The Quilt - family history

There are many traditions regarding the design and characteristics of quilts, and they may be made or given to mark important life events such as marriage, the birth of a child, a family member leaving home, or graduations. Modern quilts are not always intended for use as bedding, and may be used as wall hangings, table runners, or tablecloth.

The quilt is passed down in families as a visual representation of their past that has led upto today. It therefore stands as a product of a person's background. We are moulded from birth by nature and nurture to follow to a certain extend the beliefs and goals of our family thus we are a product of a combination of every member before us.

If we were to remove the family and place a new born in a new environment, only then could we say that they were not plaigurising elements of people before them. The only way a person could be said to stand out from their natural environment (opposite of camouflage) would be to remove this family history.

To visually represent this I will be creating a quilt from plain canvas to represent the blank family history required of the truley induvidual person. The use of canvas represtents a 'blank canvas' on which this person can now build their life.

You could/You should

Experimenting with word placement to denote meaning. Next I will add another dimension to this, the concept has multiple answers so the canvas should be made up of multiple planes.

I think it would be poignant to play with the concept of what you could do but shouldn't.

Perhaps I could embed this in the production of the pi

ece e.g. embroidery poster? Works in theory but unpractical and of little benefit.

Indirect Question Answer Pairs

Indirect answers and cooperation: On Asher and Lascarides’s ‘Making the right commitments in dialogue’

University of Michigan Linguistics & Philosophy

Workshop on Implicatures

Christopher Potts

UMass Amherst

Abstract This commentary argues that linguistic cooperation is essential even

in discourse situations in which the nonlinguistic preferences of the participants

are misaligned. The central examples involve indirect answers to direct questions.

3 Indirect answers and non-cognitive IQAP

My empirical focus is on question–answer pairs in which the answer is semantically

(but not pragmatically) unrelated to the question.

for the rest of the paper: http://www.stanford.edu/~cgpotts/commentaries/potts-umich08-cmts-on-asher-lascarides.pdf

Grammatical person in English

Pronoun	Person/plurality	Gender
Standard
I	First person singular	-
You	Second person singular / plural	-
He	Third person singular, masculine / gender-neutral third person singular	masculine
She	Third person singular, feminine	feminine
It	Third person singular, neuter	neuter
We	First person plural	-
They	Third person plural/gender-neutral third person singular (correctness of this usage disputed)	-

could/should

YOU COULD

- it is possible

- it’s possibility is conditional

- it is permission

- it is a suggestion

DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD

- it expresses condition

- it indicates duty, propriety or expediency

- it makes a less direct statement

A Few Good Men "You Can't Handle the Truth"

Grammar Rock Adjective

Defining 'could'

COULD

- used to express possibility

- used to express conditional possibility or ability

- used in making polite requests

- used in asking for permission

- used in offering suggestions or advice

SHOULD

- used to express condition

- used to indicate duty, propriety or expediency

- used to make a statement less direct or blunt

When discussing a work of art or design in progress it is important that we let the designer come to his/her own conclusions through pressing questions or suggestions. It is even more important how we chose to phrase these so as to not give too much of our own opinion whereby a trace of plagiarism will be embedded in the work as it would then contain the ideas of the suggesting designer.

We must also accept that our opinion is subjective and we must select our words carefully so as to not deter or inhibit. As John Lackman states in his address (below):

'to qualify it, complicate it, overload it, is usually a defensive move. It is a strategy for getting partial credit: you figure you may be wrong but at least you're clever, you are eloquent... and maybe not that far wrong'.

To what extent does our selective use of language inhibit or enhance the progress of another designer?

Truth, fact or opinion: The importance of truth

As children we are encouraged to tell the truth and in return expect ourparents, and other adults, to do the same. It is only as we grow older that we discover not everyone believes in telling the truth - some people consitently lie.

Is it important that we speak the truth? To my mind, yes. I have heard of many people blurring the edges of truth by saying they would tell a "white lie" if it meant not hurting the other person's feelings and whilst this life might be for what appears the best of motives, is it really the best way of not hurting someone? Perhaps, it shows a limitation in the "liar's" own ability to find apositive way of telling the truth. Whatever the reason, there are times when not telling the truth says more about the person telling the lie than about the repercussions of telling the truth.

