Image courtesy: Earthlings.com

As I am doing my masters thesis work on beef in Finland, I have been turning my head to the issues around animal and food, and have come to watch a 2005 documentary film, Earthlings. By watching it, I have realized how ignorant and complicit I have been of animal rights. Unlike Food Inc and Fastfood Nation, Earthlings more focuses on how animals can feel as much pain as we mankind do, and how the way we treat animals draw parallels between racism, sexism, and speciesism.

As long as there are slaughterhouses … there will be battlefields. –Leo Tolstoy

With footage obtained through the use of hidden cameras to chronicle the day-to-day practices, the film urges the viewers to make connection and take actions. Covering various places where animals are undergoing agony, the film touches five most prevalent ways animals have come to serve mankind: Pet, Food, Leather and fur, Entertainment, Science, none of which, I must say, can be a good excuse to torture other earthlings after watching the film.

I did not know that milk cow dies in four years whereas normally they can live 20 years or so, nor did I know that my leather shoes probably have caused a cow in india a tremendous agony none of us mankind would take for himself/herself. A poet once said, “Pain is a sensation tricked by the distance. That’s why a thorn under one’s fingernail hurts more than the disaster in the other continent”. I can’t agree more.

The change should occur now, and it’s not only about animal right. We do not see, living in the city, what it takes to make our foodstuff and products and how they will effect us in the long term, but the consequences are obvious.

Ironically we only see mankind’s complete disrespect for these non-human providers. Without a doubt, this must be what it is to bite the hand that feeds us. In fact, we have actually stomped and spit on it. Now we are faced with the inevitable aftermath. This is evident in health reports due to our over-excessive consumption of animals. Cancer, heart disease, Osteoporosis, strokes, kidney stones, Anemia, diabetes and more. Even our food has now been effaced, and at its very source. With antibiotics used to promote weight gain in animals–who can’t gain under the stressful, overcrowded living conditions in factory farms–with the over-use of pesticides and insecticides, or artificial hormones, designed to increase milk production, litter size and frequency with artificial colors, herbicides, larvicides, synthetic fertilizer, tranquilizers, growth and appetite stimulants, it’s no wonder that Mad Cow Disease, Foot and Mouth disease, Pfiesteria, and a host of other animal related abnormalities have been unleashed on the human public. –from Earthlings

Nation Earth has agreed to stream Earthlings online for free as a part of their effort to spread awareness, and the YouTube embedment below is one of them with subtitles in many languages. I know many of you have watched this already, I know that this will make many of you uncomfortable, but if you haven’t and if you are brave enough to face the reality, you should give it a try.

I had had a few choices for my thesis topic: beef, waste management, energy saving et cetera. I chose beef cause I thought I would be learning the most, which I think I am. From the beginning, however, I have deliberately chosen to exclude animal right from the discourse as it can easily be not about the rationale but feelings. Now, I am confused, but more motivated than before.

Design is everywhere nowadays. Every nation–or even some cities–runs design organization of some sort, and there are ever-more design awards, festivals, and fairs around the world. Now there is even such an initiative as World Design Capital from 2008, and funnily enough, the city I used to live was appointed in 2010, and so is where I now reside for 2012. It is safe to say there is all but design epidemic in the world. I am afraid, however, there are more people who are lured to use this illusive – if not embezzling – term without fully recognizing what it means than ones who choose to use it because they mean it. As there is no unified definition of design, and therefore design seems to mean everything and nothing: looks, shapes and colors of products; user interfaces whether graphical or physical; architectural blueprints; engineering drawing; CSS codes, business process; corporate identities; circuit diagrams and sewing patterns; you name it. Why is that so? It may be that the history of design is not as long as that of architecture, or that design actually is such a versatile term. Nonetheless, if we still want to understand what it means to design, one way is to start contracting what stand out against design from design, such as craft.

Craft–prior to the current design history–had been serving the royal family, the nobles, and the bourgeois until the mid 18_th century. Hand-crafted furniture with showy decoration represented their elegant and dignified owners. The Industrial Revolution began in the United Kingdom, then subsequently spread throughout Europe, North America, and eventually the world, and changed everything. Mass production: we’ve become able to produce goods that existed for long–like textile and plates–in ever-larger quantity with new means of production such steam engine and factories, and further, towns built around the manufacturing efficiency, introduction of primary education, and concentrated capital. The industry faced problems and required people with a new job description–whether or not they were called designers–who understand the limits of existing technology, who can make a plan for more desirable while still reasonably affordable goods. Designers from the very beginning have had at least three axes to juggle: feasibility, viability, and desirability¹. The most beautiful textile pattern is of no use if either it is not feasible with current technology or it takes so long to produce that not profitable. No the cheapest or the most useful product will sell if it is monstrous hence nobody wants it.

