In Flux_ Identities Under The Influence / By Isioma Iyamah by Isioma Iyamah

IN FLUX IDENTITIES UNDER THE INFLUENCE BY ISIOMA IYAMAH

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IN FLUX IDENTITIES UNDER THE INFLUENCE ISIOMA IYAMAH

6 0.0 PREFACE 3.0 RESEARCH AND METHODS 1.0 ABOUT ME

10 3.1 PIVOTAL INTERVIEWS Gregory Guy George Lakoff Katie Hillier

2.0 GOALS AND OBJECTIVES 12

16 19 27 31

3.2 SECONDARY RESEARCH 36 37 Origins The Evolution of Language 37 Language and Identity 39 41 Social identity theory 42 Linguistics and Gender 44 Twitter is good for some things 46 The basics of group formation 46 Communication Networks in Groups Youth Culture and Communication 48 52 Exploring Subculture 52 Dominant Culture? Subculture and The Mainstream: Cool, or Not? 54 Internet and Subculture 54 Vaporwave 55 Health Goth 56 Normcore 60

4.0 INTERVENTIONS AND LENSES 62

4.1 FIRST SEMESTER PRODUCTS Gesture 64 68 Dicto

4.2 SECOND SEMESTER PRODUCTS_ Designing for Multiple Screens: set Service Design and Entrepreneurship: [decoder] Designing for Delight: Where We Are What We Speak 3DPD2

74 84 96 108

5.0 AUDIENCE AND LANDSCAPE 132 6.0 MOVING FORWARD 136 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 142 GLOSSARY OF TERMS 138

BIBLIOGRAPHY 140

TABLE OF CONTENTS

0.0 PREFACE

In Flux concerns the myriad ways we express our identities, verbally, non-verbally and visually. It’s about the ways we create and conceptualize our spaces, using language to structure, categorize and tell our stories. It is about how, as highly social creatures, we navigate the world around us leaving impressions on each other, deeply enough to leave a mark. Our interactions with one another define us, for better or for worse. In Flux was initially framed as an inquiry into a topic I have long been interested in: how language evolves. In Flux was at first an exploration of the mechanisms underlying linguistic evolution and meaningmaking within different social groups and cultures. I looked at sociolects, dialects, gestural communication, pictograms, and emerging forms of communication in the digital realm such as emoji and memes. People use language to define and structure their experiences. The ways we conceptualize our spaces depend on the languages we speak, the intent with which we imbue our communication. Language, the words we use–the things we say, serve as a framework for our perceptions of reality. We need

to frame things in order to make them “true”, or real. This is similar to the notion of mental models, where we develop ideas about the world around us based on experience, and are thus able to have expectations. A part of our cognitive make up, we need to label and categorize things in order to make sense of the word. Meaning necessitates framing. We like rules, language is rules. In this respect, we categorize ourselves. Developing on this area of inquiry, I realized that identity was at the core of my research. Accordingly, my topic evolved into an exploration of how we use language to communicate our identities, later to be recast as an exploration of the biases that help us construct our identities, as well as an investigation of the patterns of behavior responsible for framing our identities. Over the course of my thesis year, In Flux has seen several incarnations. It has been imagined as a product (non-profit, for profit and crowdfunded/sourced), a service, a social good platform, a campaign, a brand, and as a business. In Flux is a project that has been framed and re-framed, funneled through multiple lenses, extrapolated, dissolved and finally recrystallized into the various pieces encountered in this book.

1.0 ABOUT ME

As a former science student, entering the world of design has been an amazing journey. The Products of Design program at SVA is well crafted, innovative and thoroughly exploratory, fostering a diverse community of talented design makers and thinkers. Endlessly fascinated by the ways in which we create and inhabit our spaces. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m constantly exploring and re-synthesizing shifts in culture, seeing how and where art, design and science mesh with human behavior and emerging social trends.

At UC Berkeley, I majored in molecular and cellular biology and later entered the neurobiology track. At the upper division level, I learned about the biological processes underlying our health, motivations and actions. I was interested exploring the complex interplay of genes and neural pathways implicated in mental illnesses and affective disorders such as anxiety, depression and addiction and bipolar. Although cognition is largely unaffected, these disorders disrupt an individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to regulate emotion and stimuli, making it difficult to relate to others and their environment. While this was fascinating from a molecular standpoint, I began to realize, after graduating and laboratory work, that I wanted to interact creatively and positively with people rather than cells. I began to see product design as an area in which I could employ both my interest in emotional and mental well-being and affinity for research. I am interested in exploring design as it relates to neuroscience, ethnography and culture, eventually applying my insights to the conception of mood and behavior influencing objects and environments.