For me, there have been instances when I found the truth hurt, but only because people did not appreciate all the facts behind the statement they made. They had listened to another person, heard their views, and then adopted them as their own. When this is achild repeating someone else's opinion then it is possible to understand the reason for the blunt, sometimes untrue, statement, but when it comes to adults doing this we can be more upset by the bluntness, especially if it is untrue, or a distortion of the truth due to limited information.

So many lies are told these days, so much disinformation cruelly told to mislead and distort other's views of a subject or person. Why? Do we really fear the truth that much? Are we so frightened of the truth that we will do anything rather than admit it? It would appear so, and this saddens me.

The truth, when it is told and recognised can open up such vistas of understanding that it can never be truly hurtful. The sudden realisation that we are not alone, that others might experience life in a different way to us, might gain insights that others must respect with wisdom and understanding being precious gifts most would give their souls for.

Well it is possible to gain them, and you don't have to be wealthy within society to do so. It is gained by learning the truth, recognising fear, misinformed facts, distortions of truth, and knowing that whenever you acknowledge a truth you will also be more likely to do something ethical rather than just follow the crowd.

Opinion should be formed over time as truth and fiction are discerned to a greater degree.

In my life, truth has become more and more important as the years have passed. I have learned so much, and realised that ignoring the truth, or distorting it, for your own selfish ends does not bring happiness. You may have temporary respite, but the truth will eventually surface and your own deceit will be shown for what it truly is.

Carol Noble

www.helium.com

YOU COULD DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD

To what extent do we design our language when we discuss our trade?

Basic Grammar: Proper Adjectives

Lingual Camouflage

The Art History Newsletter

ART HISTORY: 'RICH IN ADJECTIVES, POOR IN PROVABLE STATEMENTS'

Make yourself clear. This is risky. To say clearly what you think is to risk being more clearly wrong. To fudge what you think – to qualify it, complicate it, overload it – is usually a defensive move. It’s a strategy for getting partial credit: you figure you may be wrong but at least you’re clever, you’re eloquent… and maybe not that far wrong.

I work in a field – art history – that is rich in adjectives, poor in provable statements, just right for somebody who hides from clarity behind vivid, entertaining language. The best antidote I ever heard prescribed to writers came from the art historian Howard Hibbard, who told us students what to do when we’d written a sentence: “Take your favorite word and strike it out.” Hibbard meant that often we put the word there not for clarity but for vanity …

During the past generation, art history has been preoccupied with questions of art theory and the social and economic and political contexts of art, which can be answered from illustrations in books. This has made the field richer intellectually, but it’s excused faculty members and graduate students from going to real works of art in the original and dealing with them, looking hard and long, trying to grasp their peculiar way of communicating, enjoying their pleasures, appreciating how they elude simple classification and undermine theories.

John Lackman

Issey Miyake - Pleats Please

WHY?

WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO HIDE?

Book I'm reading in public

Book I read in private

The homogenous Homo Sapien

Projection of human visual form if plagiarism of environment and each other continues.

- Sky

- Buildings

- Ground

(Urban area)

Camouflage as plagiarism of your environment

'Another exponent of camouflage was P. Tudor Hart, a painter who had made and intensive study of colour values in Paris... Tudor Hart was generally critical of current military camouflage and explained that when objects on land were concealed they tended to absorb rather than to reflect the light. At sea the opposite occurred. He proposed to pant a geometrical pattern of alternating stripes of warm and cold colours, graded according to the area they covered. At a distance these colours were supposed to mix optically, assuming a general grey tone. Tudor Hart believed that because the colours were pure and arranged in a mathematical relationship they would 'fluctuate with the increase or decrease in light.'' Camouflage: A history of concealment and deception in War, Guy Hartcup.

Critical Prototypes - final crit feedback

Camouflage

Thermal ink demo

Example of how the thermal ink will disappear once the garment is worn (transition from room temperature to body temperature).

Receipt template

I presented the receipt template to Margot Bowman and asked her to fill it in for her most recent garment purchase.

Ownership

Interim to Final Crit: How has the prototype evolved?

The project is still about carrying the receipt and all emotions associated with them, around with you. The first experiment of expressing this idea in the form of a physical bag was a good method of clarifying ideas, it was a very obvious expression which needed to be evolved into a solution. By physically attaching the receipt to the item purchased you specify where the guilt lies, it is much less of a generalisation than the receipt bag idea. Enabling the circumstances of awareness of the receipt to be controlled further enhances the ability to judge what this item means to us and why.

