unit 1: a research process about obesity and human energy by gonzalo caravia

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MA GDCGonzalo Caravia

A RESEARCH PROCESSABOUTOBESITYANDHUMAN ENERGYMA GCD - GONZALO CARAVIAChelsea College of ArtsUniversity of the Arts London2015/2016

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CONTENTIntroduction................................................................................................................................................................ 03The search for a topic research................................................................................................................................... 04Choosing a topic.......................................................................................................................................................... 07Exploring a technological approach............................................................................................................................ 11Exploring visual representations ................................................................................................................................. 15A visualization of human energy ................................................................................................................................. 26Explore by doing.......................................................................................................................................................... 30Re-thinking the approach............................................................................................................................................. 37

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INTRODUCTIONThe objective of this document is to reflect the process of a research that is still in progress. Not only the main research is in progress; the topic research and the possible future outcomes are also a “work in progress”. This document will try to reflect that experimentation journey as true-to-itself as possible.

It will not be an easy journey. It will have up and downs, backs and forwards. But at the end will be rich, intense and encouraging. And although this process has been made in a chronological order - everything was made in a specific time following a consecutive or-der-, the results or starting point of each stage not necessary follow that linear order. Sometimes this research will explore ideas from the beginning at the very end; or will made speculation of future stages and explorations that may not happen after.

At the end of the document, the intention will be to have a clear vi-sion of the different stages of the research process an get a clear vis-ualization of the main strengths and weakness of the topic research in order to define the next steps for the research.

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THESEARCHFOR ATOPIC RESEARCH

Exploring topicsand ideasfor thefutureresearch.

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THE STARTING POINT

The starting point for the search of a topic research was clear. The objective was to identify an issue or topic of interest for the MA stu-dent.

On the study proposal presented before starting the MA, the topic selected was “The roles and responsibilities of designers in relation to societal, environmental and ethical issues.”. And that idea was still present. However, the objective was to re-think about the se-lected topics with a critical design thinking and understanding the research as a process, a journey more than a final product.

I decided to start a journey from NGOs communication research and Design Innovation. I wanted to talk or generate a reflection about social and cultural issues but also had this idea of producing some “innovative product or service” through innovation design in prod-ucts and services.

I want to talk about things that matter in everyday people life.

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“DESIGN MUSEUM VISIT WAS A KEY POINT.”

The visit to the Design Museum in London, was a key point on the topic research process. We visited to exhibitions that were going one there. One especially was very significant: “Design of the year 2015”, were the curators selected the most relevant design-innovations pro-jects around the world in many different industry fields: textiles, new technology, health, visual arts, etc.

What made this visit relevant for my topic research was the fact that I realized that innovation can be made anywhere in any field, and in does not have to be always a technological innovation, it can be a disruptive idea also, applying different materials to existing objects or process. What all the ideas selected had in common also, was the fact that in one way or other, all that project improved people life somehow.

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studycaases

Moving on with the research, I selected some study cases of ideas, projects and companies that did some kind of design-innovation on a product or service in order to improve people life.

“Loog guitars” for example, is an Uruguayan entrepreneurship that re-imagined the design of classic guitars in order to make it easier for children to learn how to play it.

“Other project for example is “Hexagon sports”. This is an entre-preneurship from Brazil that developed sustainable outdoor fitness gyms powered by solar energy. On the other hand, I selected this idea from Universidad Tecnológica in Perú where they developed an air-purifying billboard does the work of 1,200 trees . The final idea I selected was from the “Design of the year” exhibition; a project of responsive street furniture that helps blind people to cross the street.

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Choosingatopic

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fitness andhealthy lifestyle

Reflecting about “how as designer could I produce some kind of work that improve people life”, I decided that I was going to focus my pro-ject in a topic or field that I am passionate with: fitness and healthy lifestyle.

I decided that I wanted to do a research about “HOW” as graphic designer I can generate a reflection about health and fitness issues. These are an issues that I feel very passionate and interested with.

As a main issue into this field, I found myself very worried about the obesity as a public-health problem. However, at this stage my objec-tive was to understand my “field of research” in order to move on with a specific project to work with.

