Fresh news! The title says it all… I just got a scholarship from the foundation “Ulla Fröberg-Cramérs stipendiestiftelse”!! I am very happy!
What Portuguese people are going through is much more that a harsh State Budget, is more than being in a tight spot. Things will never get better, mark my words. The tight measures presented this week by Passos Coelho Government are in fact transformative, not just “draconian” measures like they were presented in the international press, they are in fact going to change Portugal to a privatized country. Passos Coelho never hidden his intentions to privatize the education and the health care, now he is just using the “crisis” to push that agenda. This is a very clear example of what Naomi Klein described in her book “The Shock Doctrine”. Portuguese are in shock, they are scared, and they are in need. A very good and sad example of this shock is the increasing number of women prostituting themselves, reported this week by TSF radio. How much in shock does a woman have to be to be willing to prostitute herself? I would say very much. But it seems that no one cares about this facts. Portuguese are desperate and the government is taking advantage of this fact.
“In the aftermath, like the prisoner in the interrogation chamber, we too become child like. We are inclined to follow lieders who clame to protect us.” Describes Naomi Klein in the book “Shock Doctrine”. This is exactly what is happening in Portugal, the population is in shock, in a child like state and they will follow who ever seems to protect them even though the ones that swore to protect us are destroying our country and our care state.
They say games and play are great ice breakers. We tested that with EDG1 and Sumo suits!
EDG Sumo Fight from Experience Design Group on Vimeo.
The Lisbon from now a days has very little to do with the city from few years ago when I used to visit it in my students days. In fact, coming from Porto, the buildings in Lisbon didn’t look that rundown or neglected. Now that I live in Stockholm I have a different opinion. Very expensive areas like Lapa live so close to the run down buildings near Praça do Comércio, it’s impossible not to see them. But there is something changing in Lisbon, the city is now not only the capital of Portugal but also of Street Art. The responsibility for such a big change is from Crono Project, a group of artists that were commissioned to “freshen up” the city.
Just last week in the very touristic 28 tram I heard some comments from tourist “Very good idea! It’s like a art gallery on the street!”. I love the fact that people can enjoy street art and enjoy waking on the streets of Lisbon, but as John Chamberlain from The Guardian was warning us just the other day “Lisbon highlights a disturbing practice of trying to disguise urban eyesores with alternative art – a pervasive form of official neglect.”
Unfortunately I don’t see the Portuguese Troika ( a gathering of representatives of the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund that are working together to solve the economical crisis in the country) worrying with Portuguese Architecture “much neglected, constantly abused, derelict and dilapidated.” On the contrary, I have a feeling they might make it a national thing. Empty houses in Portugal? No! It’s just art!
More info: Urban splash: street art in Lisbon in The Guardian
Don’t let urban art cover up neglect of Lisbon’s crumbling heritage in The Guardian
I decided to surrender and become hostage of one more social media tool: Twitter! So just surrender also and follow me on: http://twitter.com/#!/FernandaSTorre
Ray Kurzweil, a reference when it comes to singularity, in his TED talk in 2009 explained that technology is under an exponential growth, our mind fails to imagine what the future will be because we just aren’t capable to imagine in an equally exponential way. Tools like Future Forecasting and it’s methods become then extremely important when it comes to understanding the future.
Another one of the references in my research about Singularity was Ridley Scott’s master piece: “Blade Runner”. This movie was inspired in the book “Do androids dream of electric sheep” from Philip K. Dick and first published in 1968.
In the book androids are described to be perfect humans when it comes to the appearance, but they are not capable of empathy. So, to distinguish humans from androids, they apply a test called the Voigt-Kampff . This test can reveal the androids by measuring empathetic responses to questions designed to evoke an emotional response, often including animal subjects and themes.
In the book androids with artificial intelligence where not able to have empathy, so I wondered if that would also happen in our future. On an interview recorded on July the 13th of 2009 Kurzweil was asked about the ability for the machines to be self-aware and conscient. Kurzweil defended the importance of a model of conscience in the robots since our moral and legal system depends on these concepts. But it was also made clear by him that we don’t know how these models can be built. Some models of self representation can be explained by hierarchical thinking processed in our brain’s cortex and this can be proved by scientists, but some feelings like happiness, join and humor are very hard to describe and aren’t, in Kurzweil’s opinion, a scientifical issue since they are connected to subjective experience. While science is based on objective observations, subjective experience is connected to philosophy and there, there can be so many models as philosophers.
Will robots be able to process a situation and come up with a completely original thought? Even if they don’t, they can probably come up very close in fooling us due to the highly precise programing. It’s the same question raised by Raymond Kurzweil when he appeared as a guest on I’ve Got a Secret with a music written by his computer: does it make any difference if a robot is capable of creativity/empathy or not, as long as they appear to do so?
These are major paradigms shifts in few decades time, it’s the fastest change we have ever saw in human history, it is not possible for us to conceive this reality if ot thorough play methods.
The Voigt-Kampff test from Philip K. Dick’s book made me think, what if it wasn’t a test but a way to teach the androids on how to react “properly” or according to human criteria to a certain situation, but what if instead it was possible to teach them to acquire these reactions?
Further more, if we would apply “play” to teach androids, very much in a non-formal education framework, would it be possible to create a game on empathy? For the assignment 3 I tried to develop a game that would be applied in the future and teach robots to deal with multiculturalism, with values that they are not programed to deal with, with radically different points of view… This started me reflecting on how such test/game could be used nowadays with humans that are just thinking different (like homophobic people) and through this promoting discrimination. I want to use this teaching androids game that will be used in the future and use it already in the present.
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| Action Research Studio: Play & the Pursuit of the Unknown |
Yesterday I had the opportunity to have a very inspiring talk with Christer Lundahl from Lundahl&Seitl. Christer came here to Konstfack to meet us from the Experience Design Master Group (EDG) but the curiosity was even bigger from our side.
We talked about the methodologies used to develop projects like The Symphony of the Missing Rooms, the questions behind it, connected to the definition of the museum as both a physical and psychological space and finally the concerns like the importance of testing and predicting outcomes.
I will never forget when I saw for the first time live Tuvan throat singing. It was outside Centre Pompidou in a warm sunny day of June in 2006. It’s just an unbelievable experience full of extremely beautiful sounds. Here is a small taste of the experience.
