Weekly reflections

The first day of the second term.

We began the week by discussing the structure and contents of the upcoming courses, then we reflected on the past term, and all the lessons we’ve learned. Oscar and Mariana asked us to think about three things we would have done differently, then three takeaways from the whole term. Here are mine:

Three things I have done differently

• Working with biomaterials is something different than what I am used to. I enjoyed learning about the science behind the process, the role of each ingredient, creatively introducing new dyes/textures and perfecting the recipes through time. The tactility of the process was one of the most fun parts for me, given that I do lots of work on the computer.
  
  
• Working WELL in a group, where everybody is working together, equally hard, and has their own role and voice. I have been in many situations where working in a group has been overly complicated, people haven’t done their part or conflicts arose. This was not the case at all with Marina and Pippa, and I believe it shows in our results.
  
  
• Hosting a workshop (in general) AND despite not being an expert on the topic pushed me out of my comfort zone. I was happy that the workshop ended up being more of an open conversation, rather than a lecture hosted by us. Like this, it felt much more communal, as opposed to a top-down dictation.
  
  
• Weekly reflections: being forced to submit something each week forced me to be consistent and learn how to use html. The hard part was not the writing, because I enjoy it and think I do a good job of it. The difficult part was going through our classes each week whilst simultaneously learning how to grasp html. Over the course of the term, I slowly got quicker, better and more confident. Now I can proudly say that I’ve reached an intermediate level of html + css, and I hope to progress throughout the following terms too.

Three key takeaways from Term 1

Not limiting myself to a single topic/path to follow (biomaterials). Coming into the masters, I was very much focused on approaching it with a biomaterials lens. I didn’t know anything about them, but I was fascinated by the implementations and change they could bring. However, I began to feel discouraged in regards to the limits I faced on an individual level, and questioned how useful my DIY biomaterials could be. As of now, I think I will shift away from biomaterials and bring out my creative technology skills, whilst still maintaining my ethics and sustainability mindset.

Learning how to make my own website from scratch in html + css, a skill i have been working on but never got good at until forced to submit things every week. Consistency is important when learning a new, technical skill.

Collaboration with the right people can make or break a project, and when done well it can yield great results. This ties together with what I’ve mentioned in the previous point, when working with a group. I am happy to have worked with Pippa & Marina, but I also believe that we each got our own takeaways from this experience and might continue on separate paths. What, so what, and now what?

To sum up this reflection, I can confirm that the first term provided me with great experiences. I made connections with a big group of diverse people, I worked on technical projects (Almost Useless Machine, Design Intervention) and also theoretical projects (Machine learning, Tech Beyond the Myth) . These are all valuable experiences to me.

The rest of this Design Studio reflection will be included in my assignments page.



The first class we began with this term was Designing for the next Billion seconds. Although it was intended to take place last term, it got postponed due to issues related with the pandemic and was done online on the first week back to uni life. I was very happy with this course, and I felt quite engaged, despite the digital format of it. I usually find it extremely hard for me to pay attention during online lectures, and question whether I have some form of Zoom ADHD, but this time felt less like that.

The prof introduced the class with many notions about the future, intersecting with many other themes. We discussed the idea of referring to the “Future” in a plural form, as a way of reframing our language and understanding that there are many possible future outcomes, and not one single dictating outcome. By grasping this concept, it felt more liberating and empowering because it felt like we have a say in the way the future is shaped. By having many possible outcomes, we can (and must) choose which one we want to be responsible for.

Some of the takeaways I got from this lesson was:

• A billion is a lot, and there are so many billions everywhere. Billions of people, using billions of resources, spending billions of seconds on billions of devices, spending billions of xzy currency to make even more billionaires … It all felt like a lot. It made me realise how precious our resources, time, money are, and what kind of paradigm shift we could achieve with large scale change.
• ”System Change not Climate Change” - again, words are important. They dictate the way we talk, act and think. By shifting important concepts like “Climate change” to “Climate emergency” or “climate crisis” we might make more people understand the grandiosity of the problems at hand.
• ”Humans can’t save the planet but we can care more”. This ties together with my fight poster, and me trying to understand how to engage people in meaningful ways. We cannot be gods or saviours, but we can give importance to things, and try to understand them. Although I feel hopeless about the future often, I know it’s important to be hopeful and keep caring.

We had lots of activities to complete and interesting work to do at home between one day and the other. For example, we had to think of our life 1 billion seconds (approx. 32 years) from now. I was in a group with George, and this is what we came up with.



Then, activities related to defining the internet, time and then writing a postcard to a person 1 billion seconds in the past (1990)



One of the other activities we engaged in this week was creating a hypothetical speech from a country of our choice in the year 2052, at an Earth Day conference. I was blown away with the results of our class, to say the least. Given the short amount of time and the large amount of distance, I believe we did a great job in our delivery. Some people changed their zoom background to stay in character & give context to the speech, others made impressive videos. Some were hopeful, others dystopian. It was entertaining and thought provoking to see all these different versions of the future.

My group consisted of me, Anna, Joaquin, Paula Busto and Vikrant. The country we worked on was Madagascar. We collectively created the google slides topics we wanted to discuss, then divided the other tasks amongst each other. Vikrant and I wrote the formal text while Anna and Juaco gathered photos and made a video using a text-to-speech voice. We tried to find a Malagasy accent to dictate the speech, but could hardly find any African accents in the text-to-speech voice selections. We settled for a Nigerian accent, unfortunately.

This was the text we wrote, and below you will find the slideshow and video to accompany it.