Engraving of the 1774 steam engine designed by Boulton and Watt

By the beginning of 20_th century design faced a new sets of problems: how to give shapes to products that never existed before. Toaster, radio, TV, washing machine were newly introduced and to be designed interesting, desirable, affordable, easy, and safe. Before and after World Wars new machinery coined ergonomics studies, which design had to embrace to solve new problems. From 1940′s more advanced corporations began to realize the importance of, and to compete with brand propositions, where design has faced new challenges such as how to develop, keep, and communicate the integrity of a brand. From the 60′s some nations aware of brand proposition started developing national brand to support its national produce and tourism, and now there are cities trying to achieve the same goal at city level. Over time, design has evolved embracing anything required–usability, aaterial science, cognitive science, ergonomics, ethnography, you name it–to solve the problems before us.

Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943) demonstrating wireless transmissions during his high frequency and potential lecture of 1891. After continued research, Tesla presented the fundamentals of radio in 1893.

Long story short, the reason we may be confused about what one means by ‘design’ is because design has been evolving while expanding its notion ever since the Industrial Revolution to creatively solve newly faced problems within the given restriction or–more positively–design drivers. Now, scrape away the seemingly deserved “look and feel” aspect of design from designing. What’s left is creative, yet restless endeavor and effort to solve problems before us.

Design was about giving identities to patterns and colors on plates or textile in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and still is nowadays on mobile phone covers and laptop pouches. Design was and is about giving identities to forms of products we sit on, talk through, turn on, wash with and listen to. Design has become about giving identities to brands, cities, and nations, and now design is about giving patterns, forms, identities, to a system within which how the entities of the whole work with one another. Ultimately, design is a creative, problem solving discipline whether or not each individual project deals with aesthetics.

Today, design is facing new sets of challenges in ever more integrated manner and ever greater context where we start talking about experience design, service design, strategic design and more: how to design a phone that makes the most of an operating system, a huge backbone system, and business platform, and even coherent user experience across devices of diverse size and use; how to design a pathway to formal economy for the disenfranchised poor, and how to design a way we work better together and understand the architecture of problems, all of which are all the more systemic and complex.

–

1. Brown, T. (2009) Change by Design, How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, New York: Harper Business.

He categorized the function of art into some eight categories, one of those I now remember is escapism: such as block-buster movies that offer distraction and relief from unpleasant realities or engaging in fantasy. Art can also help us be more empathic to others by emotionally training us with stories of others or of fiction. The most interesting of the few he argued to me was to ask (good and/or right) questions.

‘Person in a ditch measuring 300 x 500 x 300 cm’, Image courtesy: www.santiago-sierra.com

Mäki presented us a piece of Santiago Sierra in which Sierra put a homeless person in a ditch between Kiasma contemporary art museum and the Finnish parliament. A homeless person was to stay for two weeks, for four hours a day, being paid 50 Finnish marks, some € 4 per hour. We were asked to discuss in groups and present what kind of questions the artist wanted ask.

While we were discussing in our group, I have learned from a teammate that he is the killing-cat-artist, who videotaped himself killing a cat and then masturbating on the dead animal, and he is not the only one who killed an animal in the name of art. There was even a Costa Rican artist who captured and then exhibited an underfed street dog for a gallery project, in which the dog was chained to the wall until its death of starvation in captivity. During the Q & A session, I asked Mäki about his project: how he felt killing the cat, and whether he had any legal issues. If I don’t remember wrong, he said ‘I did not like the feeling, but I thought it was right to do it.’, and that he was convicted of breaking the law and fined the Euro-equivalent of roughly few hundred for failing to kill the cat professionally meaning in certain seconds.

I thought both works certainly asked difficult questions: why Sierra chose to dig a ditch between the art museum and parliament not elsewhere, why he chose to put the homeless person in it not others; why would a homeless person volunteer to sit in the deep ditch being exposed to the visitors; why the homeless person has become homeless; why we were sitting there listening to Mäki about these stuff; why we are conducting further studies in masters level; why we are angry to Mäki for killing a cat; why it is okay to kill a cat or any animal if one does it professionally; why he chose to kill a ‘cat’, not a dog; why we are not angry to ourselves eating beef, and pork, which cause someone else kill millions of cows and pigs everyday; why we deliberately call beef beef not cow-meat, and named pork pork not pig-meat; why we are more angry to those artists than to people who abandon animals; whether cows and pigs are lesser animals than cats.