Born in California to Nigerian parents with positions at international agencies, I had a multicultural upbringing. I was raised in Senegal and Denmark, and bounced between Switzerland and France before finally attending undergraduate school in California, at UC Berkeley. Constant travel meant my childhood was somewhat chaotic, but also meant that I gained valuable exposure to various peoples and cultures. Partly as a result of this, I developed into an enthusiastic reader and explorer, spending much of my childhood in both libraries and the outdoors. I read everything â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from recipes to fantasy novels, biographies, science fiction, discovery books about space and dinosaurs, books about ancient civilizations. I remain fascinated and inspired by the different ways in which humans inhabit and create their spaces, through language, culture and objects.

1.0 ABOUT ME

2.0 GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

As a neurobiology undergraduate, I studied the cellular mechanisms underlying behavior; now as a graduate student in Products of Design, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m excited to be giving myself an opportunity to study behavior on a macro-level, to use the lens of design to study the frameworks that dictate the ways in which we communicate, and the ways we choose to enact our identities. Much of our identity is constructed and perceived based on implicit or explicit biases. By investigating how we communicate, I can begin to expose the patterns of bias responsible for constructing our identities. Patterns of behavior are at the core of my thesis. Patterns evolve depending on context, depending on time. In Flux tries to answer the following questions: If we can begin to abstract our identity into pattern, canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t we then do away with judgement? Can my interventions reintroduce celebration, empathy and curiosity into our dealings with one another?

2.0 GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

16 16

3.0 RESEARCH AND METHODS

Research for In Flux is a combination of interviews with subject matter experts and secondary research; poring through journal publications, articles from the Internet, capturing contemporary thought around language and communication, as well as holding workshops / salons for participants and I to co-create and generate conversation and spark insights around my topic. Within the territory of communication, I found my self drawn to a multitude of areas, most of which I will address in the coming chapters.

3.0 RESEARCH AND METHODS

3.1 PIVOTAL INTERVIEWS

In the early stages of my research, my interviews centered around what is lost when going from one language to another. In that vein, I spoke to linguists, translators and linguistics graduate students. I had fascinating conversations with each, however that was alls most of

them remained: fascinating conversations with very generous people. Covered in this chapter are the key subject matter experts who really informed the development of my thesis.

3.0 PIVOTAL INTERVIEWS

GREGORY GUY I spoke to Professor Gregory Guy who teaches at NYU. He's a tall man with a beard and glasses, a quizzical expression on his face. His voice is gruff and he speaks somewhat faster than I would have expected, given his profession. He is sharp and canny, and does not at all fit the dusty linguistics / anthropology university professor stereotype at all. He is pleasantly intrigued by my work. I was able to gain a new perspective into my thesis from talking to him. I think one issue with my thesis in the beginning was the fact that it was simply an exploration of the relationship between identity, language and place. Through him I struck upon the idea of bias in perceiving identities. Talking to him I learned a little about what his role is at NYU. The courses he teaches are a course called language in society, and then another about sociolinguistics in America: Spanish, Portuguese, English, Indigenous, and African. At this point

in my research process I was really interested in devolution of language and how language changed over time within communities. I was really interested in factors were responsible for propagating a language and what factors responsible for killing it. Language changes it develops like a living organism. If you think of it as a strand of DNA, imagine it acquiring mutations overtime through interactions with elements in around it, or through errors in replication. That's a lot of what the process of language evolution is: errors in replication â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and they're always beautiful. It's important that we except how things change because the process of evolution is important for us to adapt to our environment and as you communicate with our payments due language be it physical or verbal we need to maintain a sense of flexibility or else we die out overtime. So as opposed dying out, we should adapt, as we often do.

GREGORY GUY

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Popular understanding is that language decays as it changes.â&#x20AC;?

What he does is study languages, deducing their derivations by finding similarities between them and and coding them. Specifically, he looks at Indo-European languages, which include mostly European languages as well as Indian and Urdu. There is a language family researchers can trace back to about 6000 years ago that they designate the on of the earliest versions of Indo-European languages. Its epicenter was somewhere north of the black sea, and it spread out towards the middle east. The process by which it could have spread so far to so many people, from one little location, is fascinating. They were so successful because they had gamechanging technological innovations such as horse and wagons, metallurgy, things to trade and skills to share. with their relatively new mode of transport, they were able to move quickly across the land, carrying their products and services with them. With their advanced technologies, they were able to spread out and defeat local, neighboring communities and impose their influence on them, slowly subsuming an transforming their civilizations into a mass merged homogenous society. From this homogenous mass, of course came various strains of the language, both written and spoken began to incorporate elements of linguistic variation from the indigenous, now well mixed, populations. For example, at the same time that Sanskrit was developed in Indian, Greek characters in Greece sprang up, both sharing a common predecessor.