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NEWSAND PRESSRESEARCHABOUTTHE ISSUE

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exploringatechnological approach

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INNOVATIONTROUGH DESIGN

One of the first ideas to generate an approach to the issue, was the idea to create some kind of product or object with a innovation for outdoor sport-life.

I realized that when people practice outdoor nigh running, some-times they don´t have any type of illumination so it can get danger-ous for them nor others; they can be hit by bicycles, other runners or cars. So, What if they could have some kind of body-energy-fueled t-shirt that could help them with that.

I started a first research in the library and getting in touch with peo-ple from College Saint Martin to know more about innovation in tex-tiles and innovation in fashion-sportwear

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LEDTEXTILES

In one of the books I found a reference to a company called “CUTE-CIRCUIT”. They are a fashion label that creates fashion collections with wearable technology.

This company was a great reference to show how lighting and led technology can improve fashion. The challenge now was going to be trying to find out if it was possible to convert the “human energy” that we produce while running into electricity.

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tutor´sfeedbackand evolutionThe feedback about the idea was positive. The tutor said that textiles were not his field of ex-pertise but encouraged me to explore the is-sue.

He made a point mentioning that maybe eider me as student had the technical knowledge and know-how to develop this kind of project.

He suggested that it may be interesting to go a little deeper on the exploration about ener-gy. How does it work? How can it be generat-ed manually? He advised to develop a home-made dynamo to explore how to generate electricity.

As result of the feedback I stooped this project and started to explore other ways to under-stand energy, how it words and what we can do with it.

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EXPLORINGVISUALRESPRSENTA-TIONS

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As part of the research, I explored specific exhibitions, art installa-tions and museums looking for references and study-cases about the issue, about how to represent information, and about energy. I se-lected three of them to showcase in this portfolio.

The objective was to explore how artists and curators use different design resources and techniques to reflect about specific issues or generate a specific reflection on their audience.

EXPLORING VISUALREPRESENTATIONS

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Fred Deakin - UAL Chair of Interactive Digital Art- recently developed an audio-visual art installation (Intrabox, 2015) where people were able to control virtual characters and make them sing as a chorus using kinect technology.

I selected this art installation as study-case because I strongly believe that it generated a unique experience with design though the use of innovative technology. It generated an exceptional design-experi-ence, a unique way to interact with a visual art representation.

intravoxbyFred Deakin

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I selected this permanent exhibition from the Wellcome Collection (London, 2015) because it is directly linked to my topic research.

“‘Obesity’ explores a condition dominantly affecting developed na-tions and compares it with a disease mostly associated with the de-veloping world.” Curator description.

The exhibition put together a group or different works from research-ers and artists from around the world to generate a reflection about the obesity issue in the culture.

“In this work lies an interest in a representational possibility of the emotional land-scape of the body becoming manifest in its surface. Visually, the way in which the flesh grows, erupts and engulfs the body can be seen as a metaphor of the way in which we become incapacitated by the emotional landscape in which we live and over which we have little control. Of course, the body also appears to be suffering from some kind of malignancy, as in cancer, but, for me, the image of the figure, coupled with the title, leads one into an open contemplation of the plight of the individual.” John Isaacs

Obesity,wellcome collec-tion, 2015

I Can Not Help the Way I Feel by John Isaacs, 2003

The exhibition also features some products and techniques developed by medicine to fight obesity. For example, it showcase a plate that indicate the exact proportions of each food an individual should eat per meal.

medicine and science

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“For one year and one day, commencing on her 22nd birthday and ending on her 23rd, Ellie Harrison photographed everything that she ate. She took her digital camera everywhere with her and could not eat a morsel unless she was first photographed with it. She un-dertook ‘Eat 22’ not only as a test of her own endurance - a way of finding out what she consumed over the course of a year - but also as a way of determining whether such a demanding task would be possible.” Wellcome Emily Sargent Curator, Wellcome Collection.

