Artefact 243
Bright Friday
Dear
First things first. From the Artefact Cards perspective, we have never engage with Black Friday, the now all-encompassing, pervasive celebration of buying as many things as you can which your emails have now been probably full of for weeks.
But this morning, I was part of a brilliant extended conversation as part of the UnSee research project being run by the Department of Design of Politecnico di Milano (thank to Riccardo Torta, Beatrice Villari and the team for inviting me to take part).
I started reflecting on about what I want to see more of in the world, and all the things I might do about it.
And then I thought about our Regenerative Design Field Kit, Where The Light Gets In, which we first made last year.
One of my favourite public reactions to it was from Gabby Morris, when she wrote the following:
I love it, it's hard, it challenges me to think differently and who knows if I am using it right. But when I return with images and think about the prompts I am often provoked to really engage in the world around me and to think more radically about the future. It's also quite hard to photograph through it especially when trying to take a photo of someone else's shopping.
Getting into more depth though, some of these photos and the moment of stopping and noticing enough to take a photo and think about the prompts on the viewer, are really important.. One of the cards "Who will touch what we make over the next 20 years" really makes me think everytime I look at it.
Even the viewer itself, "Why does it exist?" I've almost been using it as a frame when noticing things that really probably shouldn't exist, to make myself imagine what is the regenerative future for these items or what they represent...
One of the short term things I can do then, to make more of that sort of thinking happen, is put the remaining 58 kits from the second edition on sale.
Until midnight on Saturday then, if you use the discount code BrightFriday, you’ll get 25% off Where The Light Gets In.
After that, I’d love to hear more from folks on how it has made them see the world differently, and to what end, before we design the third edition of the kit.
Filling a room with song
Back in October, I had the pleasure of speaking again for the fine folks at Smashing Conferences in Antwerp. It was held in perhaps the most beautiful venue I’ve had the privilege of speaking, the Bourla Theatre.
The talk was filmed, and the whole thing is here:
It is the first talk I’ve done that has pulled together everything from the original Pace Layers weaving of Stuart Brand’s work in How Buildings Learn and The Clock of the Long Now, through the basic set-up for Zenko Mapping, and into the new Zenko Systems work.
As such, it is a really punchy way through that work if you’ve not followed much of it before, and a perfect Friday lunchtime watch.
Plus, given the surroundings of the Bourla Theatre, it gave me a good excuse to get everyone on their feet singing too… I think I’d like to do more talks with audiences singing in future…
More soon, on the Dubai Future Forum and other shenanigans…
John