Says Gregory, â&#x20AC;&#x153;with the kind of evidence coming from written language, it is possible to deduce origins and create etymological charts. as technology progressed, we became able to record sounds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; now we have recordings of speech, and can more easily track the changes that have taken place, especially within a shorter time frame. We can begin to look at the evolution of sound systems, the phonic systems comprising language and analyze patterns of evolution. Looking at an environment like New York City, where English is by no means the dominant language, we can really start to see how intermingled cultures begin to manifest changes in their communication based on who they interact with. Words are falling into disuse, words are being butchered or re-appropriated, language is dissolving into half phrases and lazy shortcuts. All of these are complaints voiced by older generations, who see language as a sacred, untouchable thing. In english, for example, we will often hear grumblings about the degradation of the language though texting shorthand or internet speak, as well as by the physically mediated modifications like slang or other social group related jargon. What they forget is that English is in itself a bastardized language â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the English we speak today is completely unrecognizable from the english spoken 500 years ago. Language, to reiterate is non-static. An interesting case study comes form Iceland.

GREGORY GUY

We discussed the difference between rural dialects and urban dialects – different sounding because of the composition of each community. In urban areas where there is less homogeneity, there is more variation in the dialect, there is more borrowing. We also talked about the stigma associated with sounding different. In subgroups, which I will talk about in later chapters, the stigma is actually of sounding the same. By avoiding the use of a specific social lexicon, (which I define by word content and topic), usually that of the dominant social group, subcultures can maintain their social differentiation. In mainstream culture, various social dialects and accents are subject to discrimination by majority dialect speakers. People who don’t speak the ‘right’ way, experience discrimination, especially in the workplace. People can be biased against someone’s accent especially if they feel that it denies a lower level of education, a lower social status and differing world views. I myself am guilty of this. When I hear a southern accent, spoken by a white person, I immediately raise my guard, ignore or avoid them. I’m reacting to the stereotype of white southerners being racist, parochial and uneducated. The (erroneous) associations with that social dialect elicit strong reactions from me. In general, Northerners discriminate against Southerners, for similar reasons. AFRICAN AMERICAN VERNACULAR African Americans who speak it regularly experience prejudice in the workplace and in daily life due to snobbery and racism. There is, in particular, a prejudice against African American Vernacular, originating times of recent post-slavery society, and having much to do with the current state of race relations, and the associations the dialect has with underprivileged Blacks. “But linguists have long known that Black English isn’t a broken-down version of “real” English. It

isn’t being made up by speakers who don’t care about grammar. It has a grammar, in the Chomsky sense of a set of rules that produce acceptable sentences. Violate them, and you’ll sound odd. For example, the verb “to be” must be left out of many sentences in the present tense: She my sister.” (Robert Lane Greene, You Are What You Speak.)[1] VOCAL FRY We also talked about linguistics trends in American English speaking culture, taking a look at the sorts of changes that are going on, and being documented in popular media. For example, vocal fry. A phenomenon that has attracted the attention of several media sites, such as the Huffington Post, The Guardian and NPR. It’s a peculiar, really quite funny affectation in a set of speech behaviors linguists call voice quality, how people adjust their larynxes in speech. It is characterized by a creaky voice and long utterances that seem to extend till speakers run out of air. MECHANICS The creaky voice is facilitated by relatively relaxed tension in the larynxes, so they are not taut and they vibrate more. The breathy aspect of vocal fry is a function of airflow through the erythnoids. When there is a gap between them, as there is with vocal fry, you have air flowing in and out at the same time as your voice. What is fry used for? linguists say that it is a sign of a social symbol. Social differentiation in terms of cool or trendiness is a big driver. so, as with most things I will later discuss, pertaining to group dynamics and social groups, individuals can opt in – or opt out, follow or oppose the status quo. I find it so fascinating that physical innovations in speech like these can become markers of a social identity.

UPSPEAK Another linguistic variable we discussed was upspeak. An innovation that occurred about twenty years ago. This term describes the use of a rising intonation in declarative speech. It was popularized in the 1980’s in the United States, but dates back to the 19th century Northern Ireland, Northern Scotland and Northern England – there it was know as a lilt. “It’s often associated with Disney Channel-loving tweens and Valley girls and dismissed as a marker of immaturity and airheadedness.” (What Does How You Talk Have to Do With How You Get Ahead? Caroline Winter, Bloomberg Business, 2014) Linguistic experts such as Penelope Eckert (Stanford University) say that the vocal style may have more complex social purposes that simple differentiation. Upspeakers are mostly women,

and deploy this technique to keep attention on them while speaking, as well as to head off interruptions, particularly effective beach up speakers sound like they are in the middle of a sentence at any given moment. It has also been established that those who are of higher status (both male and female), will use it to communicate empathy, but also manipulate their subordinates and “build consensus”. An interesting study by one of Penelope Eckert students looked at Jamba Juice customers and found that fathers of undergraduates scored as the biggest upspeakers. Says Eckert, “they were being polite and trying to mitigate their male authoritativeness.” It can make speakers sound deferential and harmless.

GREGORY GUY

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The nice thing about emoji is that it bypasses the need for less engaging words and gets straight to the emotion that needs to be communicated.â&#x20AC;?

