Design Philanthropy

Thanks to Koby for the lovely design

The historical function of libraries, as an archive and distributer of human knowledge is being challenged by an ever growing range of digital solutions. A library’s future depends on its ability to serve as a significant relic – a symbol of culture and time.

South Lambeth Library doesn’t own any “historical treasures” (like the “Lambeth Apocalypse” at the Lambeth Palace Library), a documented history (Brixton Library), or even a local myth (the ghost at the “Durning library”), Its original function, as a service to the community, could prevent it from having a future.

So how can a library that lost track of its own past, survive?

Archive of Years to come is an apparatus that ages books – It uses UV radiation to speed up the natural process of ageing (Every 4 hours inside the chamber equals 1 year on the shelf). This “time machine” gives the library a new myth – A library that is able to archive its own future.

Koby Barhad

Guiltless Excuses is a mobile phone app, but it is not just an app. It is a management system for your little dark desire, and it tends to offer the community a better understanding of people’s psychological needs for being absence.

There are times that we are highly involved in community activities that it takes up too much of our time, and we just need a little bit of rest. There are also times where you are obliged to participate in some activities which you don’t desire to take part in. However, in either cases, and all other possible cases, there is the peer pressure for your absence, and as a good person you will feel a bit guilty about being absent as well. Guiltless Excuses is trying to offer you a solution to this: Excuses Management.

Guiltless Excuses looks like a normal calendar app. You can use it like a normal calendar app, to add your events, setting notifications, etc. Beyond the normal calendar function, it has three more things: Danger Meter, Events to Keep In Mind, and Radar.

Danger Meter indicates how much excuses you have made in the past that are still effective psychologically in others mind, and warn you when you have made too many excuses. Just to prevent people realizing that all your excuses were EXCUSES and you don’t really want to join them.

Events to Keep In Mind are the excuses you’ve made and that you should remember it ALL TIME when you encounter others so they feel you are unreliable.

Radar is a GPS map that gives you real time information where to avoid. Don’t get too close to the location that held the event you want to avoid! You might meet someone just on the way there!

Whenever you add a new event, it will set up a recommended 3 days advanced notification – which is the best time to make an excuse if you want to avoid any event.n It decompose the excuse into critical elements to help you come up with a well-rounded “fake” event: the location of the event, the people involved in the event, the duration of the event, and the expected outcome. For those who are not so good at coming up with ideas from scratch, there is also a template generator machine that you can use. Guiltless Excuses will tell you how “difficult” your excuse is to maintain as a guidance to minimize the chance of regrets might occur later. And for those who want to feel less guilty, we also introduce the idea called Absence Offset.

Absence Offset is an anonymous donation by you to whoever you will like to contribute to, whom you think your absence has caused their loss. We, Digital Salvation, the designer of the app, will send the amount of money you entered as an anonymous cheque to the person/organization you appointed to. We combine the money you contributed along with other’s contributions to the same organizations each month, and send them a monthly cheque, in order to keep you under cover.

And the last thing, the app will send an email message for you to the event organizer to inform your absence, saves you the energy to open your mailbox!

Please contact Pei-Ying Lin (peiying.lin@network.rca.ac.uk) if you want more information.

I took some quick pictures inside the Tate South Lambeth Library incase any of you want to look at the walls/space when thinking about showing your work next week.

I always was fascinated by mental maps, the idea to ask a person to draw a map from memory, to get an insight of the person’s perception of the world. So I was quite happy that, finally I had a chance in this project to engage myself in this concept. Furthermore, I was wondering whether it is possible to go with the mental map concept one step further. My idea was not only to collect mental maps of Vauxhall, but also to combine these mental maps with real world map data to “interpolate”, or in a way, to fill the white spots of the mental maps with data of the realities. I was hoping to gain with these mashup maps new insights in terms how people “see” Vauxhall e.g.: how is the space order around them? are there things they would like to change? what is important for them?

More results and final documentation can be found here

‘Vauxhall Through Teeth! ‘ is an interactive device to gathering the images of people’s teeth in Vauxhall area. There is an iPhone installed on the device which documenting the pictures teeth of participants, also updating it with their post codes on tweeter (@vauxhall_teeth) and the map.  The aim of this process is not only collecting people’s teeth images but also building a database about it. Through this database, we may figure it out there is a correlation of people’s living location with the teeth care. It can be a starting point to provoke a philanthropical activity to council or government for teeth care/ health care system in this area in the future.

http://vimeo.com/31162704

My philanthropic machine was designed to simply make people in Vauxhall smile – providing them with a little positive transfusion of endorphins. Whether or not a smile is intentional, the act of smiling stirs up endorphins and gives a gift of positive energy for around five minutes.

Rumour Regeneration attemps to initiate the spreading of ‘useful’ or  ‘important’ information within a community, but through the invisible channels of Rumour. Starting with scripted conversations designed to be overheard, and imagining other instances which could be fabricated, the project deals with facts and fictions in communities, and imagines a covert form of generosity.

(Office of I.R.F.A – a think tank dealing with rumour regeneration)

Projected spread of ‘Factual’ Rumours in Princes Ward, Lambeth.

This is a philanthropic project which induces people to study and to think of emergency, such as a nuclear crisis, spontaneously. If a homeless guy, an unused coin box, and an overlooked street sign started acting towards a possible nuclear crisis, then what would you do?

‘ Where is Vauxhall Village? ‘
Helga and I tried to find this area by asking people to outline Vauxhall on a map. As a result, there were very few overlapping points and agreements. To create a sense of community we designed thresholds within Vauxhall in public and private space more like sensitive experience rather than just a physical line.

The story of a person who removes themselves from society in pursuit of perfection

I tend to question street ownership towards planting : in a really “street” way.