Content of 'guilt'

Content of screen printed receipt:

POST-PURCHASE

- how much did the garment cost?

- where did the money come from?

- what is it for?

e.g. £100 from mum with love

£190 from food fund for party

WHAT WILL YOU GAIN?

- Nostalgia for garment - you will be reminded of the circumstances of purchase

- Value - being constantly reminded of the garments worth will help you to appreciate it

- Organisation - know what you've worn when so you dont wear the same thing to see the same group of people more than once and you can wear pieces bought for you by other people when you go to see them - garment management.

By embedding the guilt into a garment you are giving the garment a narrative: past, present, future.

Managing guilt

How can you maintain the guilt factor of a purchase when it is idol but remove the guilt from the item in use?

LABELLING

- Receipt must be somehow attached to the object - guilt physically attached to item - embedded in piece.

In what type of purchase does the most guilt lie?

- Unnecessary

- Aesthetic

CLOTHING/FASHION

We all are guilty of possessing way more clothes than we physically need therefore we are all guilty of overindulging in fashion.

How can you attach guilt to a garment?

- label

- print

The most effective way of embedding the guilt into a garment would be to screen print the 'guilt' directly onto it.

How to maintain guilt when garment is unworn but remove it when item is being worn?

- Thermal ink

Disappears at body temperature - when garment is being worn (when it is being worn it is fulfilling its purpose)

Identifying emotion: Receipts as guilt

It is important to re-evaluate the emotions we associate with receipts. Receipts to me are reminders of the amount of money I have spent on something, mostly money I don't have.

RECEIPTS = GUILT OF PURCHASE

When do we not feel this guilt?

When we are using the item - Useful therefore necessary/worth it

So...

GUILT when item is idol

GUILT FREE when item is in use

TRANSFER OF MONEY PARALLELS TRANSFER OF ENERGY

WE CONSUME // WE RESPIRE

Receipts as evidence of life

Colourtherm

Colourtherm fabric dye so I can screenprint thermochromic colour onto most fabric types.

When you carry around receipts in your bag you are effectively carrying around the code to your economic life. This bag is a visual representation of this.

Essentially you are financially vulnerable if anyone was to get hold of this information.

The bag itself represents consumption.

Portable trace - The giant receipt bag

A variation on the brown paper bag: portable, disposable, container.

Contains information about the user: spending patterns, disposable income, routine.

Thermal residue

Using thermal paper to detect presence of a heat source - The Human Body

Thermochromism

Thermochromism is the ability of substance to change color due to a change in temperature. A mood ring is an excellent example of this, but it has many other uses such as baby bottles (changes to a different color when cool enough to drink) and kettles. Thermochromism is one of several types of chromism.

The two basic approaches are based on liquid crystals and leuco dyes. Liquid crystals are used in precision applications, as their responses can be engineered to accurate temperatures, but their color range is limited by their principle of operation. Leuco dyes allow wider range of colors to be used, but their response temperatures are more difficult to set with accuracy.

Thermochromic dye would be a really interesting way of representing where something which gives off heat has been e.g. the human body or electrical equipment.

Prototype 1 - The receipt as a trace

If you had access to someones receipts you would be able to build up a picture of what they do, where they have been and what type of person they are: male/female, old/young.

Receipts act as a trace of where someone has been and what they have been doing.

The more receipts are handled the more the warmth from the hands degrades the thermal paper and leaves a mark of the person's presence. The more the receipt is handled the more evidence it holds of human interaction.

Prototype 1 - Tracing human presence

In order to trace human presence I am going to utilise the properties of thermal paper and manipulate how it visually represents human interaction but on a larger scale.

Thermal paper

Most receipts are printed on thermal paper - no ink used, the paper is heated where the type is set to produce darkening, it is now possible to produce 2 colours by heating paper to two different temperatures. Degrades in heat and light, even if kept in optimum conditions will only last 3- 5 years.

As time increases - Info contained decreases.

The more the receipt is handled, the more the paper is heated therefore darkens and information fades into black.

Bringing the receipt up to date

- Who am I designing for?

- What am I designing?

- How will this design benefit the intended user?