“Emoji can indicate emotion in text in a variety of ways in spoken language, but in longer form written language, you can say things like “I found it really irritating”, but you’re never really going to tweet all that. The nice thing about emoji is that it bypasses the need for less engaging words and gets straight to the emotion that needs to be communicated.” To cap off this section, he asserts that new communication mediums will not change the way we speak out loud in the long term. That remains to be seen, of course!

I also asked Gregory was about language comprehension. With the advent of short burst communication as is seen on Twitter platform, I wondered what effect, if any, it could have on long term language comprehension. He responded by saying that different mediums affect how we communicate with each other (within the platform), but that we respect the fact that there is a time and place for each kind of interaction. I would argue that there has been some spillover; mainly in syntax and content and the new words we have incorporated. Internet contractions such as LOL, which stands for ‘laugh out loud’, is now being spoken as lol. And everyone knows what it means. Another question I asked him was about emoji and emotion:

GREGORY GUY

GEORGE LAKOFF George Lakoff’s research centers on the embodied mind, how we make sense of the world through metaphor. As a cognitive scientist he related this back to neural circuitry. Neural structure is hierarchical and well defined. It also turns out that the human motor and visual’s system is working same way as an animals however part of systems are also used have also been repurposed for thinking and language, which distinguishes us from animals. We have a strongly developed conceptual system that allows us to navigate our environments, as well as to understand the parameters governing the perception of our reality – such as space, time and causality. “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.” (George Lakoff; Metaphors We Live By.)[2]

society. Would societies become more homogenous, would languages start to blend? I was also curious about how culture affects conceptual thinking and perception reality. This is a very abstract concept: I wondered if, as cultures merge through globalization will the conceptualization and understanding of our spaces also change? Basically, are conceptual systems becoming more homogenous because of the internet? His response was this: “What I can tell you is that languages change over time; as they evolve, you get a new grammatical constructions appearing. For example you want my classes I was looking through literature to give to my students. I was looking through a book on John Austin. And I assigned it to them because I thought it was so simple. An overwhelming response I received was I cannot understand this book the sentences are too long, the vocabulary is too complex, and I have no idea what to do. Every undergraduate in my class was having trouble doing the reading. The short bursts text are killing us. Reading simple things online, those sound bytes are preventing us from understanding true academic discourse. It is a generational thing.” He concluded: ”it’s a very interesting time to be teaching this class. I could perhaps teach them to read.”

I asked him how I thought English would look in 30 years from now. As a result of our increasingly connected

GEORGE LAKOFF

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our conceptual system is based in metaphor, which in turn is grounded in the physical world - what we experience in our day to day.â&#x20AC;?

George Lakoff

KATIE HILLIER I then spoke to Katie Hillier, a digital Anthropologist at ?What If!. Quick talking, friendly and incisively intelligent, Katie was and is very much pivotal to the evolution of my thesis. It was important to me to begin talking to stakeholders and possible target users in the real world. People in the business of learning about human behavior and applying their insights to the design of new products or systems, or simply using their learnings to intervene, for the better, in already existing systems. The topics we discussed are very much in line with the line of inquiry I was to adopt further down the line, as we will see later. Her job is to really understand human behavior, in order to drive design from core needs. Daily, she tries to find ways to get as close and as intimate with the groups she is studying. Katie combines keen critical analysis with creative problem solving to develop new methodologies and uncover customer insights. She has an extensive background in both traditional ethnographic research and new social media technologies. As part of her thesis work at USC, she launched a crowd-sourcing startup that mapped citywide trends by neighborhood and researched the effects of on-line communications and microblogging on human interactions and relationships. I really wanted to talk to Katie because of her

background. Digital anthropology is a relatively new field, and is one that arose out of necessity as our lives began to move more and more on-line. We create data trails, we build entire existences in this alternate space. Since we are so interconnected, social phenomena spread very quickly. We can essentially observe evolution in a microcosm by simply tapping into on-line communities. In order to garner insights about a particular brandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s target audiences, she engages in social listening, scouring online sharing platforms for social trends and recurring conversations. She also spends much of her time creating online spaces for people to share aspects of their identities with her over time. In this online environments, she can live with them and through them, almost vicariously. What these spaces look like are chat rooms and online forums. Katieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work seeks to investigate underlying motives, goals and pain points, and begin to uncover their journey. A digital anthropologist, her job description is rather apt. Ethnography in her world, for the most part, consists of building online communities and designing research methodologies that will help her surface out actionable insights for her clients. Activities within those online communities include video and image sharing and conversation via user comments.

KATIE HILLIER

Katie Hillier

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are becoming more connected than ever before. Online, we curate our identities, create tribes and communities. More content might mean more room for misinterpretation.â&#x20AC;?