Image: 495 Date:10 June 2001 Time:13:24Food: egg fried rice with pickles and miso soupLocation:Wagamamas, Nottingham

Eat 22, 11 March 2001-11 March 2002 by Ellie Harrison

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yellowbluepink,Ann Veronica Janssens, 2015

Ann Veronica Hanssens, developed this immersive and interactive exhibition where she explored the interaction between light and colour. As result of that research, the artist developed an immer-sive installation where the audience were invited to have a unique encounter with light and colour.

I found very significant the way the artists used the color to rep-resent light and made me realize that the coulour could be a good element to represent the energy.

“Ann Veronica Janssens’s work explores perception through the use of light and colour. For her installation at Wellcome Collection, Janssens invades the gallery with coloured mist. Defying the apparent immateriality of the medium, colour is caught in a state of suspension, veiling any detail of surface or depth within the space. Instead, attention is focused on the process of perception itself, destabilising perceptual norms and playing with the material nature of colour and form. Entering the gallery is to submit to colour as a physical entity, to be subsumed by the experience of seeing.” Emily Sargent Curator, Wellcome Collection.

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BIGBANG DATA,Somerset House, 2015

This recent exhibition form Somerset House (London 2015), ex-plores how artists have representated and visualization of data and information in our daily life.

“The works follow the origins of data, reveal its industrial infra-structure, visualise hotlydiscussed data sets, from migration pat-terns and artificial intelligence to the global population of cats and trends in selfies, and consider the advantages and dangers of data in our modernday society. The artists have sourced sets of data not only from research centres, but also the public – possibly even vis-itors to the exhibition – themselves.” Olga Subirós and José Luis de Vicente (Curators Somerset House)

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“1:1 is a graphic database that set out to map the address of every web-site in the world. It presents a vibrant visual representation of the mag-nitude and unstoppable growth of the Web.” Olga Subirós and José Luis de Vicente (Curators Somerset House)

1:1 (Every IP), 1999, Lisa Jevbratt

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Tekja’s installation in the London Situation Room shows a live feed of Tweets, Instagram posts and TfL data from London

“Ingo Günther’s World Processer, an ongoing project he began in 1989. Günther has created over 1000 globes which are used to visualise infor-mation at the time they were made: one maps refugee migration around the world, another shows global prison populations (the brightness of white lines on a black map indicates density) and another presents a map of the worlds largest economies – 51 of which are actually corpora-tions.” Rachael Steven, CR BLOG

DATA VISUALIZATION IN REAL TIME

WORLD GLOBE AS SYMBOL

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Face Cages challenges the way biometric data is gathered from surveil-lance and points to the inadequacy of standardised diagrams through sinister 3D printed masks.

Face Cages, 2013 – 2015, Zach Blas

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AVISUALIZATIONOF HUMANENERGY

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STUDIO SESSIONCHELSEA, 2015

As an exercise about the topic research, I developed an activity with some students from the MAGDC in order to explore how daily human energy could be represented by the use of colours.

The project aimed the students to reflect about their morning-rou-tine and represent each activity with a colour. As a final result, each student were going going to have a colour-pater representation of their morning-routine energy.

HOW DOYOU USEYOUR ENERGY?

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INTRODUCTION:The purpose of this activity is to re�ect about the human energy and how we use that energy in our daily activities.Our body works with energy. We consume aliments that our body transform into energy that we use with di�erent purposes: from opening a doorto run a marathon or just thinking about something. By reading this lines you are already using your body energy.

THE ACTIVITY:#01 > Think and write down in order (1 to 36) your �rst 30 minutes of your day: since the moment you open your eyes. Try to write down each single action you did that you think you used your body energy (e.g. open a door, put one shoe, put the other shoe, etc.)

#02 > Assign ONE COLOR to each action in the box below to he action.

#03 > Paint the correspondent box.

YOUR

ENERGY PATTERN

YOUR

ENERGY PATTERN

YOURENERGY PATTERN

YOUR ENERGY PATTERN

Introduction: 10 minutesActivity: 20 minutes

Discussion: 20 minutes

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WORK IN PROGRESS, CHELSEA COLLEGE OF ARTS, 2015

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RESULTS FROM THE ACTIVITY

FEEDBACKANDSUGGESTIONSThe feedback from the MA students was very positive. The manifested that it was a very illustrative way to visualization how they use their energy. However, they pointed the lack of a colour-guide that indicates which colour should they use for each activity. Without that guide, it was impossible to com-pare one pattern to the other at the end of the activity.

