just have to put it with it. Including me.

Like i also explained in my "6point2tweets" (don't ask me why I started that blog first) i have for some reason decided to take on the challenge of writng four blogs:

thedunnething.blogspot.com - THEDUNNETHING"
- This blog will act as my blogging home. I intend to blog here about design, the world and gerneral happenings.

britindeutschland.blogspot.com - Brit in Deutschland
- For the past 6 months i have been living in Germany as an exhange student at Koeln International School of Design. As happens so often i try to record my experience but fail to find the time or the energy. For the next few months until i return to Scotland I intend to record what it means to be a British person in modern Germany and what i've been getting up to.

scotornot.blogspot.org - Scot or Not
- To Scot or not to Scot. Perhaps one of the life's biggest questions...well in my life anyway. The idea for this blog came as a spin off from "Brit in Deutschland" and the slight yet strange inner unrest i felt describing myself as a "brit". Born in Manchester i moved to scotland with my family at the age of 5 and have forever been the English-One to the Scots and the Scottish-One to the English. Although this troubled me a little in earlier year its now proving quite difficult in traversing the cultural and rivalry mine-feild of Europe. Tho it does piss me off that people always ask me about England when in fact they mean the UK. In this blog we can maybe decide what i am. Scot, English, Brit? Global citizen perhaps?

6point2tweets.blogspot.com - Skeptic to Savvy in 6.2 Tweets
- Oh yeh and the up-to-now most prolific blog of my current four with a whopping 2 posts following my new found interest in all the stuff you can do on the internet and with common technolgy. I mean i've just joined Twitter for God's sake.

Lets hope i can keep it all up!

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