KATIE HILLIER

I then asked her what social platforms she monitors, and why. First, she determines what group of people she wants to understand. This is achieved by doing background research on the group and finding out what languages or what content forms the majority of their social dialect. Social dialects are linguistic registers shared by a individuals in the same group, be it socioeconomic or ethnic. One platform she uses is Twitter, which is a good source of rapid, off the cuff emotion. Twitter, as with Youtube, Facebook and Tumblr are rich social listening sources for marketers. The internet is a veritable goldmine in terms of sociological research. Writer and OKCupid co-founder Chris Rudder, likens the internet to an experiment; and the users are participants. “The printed word, helps us understand our larger culture. Twitter lets us see groups coming together within it. But books and tweets both are oneto-many forms of communication, and, often, like Major Ballou’s, our most important words are expressed oneto-one” (Christian Rudder, “Dataclysm.”)[3] “Right now, just from your pattern of likes on Facebook (and without relying on status updates or comments), an algorithm can determine with eighty-eight-per-cent accuracy whether you are straight or gay. Sixty per cent of the time, it can tell whether your parents were divorced before you turned twenty-one.” (Make Me a Match, Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker, 2014)[4]. Searches on databases require boolean queries, a type of technical linguistic query. Using specially structured search terms and phrases, you can create a filter for the information needed. We then began to talk about changes she has observed in language in the digital space. What she has seen so far relates to the notion of identity and narrative. The internet is a platform through which individuals have started to develop new identities, to carve out social

niches. Many of the subcultures that have gained relevance in the last few years were born on the internet, on blogs, in the Tumblrverse, platforms like Soundcloud, even Twitter and Facebook, which have to largest number of users. Trending now is the notion of visual communication. Rather than solely words, younger generations have begun to curate multiple identities online, through the use of imagery, and with these, begin to originate new tribes. Digital anthropologists categorize who these people are, the identities they assume based on their chosen lexicons, and by gleaning clues about the personality and social identity markers based on the interactions they have with others. More examples of these interactions are: live-streaming – more than ever, people are taking to platforms like YouTube to share, instant messaging, and microblogging. We are constantly communicating, in our hyper connected world, we are inundated with connections to other people. We then turned to the problems that will inevitably be part of a more visual generations communication. Businesses primarily understand their customers or target audiences through the woods they use. There is currently no fail-safe way to interpret the visual lexicon younger generations use to navigate their social territories. (Visual anthropologists will probably become much more valuable than they currently are!). It is very difficult as a researcher to categorize and search for images, because when we search the internet, we use words. The question now, is, how can we create a framework to understand and search, leaving no room for misinterpretation? Through augmented reality, or tools such as Google Goggles? This will be a challenge for the next few years, especially because imagery has such cultural weight. How will we structure a new visual search engine – what are the new rules?

"In the physical world, we tend to identify ourselves by nationality. But online, where you can reach across cyberspace and speak directly and instantaneously with someone 6,000 miles away without ever passing through customs, nationality isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t nearly as meaningful. The real borders are created by language.â&#x20AC;?

KATIE HILLIER

3.2 SECONDARY RESEARCH

In this section, I delve into secondary research. My sources ranged from academic research articles, books written by leading cultural commentators and researchers in the field of anthropology and linguistics. I also listened to podcasts and read from online publishers such as Wired, The Atlantic, The Verge and Slate Magazine. This ensured that I got a sense of developments in language and communication both on an academic front and on the pulse happenings in pop culture. I addressed two main topics; language innovation and shifts, and language and identity. I was initially interested in how languages evolved over time in different social groups. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve always been really interested in the way our interactions can

drive change. I realized, however, that simply exploring the shifts in ways of communication was not providing enough friction for my design process. I was digging myself deeper into the realm of academic research, and losing sight of my goals as a designer. During the second half of the thesis year, the second semester, I found myself occupied more and more with the notion of identity and how it is expressed but also with the notion that there is a tension at play in how we choose to define ourselves. So, first, I explore patterns of language evolution and innovations, and then start to try to develop understanding of the social aspects of communication.

SECONDARY RESEARCH

40 ORIGINS Language entails not simply having a name for an object, but being able to communicate what to do with it. Cumulative cultural adaption, or social learning is responsible for what we see today. Language is an important factor in communicating concepts. About 200,000 years ago, humans began to develop systems of communication that ensured information would be passed on to larger groups of people than close relatives (Mark Pagel, 2011)[5]. More complex ideas were able to be communicated through language, speech. Over time, this led to an accumulated store of cultural knowledge, which would increase exponentially as generations wore on. Language is a highly efficient tool to transfer information. Imagine what the world would look like without this facilitated flow of information, or a world where innovations died with individuals or very small groups. “Visual theft” (Mark Pagel, 2011) [5] can only go so far. Concepts more complex than naming an object, such as detailing how to use or make an object would never be passed on. However, in order for concepts to be passed on, our cognitive machinery had to evolve to process and store it. What happens if we can’t get our point across? “When we study different language groups and associate them with their cultures, we see that