On the other hand, the feedback from the tutor was that the activity was pointless regarding the topic-research. He suggested me to focus on understanding the energy, how it works and how we can generate it. He suggested again to develop a home-made dynamo to explore how to generate electricity.

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EXPLOREBYDOING

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One of the main objectives of the MA is to promote the exploration of the graphic design in relation with other artistic disciplines. With this purpose in mind, the tutors aimed the students to explore the opportunities provided by the UAL to use the facilities from the uni-versity to explore the process and production of objects related to the researches.

I featured three of that production-process in order to show and re-flect about the process for each one and the final result.

EXPLOREBYDOING

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The Brief. As introduction to a Design Thinking, the students were asked to think about improvements for the room. Design solution that make the studio a better place where to work. The ideas and proposals should be practical but at the same time should try to re-flect the identity of the designer.

The studio. The space available for the MA course consist In two fur-nished rooms in the second floor of the Chelsea College of Arts. There are tables, chairs, projectors, computers, an many materials used for projects strident from last years. The rooms are very luminous during the day. Each room has a capacity for 10-15 people in total. The stu-dios are a great opportunity to reflect our work as designers. But in order to do that, first we had to make those “our studios”.

Re-order and clean. The first idea for the room was a re-organization of the furniture and cleaning the room. There was many materials from old Project that were occupying too much space. Also, since the first day of the MA, the group has been using some carton boards that were part of an old Project as boards where to exhibit projects and ideas. The idea was to keep some of those boards by cutting and fixing them to the walls of the studio.

Room Signs. Other of the ideas and proposals for the room was to develop some signs for the outdoor. The doors only had some stand-ard numbers printed on the doors, but the name of the group or what we do was not shown anywhere. I propose to use different techniques for the door, but the outcome of that proposal was that the sign should be simple and functional. The idea was to use the letters “MA GDC” that were used in other Project from others stu-dents too.

The studio as reflection. This brief helped me to reflect about the topic of my future MA research; the human energy. It was a good example of how can we chose to use or not our energy in a specific purpose. How can we transform places with our energy and it also was a clear visualization of the power we have to influence simple things as human beings.

STUDIOSIGNS

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The idea was to create a torch that could work with human energy. The electricity for the lamp was going to be provided by a dynamo located inside the torch. The prototype was going to have a cilinder connected to the dynamo what could made posible the generation of electricity just by making it rotate.

The firs stage of the proces was to develop a visual prototype to have a clear idea of what I was looking for. After I got it, I went to the Workbench where I was told that the project was possible. They suggested me to take precise meassure of all the elements form the torch and to develop some technical drawings. After a few extra visits for assestment, I got the final meassures, techical designs and mate-rials to develop a prototype.

Before going to the workshop, during an assessment with the tutor, he suggested that developing the prototype was pointless. He argued that it may work, but had no point developing it becouse the torch could become a kind of “black box” where you don´t know whats going on there. Indeed, he suggested to develop a kind of dynamo to explore how to generate electricity manually.

hand-fueledtorch

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12 cm8 cm

_____ 7,5 cm _______

_____ 6,4 cm _______

15 c

m

12 cm

13,5

cm

FRTON

7,5 cm

firsts protptypes and technical drawings

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The objective of creating a hand-made dynamo was to reflect and understand how energy and electricity works and how we can gen-erate it.

One easy way to produce electricity is by producing electromagnetic elecricity. This means producing electricity by the friction of difer-ent electromagnetic fields. With a few magnets and a cooper wire, is possible to crete an electomagnetic field friction and create a tiny electirity voltage of 0,5 to 1,5 volts. Thaths enough to power small LED bulb for example.

