Flagons Den

I have booked a space in the local village hall to exhibit my project 3-6pm on Weds 20th May to enable me to film people interacting with the reader and inputting comments - I have put the word out so hopefully I should get a few along…

But first I just need to do a final check that the whole thing works correctly.

RFID tag on object

Tagged object launches webpage from archive

Sorted. Heres hoping there are enough people there tomorrow…

I have spent the day sticking, slicing and cutting out all my artwork so I can label all the objects in the archive and make the reader look professional (as per the brief). Here’s my visual log:

Cutting and slicing RFID stickers

Wireless interaction

Tagged objects completed

Close up object (Monkey Keychain)

Tag detail (hiding the RFID)

Reader redesign

Now for the final tests…..

It seems that for every project I create I require an afternoon in the garage with some random wood, a saw and some glue!  I have made the basis of my reader body - after ensuring the RFID tags can still be read through a barrier (mounting board) at about a 15 mm range.

Wooden base for reader

I have designed a top for the reader and for the stickers to cover the RFID tikitags so I now just need to get them printed and buy some other peripherals (Wireless keyboard, mouse and luggage tags) to complete the set up for the installation.

I just found an online tag cloud generator (here) - so I popped in the text from my dissertation and it gave me this;

Well the big day came - and we did our thing.  Here’s my summary;

First of all I had to do the classic ‘Yes Men’ costume change in the gents - and like a reverse Mr Ben I emerged wearing a suit and tie and renamed ‘Andy Credit’ - a representative of Consumer Direct.

my Andy Credit suit

My exhibit was a sort of info point for Consumer Direct - with pastiche posters extolling the virtues of consumer spending. I reversioned the WW1 propaganda poster of Lord Kitchener and mashed it up with Gordon Brown and the chip and pin logo to create a call to all consumers to spend to rescue the ailing economy - the literal “Your country needs you”. Alongside other such promotional posters there was a terminal to surf the ‘identity corrected’ Consumer Direct website so visitors could pick up crucial consumer advice on maximising credit, the feelgood factor of purchasing and avoiding ‘consumer stagnation’ by replacing obselete items.

The exhibition went well - although it was lacking the usual business the Lewinsky Building usually has, I think this was mainly due to the preceeding Bank oliday and the ridiculous amount of building works in the grounds which cut off easy pedestrian access to the building from the main campus and so stifled the usual passers by. Those that did show up seemed interested and involved in the various works, I had some good conversations with visitors as ‘Andy Credit’ and also to those that knew me already they were interested in the content of the site and the artwork.

The other contributors all had keen interest, with visitors parttaking in the interactive pieces and sampling the open source beverages (I even managed to get a decent snowboarding jacket from the Freetrade Boutique!). My family showed up for a look around and my little girl got stuck in - Adbusting at the age of 15 months!

Goldie vs Matalan

All that is left to do now is edit the video documentation and update the site with our experiences of the exhibition.

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Have you seen the revamped Pepsi logo? - a designer did hehehehe

Lawrence Yang

Following our work on subverting content - and my recently identitiy corrected Consumer Direct Website I was chuffed to find the Onion News Network. I’m pretty sure I have seen some of their stuff before but the content seems much more pertinent now - especially the videos on outsourcing and sweatshops.
It reminded be of ‘Brass Eye‘, but as it’s online it allows it to be a bit more uncensored - which adds to the ludicrous nature of some of the panel discussions and content.

I have finally finished the 23 page reversioned Consumer Direct site - all created using CSS and photoshop. I am very happy with the content as it looks believable at first and then becomes more and more outrageous and ludicrous as you delve further into the text. In a side by side comparison to the original site it is a pretty close approximation and contains enough (mis)information to be a convincing parody.

The site is here and here’s some example screenshots;

Home Page

Before You Buy

The Feelgood Factor

And if you wanted to compare it to the real site - it’s here

After speaking to Geoff, he suggested that my MIT ‘My Internet of Things’ was a bit passe as the phrase is a bit worn out these days. SO after rethinking my approach to the objects in the archive, all of which are defunct, obsolete or broken but which retain a mnemonic status I have renamed the project and created webpages for each of the objects.

Screengrab of example page - JRB/OE 001

I need to create as many links to external sources - like a folksonomic wiki with hyperlinks that are associated with each object to suggest the network created around each item. Hopefully they will inter-connect at times - and also through either the objects themselves or the comments from users create a rich subjective/semantic network which enables the archive to become much more than a taxonomic colection and stress the stories and relationships between each artifact.

I now have to create a stylised reader, and remove the overt tikitag branding to make the whole piece seem much more personal.