different languages slow the flow of ideas between groups. They slow the flow of technologies.” (Mark Pagel, 2011)[5] Humankind has evolved to be social creatures, as evinced by the complexity and functionality of our developing brains. Our species would not have attained the level of sophistication it has thus far seen without along with the brain architecture that supports them. The outermost layer of the brain the neocortex, is significantly larger in primates and especially in humans. The neocortex comprises areas of the brain which are involved with language, conscious thought, emotion and behavioral regulation, as well as empathy. (Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size and Language in Humans, Dunbar, Robin et al. 1993). Researchers call it ‘the social brain’.[6] Member exchange information regularly as part of the maintenance of group cohesion. Communication networks describe the patterns of dialogue and interaction within a group. These develop over time, and are dependent on the ever fluid group dynamics present. Oftentimes, the group will follow a hierarchical structure of communication, where the individuals with higher status, as well as those who are most liked, will initiate and receive information earlier than the rest.

41 LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY Language in this work encompasses different modes of communication, be they verbal or nonverbal. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Human mental identities are not like shoes, of which we can only wear one pair at a time. We are all multidimensional beings. Whether a Mr. Patel in London will think of himself primarily as an Indian, a British citizen, a Hindu, a Gujaratispeaker, an ex-colonist from Kenya, a member of a specific caste or kin-group, or in some other capacity depends on whether he faces an immigration officer, a Pakistani, a Sikh or Moslem, a Bengalispeaker, and so on. There is no single platonic essence of Patel. He is all these and more at the same time.â&#x20AC;? (Robert Lane Greene,You Are What You

Speak).[1] This quote was instrumental to the development of my thesis as we will see later on, and is the concept on which I have grounded much of my work. It is a confirmation of what we already implicitly know, but must acknowledge to improve our intersocial relationships. Our identities are fluid, changeable (to some extent) and determined by our interactions. We navigate the world around us leaving impressions on each other, deeply enough to leave a mark.

SECONDARY RESEARCH

42 SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY Social identity is in itself a biased phenomenon; by choosing to belong to a certain category, you are negating another. In other words, by associating yourself with a group, you, concisely, or unconsciously, exclude another. In social psychology, this is termed intergroup conflict, where an in-group makes judgements or decisions against an out-group, ostensibly to make clear the distinction between the two groups, but also, (and interestingly) to enhance the group’s self-worth. Individuals in groups are connected to each other by social relationship, which is communicated through beliefs, preferences, values language, geography, etc. These connections form collective identity, almost like a hive-mind, wherein the members experience an increase in self-esteem through community belonging. Broadly speaking, things like nature and nurture dictate our behaviors and personalities, the impressions we make on the spaces we occupy. In discerning between different speakers (if unseen), we can learn a lot about them from both content words and style of language, written or otherwise. Content words are words that have a culturally shared meaning (James W. Pennebaker. “The Secret Life of Pronouns”)[7] Examples of these are nouns, regular and action verbs, and modifiers such as adjectives. Those are the basics. Style or function words are what we use to connect and organize

content words. Without these, sentences and phrases make no sense. The interesting thing about this is that function words are innocuous “stealth words” (James W. Pennebaker) like “of”, “that”, “in”, and “for”. Based on neurological studies, especially following injury to parts of the linguistic brain called Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area, style words are help frame our social worlds. Style (or function words) are referential–they only make sense if listeners or readers are able to understand the context being communicated. As highly social creatures, relationships with others are highly necessary. Within each sub-group, a subtle and very complex self-categorization takes place. In groups we are constantly evaluating and reevaluating our roles and those of others. Much like animals, humans exhibit territorial and dominance behaviors that are so ingrained that they are often overlooked. These instincts actually help us self organize; group formation is not merely intellectual, a large part of it is biological. On a psychological level, social group membership is also predicated on perceptual or cognitive responses. Basically, people identity with those who have internalized a social membership category that is similar to the one expressed in their own self concept.

43 LINGUISTICS AND GENDER Men and women represent two subcultures of humans. Males and females belong to their own sub-culture and thus use language to maintain identity within their respective groups. Maltz and Borker (1982). Women use more social pronouns, which include words like we, us, he, she, they, and them), concerning themselves more than men with their social surrounding, the intricacies of relationships around them. Testosterone-laden men prioritize day to day tasks, events goals and objects. Men also tend to speak in ways that categorize objects spatially. (My ex-boyfriend is really fond of telling stories that focus almost exclusively on where things are located…) We have long known that biological differences between men and women lead to differences in cognition, so it makes sense that there are variable ways of communicating. Testosterone sampling is normally not something you can do tests on in normal populations, but recently in Amsterdam, a neuropharmacological laboratory conducted a study on female to male transgender patients who were undergoing hormone therapy. What they found through series of functional MRI scans (fMRI) was that grey matter in Broca and Wernicke’s area, both responsible for language processing (speech production and language comprehension, respectively) reduced in size, whilst white matter, neuronal sons coated in myelin (conductive matter for synaptic communication), increased. Exposure to testosterone affected the physical structure of the brain, which underscore differences in how women and men process langue and speech. Additionally, higher testosterone in children has been linked to smaller vocabulary, which correlates with the decrease in verbal fluency skills seen in transsexual patients. (Testosterone affects language