Watching tutorials from internet and reading about the toppic, i de-veloped a hand-craft dynamo following specific instructions. The re-sult was a carton-made dynamo that can provide smalls ammounts of energy.

electromagnetic dynamo

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RE-THINKINGTHEAPPROACH

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Since the beginning of the process, research has been focused on the human energy. “How do we use it?”, “How can we represent it?” or “how can me generate it?. However, many times during the process also, I have reflected about the issue with other perspectives.

An artistic representation of the obesity was a different approach. In that opportunity, the tutor suggested not to focus on that aspect of obesity because it could be easy and suggestive. The tutor suggested to find a positive approach about the issue instead of pointing a spe-cific issue about obesity; like for example, “How we use our energy” and how we can promote the use of that energy.

However, I continued researching about the original topic (obesity and health) and trying to understand and reflect if the “energy” ap-proach should be the only one. Maybe there were something else I was missing.

It was at that stage that I watch the documentary “Fed Up”(2014), directed by Stephanie Soechtig and it gave me a huge new perspec-tive about the issue.

“Fed Up shows how the first dietary guidelines issued by the U.S. gov-ernment 30 years ago overlooked the role of dietary sugar in increas-ing risks of obesity, diabetes, and associated ill-health outcomes, particularly in children. Since these guidelines effectively condoned unlimited addition of sugar to foods consumed by children, sugar consumption has greatly increased, obesity has skyrocketed, and generations of children have grown up far fatter than their parents. These children face impaired health and shorter lifespans as a result.As the relationship between the high-sugar diet and poor health has emerged, entrenched sugar industry interests with almost unlimited financial lobbying resources have beaten back attempts by parents, schools, states, and in Congress to provide a healthier diet for chil-dren. The film concludes with a list of 20 companies, industry groups and politicians who refused to talk to the filmmakers”

REFLECTINGABOUTTHE APPROACH

“fed Up” (the movie), 2015

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“SUGAR INDUSTRYIS A VERY POWERFUL INDUSTRY AND THEY ARE HERE TO MAKE

MONEY”

“THE MESSAGE HAS BEEN PUSHED TO US: IT´S YOUR FAULT

THAT YOU ARE FAT. AND IT IS NOT.”

““THIS IS THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM NOBODY IS TALKING IN

SOCIETY”

“JUNK FOOD COMPANIES ARE ACTING LIKE TABACO COMPANIES

DID 30 YEARS AGO”

“80% OF PRODUCTS HAVE ADDED SUGAR”

“ ONE OF THE GRATEST PUBLIC HEALTH EPIDEMIC

OF OUR TIME”

“THIS IS THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM NOBODY IS TALKING IN

SOCIETY”

“KIDS ARE BEING TOLD THE BIG-GEST LIE THEY WILL EVER HEAR

IN THEIR LIFES”

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This phrase is one more phase from “Fed Up” (the movie) but it can be perfectly applied also to this research.

This extraordinary documentary shows and demonstrates how for more than 30 years, the approach to the obesity issue has been wrong. For years people has been told that it is their fault to be fat and if the just work out more, they will get thinner and healthier. And they are not talking about the real problem. The reason why most people around the world is obese. And the reason is the sugar in the processed foods.

The filmmakers propose a possible solution for this problem: home-made cooking. Cooking their own food it is the best way to avoid all the saturated fats in the aliments. However, when they talk about this solution, they also show major problem: many people does not know how to cook.

Going on with my research, I am going to focus on this point: how people learn to cook nowadays? Is there any may to make it more easy or attractive? How do grown-up people learn to cook? Should I experiment with cookbooks as a symbol?

Jaime Oliver is an English celebrity chef, res-taurateur, and media personality known for his food-focused television shows, cookbooks and

more recently his global campaign for better food education.

Joe Wicks is a perosnal trainer who created a plan to educate people and give them the knowledge

they need to get healthy by promoting 15-seconds-recipies in social media.

“What if OUR all approach to this EPIDEMIC has been DEAD wrong?”

jaime oliver

Joe Wicks

:: PEOPLE TO WATCH ::

COOK BOOKS

One possible way for the research will be take the cookbook as symbol to explore in combination

with new approaches no learning how to cook like internet videos or courses.

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TO BECONTINUED.