These questions are coming back to me every once in a while urging me to think what I am allowed to do and what is not as a person and a designer, which is all but painful, however obviously so worth thinking about. I am deeply grateful to Mäki, and the organizer of the seminar. If you’re too shocked or are not with me, here’s a well written post about Mäki, his work, and the likes, before you make comments on a poor post as mine.

One years and two movings later, I happened to find a universal adapter at an electronics store, and got it for € 39 with a promise that I could get it refunded within a month for any reason. Brought it home, hooked it with JBL, and it worked perfectly. Got it refunded, and went to Valtteri, one of the largest flee market in Helsinki. Three visits and 10 minutes of bargain later, I could get an old IBM power adapter for € 15. The seller did not want to sell it cheaper because he could easily sell it for more as laptop owners are ready to pay more. I couldn’t find anything from cheaper and lower voltage adapters commonly used for micro electronics.

Ready to go

Later I realized that the remote was missing. I visited my old apartment where no my ex-flatmates live any longer, and found the remote. It doesn’t work, which my ex-flatmate also thought out of order but I was sure that it was again just the battery. I bought a new one for € 3, then everything works perfect. I put it on Huuto with a great help of one of my best friends Masaich, because I do not speak as fluent Finnish as to handle it alone myself. After three trials on Huuto, I sold it for € 30 including the poatage which was €8.50 to Naantali. Taken all thing into consideration, I made € 3.50. Yeah, three and a half Euros.

In the end it ain’t that bad. I have found really lovely porcelain for daily fruits, a wind breaker and useful 2nd hand tools during my visits to Valtteri. What is more I have got to learn the problems of too many standards. Not only plugs and input voltages are different, but also are the plugs–input plugs vary from country to country, while output voltages and power consulption greatly vary and there are at least as many as 12 different DC plugs which you connect from the adapter to the electronics. Even worse, some of the manufacturers use two or three different types.

The dock and the remote.

Planned obsolescence. Is your charger broken, you won’t be able to use your product again unless you are ready to pay for an expensive universal power adapter, let alone the possibility that you won’t be able to use your charger for another electronics. It’s not that I am saying everything should use the same standard which is of course impossible will diminish evolution and efficiency of the individual products even if possible, but we can at least reduce the number of kinds, by which we can also reduce gigantic amount of e-waste in theory. Yeah, I know that the bigger problem is the globalization and too cheap products, but still.

Then what about Apple and its authorized accessory makers ? My iPhone 3Gs doesn’t get charged with most of docks that were released only three years ago. Newer iPhones in coming years will probably not be compatible with the docks you buy today. You’ll throw it away in a few years because it doesn’t play music from your new phone. What a scary idea–especially because most of these problems can be solved by simple firmware upgrade and a little more considerate attitude of hardware manufacturers to lengthen the obsolescence cycle of cables, which is why I am so happy that I could sell the old JBL dock to a guy in Moomi’s home town. Stay strong with legacy iPod. Please.

Huuto.net page

The flag poll

Close-up, does this look dangerous only to me?

Sounds terrible, and I call the police, and I realize that I have the old number–10022, and the machine do not redirect me automatically to 112, but inform that the number has changed to 112 and hang up on me. I become more frustrated, call 112 and tell the police that the poll looks dangerous, the police tells me that I have to call the maintenance company, I tell her that the company doesn’t give a shXX and ask her to force the company to do it or do something about this poll, then she redirect me to the Central Police which I do not know what it is, and they don’t answer the phone for five minutes. I think they will realize that this is their responsibility when somebody will actually be hit by the poll.

The phone number of the maintenance company.

Update: I went down to the fitness club on the same street, the clerk agreed with me and took out a ladder, and we went to fix the problem. The ladder is not nearly tall enough, and the poll is really really heavy so no ordinary people with ordinary ladder can do this. The clerk says she will call the firestation. No change yet, as of 23:46 April 20, 2011. It’s quite windy nowadays, and I am worried.

Update II: Now, after few weeks, the poll is back to where it is supposed to be. I guess nobody got hurted as I have not seen any of that on newspaper. Thank god.