areas of the adult human brain; Hahn, A., Kranz, G. S., Sladky, R., Kaufmann, U., Ganger, S., Hummer, A., Seiger, R., Spies, M., Vanicek, T., Winkler, D., Kasper, S., Windischberger, C., Swaab, D. F. and Lanzenberger, R. (2016)[8]. What does this really mean though? Women use a greater number of cognitive words than men. According the writer James Pennebaker, cognitive words include words that refer to insight, such as “ understand, know, and think”, and words like “reason, because and rationale”, which reflect causal thinking; creating relationships between concepts. Because women spend so much time talking and thinking about others, they are able to to rationalize and analyze social relationships with far more fluidity than men. What I would argue from this is that in perceiving the threads of intent and interaction that link people together, women are the key to how we structure culture and society. Women’s speech is also more susceptible to change, is more dynamic since it deals very much with topics that are subject to change. It has been found that women tend to use linguistic devices that stress solidarity more often than men, more cushioning words while talking to each other, stressing empathy and solidarity. Women are more stylistically flexible than men, fluent in many social dialects. Men tend to interact in ways that maintain, reflect or increase their power or status. “…but there were big differences as a function of people’s age. And social class. And emotional state, level of honesty, personality type, degree of formality, leadership ability, quality of relationships, and on and on. Word use was associated with almost every dimension of social psychology” (James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns)[9].

SECONDARY RESEARCH

44 TWITTER IS GOOD FOR SOME THINGS A lot of my work thus far has been geared towards people who study human behavior such as (digital) anthropologists, sociolinguists and ethnographers both inside and outside academic contexts. I’m also very interested in studying people–we are fascinating, and simply observing and listening to people provides fodder for a lot of my internal narratives and ha helped me develop an intuitive understanding of their behavior. I always want to know what makes people tick. The underlying message of my thesis is that the content of our language, physical or verbal strongly reflects our identities. For me, an identity is the same thing as a label, a category, a narrative you develop around yourself that is reflected in your interests, your behaviors and your physical appearance. We need to categorize in order to describe. (Otherwise the world will disintegrate). Naturally, bias comes into play. As I’ve playfully suggested, something that is something is then definitely not the other thing. Good, bad; organized, sloppy; high-strung, even-keeled; all of these adjectives are categories within which we place ourselves and others, to the exclusion of other descriptors. There are obviously more explicit forms of bias involved in the construction of an identity. In short, we form judgements on people based on what we can see or hear. And we are rarely conscious of it. “I am an organized [insert gender], because I would rather not be a disorganized [insert gender]”. Or, that person must not be very intelligent because of how many times he/ she/we says “like”. Or, up-speaking is a sign of someone with no confidence.

Or, “I work in an advertising firm, I need to start using terms like “ROI”, “KPI” and “deliverables”. When we start to peel back the layers of our linguistic interactions, we see that the words we use are merely that–layers. Depending on context, when people interact with each others, they seem to slough off a little bit of their constructed identities, or at least, take on new characteristics, which can be reflected in speech. It’s empathy; we tend to mirror each other in speech, not to speak of physically through body language. I believe the correct term for this phenomenon is Audience-Modulated Variation, which, I learned recently, is also replicated online. For example, when tweeters hashtag, their tags tend to be more formal– their audience size is larger, there are more strangers likely to view their writing. When the group size is smaller–one is speaking to friends, idioms and geography specific jargon / slang appear. (AUDIENCE-MODULATED VARIATION IN ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA. American Speech; 2015) [10]. If, in conversation, people’s speech patterns remain distinct, it’s highly likely that the speakers are not going to remain interested in speaking to one another. Over time, we begin to group ourselves around social preferences, which tie into social status. And those preferences, a function of social differentiation, as outlined earlier, are often expressed verbally - speech rhythm, idioms, jargon - and physically, through where we live or what we wear.

income Twitter users tended towards more optimistic offerings. They also used more “swear words” and used Twitter as a means of communicating between others in their social groups. Conversely, it was found that the higher income users “[disseminated] news” and used Twitter in a more professional capacity. The amount of information that can be gathered from Twitter and related social media platforms is astounding, and with the right combination of technology and human understanding, we can begin to innovate in sectors like anthropology and ethnography, reducing the cost of chasing people around and actually making it easier to come across research subjects.