- Who else may benefit from the design?

- Is the design adaptable to suit different user groups?

- What form will this design take and how will it be created?

Areas to address:

- Definition

- History

- Growth/Development

- Materials

- Useability

- Function life span

- Faults/Areas in need of improvement

What is it about the receipt that is backwards/lacking in technological development?

What can I bring to the design/function of the post sale agreement to improve it and in what way?

Interactive Spreadsheet for average UK household

Open in full screen view and click to edit. Add in expenditure figures to gain chart view of distribution of spending.

Interactive Spreadsheet - basic

How to create an online worksheet

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/09/embed-interactive-excel-spreadsheets.html

An online spreadsheet would allow people to input their own receipt data to receive a record of their spending. The aim would be to then translate this data into understandable graphs to show the user how their spending is distributed amongst the different areas of spending (Transport, Fuel, e.t.c).

This however is not dealing with the initial problem of the printed paper receipt. I therefore need to decide whether I will be focussing my design on improving the printed form of a receipt or the way people use this data to understand their money and consumer rights. Would it be possible to tackle both?

Mock up of chart with stickers

Receipt stickers printed on clear adhesive sheet, stuck onto the chart backing.

Does it have to be a tangible object?? Going back to the idea of the Excel spreadsheet, it could be an online app?

Organisation - Sticker Chart

What if receipts were printed as small stickers which could then be stuck onto a chart (wall or book) to improve the organisational quality of the receipt process?

Example layout of sticker chart shown above.

Information hierachy

- PLACE OF PURCHASE AND WHICH EXPENDITURE GROUP THIS FALLS UNDER (e.g. Transport, Recreation and Culture, e.t.c.)

- DATE (Month and Year most important)

- AMOUNT AND IN WHICH FORM PAID FOR (e.g. Cash, Credit Card, Debit Card or Cheque)

Excel analysis of expenditure

I have direct debits for Transport, Housing (rent), Fuel, Power, Communication and Education, so do not have receipts for these expenditures.

Analysis of receipts in my wallet

Who am I designing for? The retailer or the consumer?

As a consumer I accumulate a large amount of paper receipts, mostly from credit card transactions, which linger in my wallet and eventually get thrown away. There is a need to make the receipt an object which is retained by the purchaser so that they can check their accounts to make sure they tally, and, if desired, return the item to the seller getting a full refund or store credit.

The receipt at the moment is not designed to aid the receiver. They are printed on thermal paper as it is cheap and does not require the use of ink, this is to cut costs on the retailer's end. By making the object feel cheap it gives a feeling of unimportance and therefore is commonly discarded. This benefits the retailer as the consumer does then no longer have proof of purchase and will therefore find it difficult to return the purchased product. Retailers will do as much as possible to ensure they do not have items returned to them.

I intend to redesign the receipt to aid consumer experience. I intend to improve on the satisfactory experience of receiving said receipt and by designing to increase the quantity of receipts kept and stored by consumers I will be aiding people to retain their consumer rights.

How to design a receipt

By ehow.co.uk:

Receipts are legal documents that provide details about a transaction---sales, donation,

materials received or petty cash. The document can be used to track incoming revenue,

identify a return of materials, or keep track of inventory. Some businesses may have further

receipt requirements that include facility identification numbers, customer numbers,

and business tax numbers. Knowing federal, state and local government requirements

pertaining to taxes and identification before designing the receipt prevents the need

to re-design the document.

Instructions

1. 1

   Decide what type of receipt is needed and how it will be used and printed.

2. 2

   Identify all the information needed for the particular receipt. For example, a sales receipt will need to indicate a date, the names of the parties making the transaction, the form of transaction (cash, credit card, store credit), the items being purchased, state, local and federal sales tax (if applicable), and a place to note the total amount of the transaction.

3. 3

   Identify all the different departments that will handle the receipt and ask what they need to see on the document.

4. 4

   Design the receipt using the information in Steps 1 through 3. Sketch the receipt design on paper before creating the document in a computer graphics program.

5. 5

   Include any other information that may be pertinent for the customer--return policy, available discounts and coupons, fees charged for restocking merchandise, and business identification numbers.

Read more: How to Design Receipts | eHow.co.uk http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_5800829_design-receipts.html#ixzz19vQ3Q9kK