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46 THE BASICS OF GROUP FORMATION Individuals must demonstrate and experience a psychological affinity to one another. However, social identity theorists argue that the bond is actually formed upon recognition of a perceived social category, such as “hipster”, “burner”, “soccer player”, or, “tech bro”, and that the psychological attraction develops later. I agree with the latter theory. As humans, we are remarkably biased people not within our immediate social circles. We often make snap judgements about one’s perceived identity by seeing how they move, how they dress and how they interact with others. It then follows that we can choose to form a group by associating ourselves with individuals and then explicitly not associating ourselves with, or identifying with others. From there, our interactions and the roles we settle into in social contexts begin to follow patterns, which are then internalized by the group and which influence member behavior over time. Through those interactions we can begin to develop norms and attitudes which define us. Norms are rules that structure or group’s behavior. “People who identify with a group are simply more loyal to it. They tend to rely on people in their group and distrust people outside it. Group identity has frequently been associated with stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. Many family feuds, regional battles, instances of genocide, and world wars have been fought where group identities served as the rallying cries.” (James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns)[9] “To appreciate how a group functions, look at how members of the group interact with one another. When people in the group are talking, are other members of

the group listening? When they are working on problems together, do they tend to talk in similar ways?” (James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns)[9]. Every group has its own linguistic markers, and it is possible to deduce the degree to which group members agree with each other, or which aspects of the group members identity with. According the Pennebaker, the words we use to describe our community, especially something as relatively impersonal, or as non-intimate, rather, as a workplace, could serve as clues into group dynamics. For example, someone who refers to their place of work as “my company”, will perhaps be less attached to it that someone who refers to their workplace as “our company”, which would signify a strong attachment and investment in the workplace community. Other parts of the fingerprint reflect how the group thinks and feels and how emotionally open, formal, detached, and so forth it is. In theory, the language from any group gathering should provide clues to the dynamics of the group and its members. How people talk about their company is only one way to tap the group dynamics of an organization. By listening to the words people use within any group, several features about the group’s inner workings can be unmasked. Through e-mails, web pages, transcripts of meetings, and other word clues, we can measure how much group members think alike. It is also possible to profile groups in terms of their cohesiveness, productivity, formality, shared history, and, in some cases, their honesty and intentions to change” (James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns)[9].

This is what social scientists study. Now with social media engines like twitter and Instagram, researchers can track and begin to learn more about user groups based on the words and content they post. Even the least obvious, such as income bracket, as outlined late last year by researchers at UPENN (Studying User Income through Language, Behaviour and Affect in Social Media. PLOS ONE, 2015)[11]. Posted words link to behavior which then links back to identity, perceived and/or constructed. Interestingly, on Twitter, it was found that people in higher income brackets tended to use words that express anger or fear (which could perhaps speak to a sense of entitlement), whereas lower income Twitter users tended towards more optimistic offerings. They also used more “swear words” and used Twitter as a means of communicating between others in their social groups. Conversely, it was found that the higher income users “[disseminated] news” and used Twitter in a more professional capacity. The amount of information that can be gathered from Twitter and related social media platforms is astounding, and

with the right combination of technology and human understanding, we can begin to innovate in sectors like anthropology and ethnography, reducing the cost of chasing people around and actually making it easier to come across research subjects. A group’s norms in order to regulate member behavior with other important because it allows for a sense of cohesion and community if you believe that the rationale for someone’s behavior is according to the rules set in place agreed-upon rules this is a fundamental aspect of group structure because they provide motivation. It’s interesting to see how norms vary from group to group. What makes something appropriate? What dictates unacceptable behavior within a group? How are these regulated? Membership in a group allows for a level of accountability between members. We regulate ourselves: we mete out “punishment” via gossip, alienation, “roasting” if an individual has violated the group rules. This sounds so far quite serious, but as well as time consuming, but the highly empathetic human brain has evolved to process these subtle interactions at lightning speed.

SECONDARY RESEARCH

Humankind has evolved to be social creatures, as evinced by the complexity and functionality of our developing brains. Our species would not have attained the level of sophistication it has thus far seen without along with the brain architecture that supports them. The outermost layer of the brain - the neocortex, is significantly larger in primates and especially in humans. The neocortex comprises areas of the brain which are involved with language, conscious thought, emotion and behavioral regulation, as well as empathy. (Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size and Language in Humans, Dunbar, Robin et al. 1993). Researchers call it ‘the social brain’. Member exchange information regularly as part of the maintenance of group cohesion. Communication networks describe the patterns of dialogue and interaction within a group. These develop over time, and are dependent on the ever fluid group dynamics present. Oftentimes, the group will follow a hierarchical structure of communication, where the individuals with higher status, as well as those who are most liked,

will initiate and receive information earlier than the rest. The simplest examples can be seen with our allegiances to sports teams. One of the most clever social psychology experiments to demonstrate this was run in the mid-1970s by Robert Cialdini and his colleagues. Students who were attending universities with topranked football teams were called in the middle of football season as part of a survey purportedly dealing with campus issues. In the previous weeks, their home football teams had won a major game but also had lost another. After a few preliminary questions, the interviewer asked about one of the two pivotal games in the season, “Can you tell me the outcome of that game?” If their team had won, they usually answered, “We won.” But if their team had failed to win the game, their answer was more likely “They lost.” Taking partial credit for your team’s winning is a form of basking in[…]” (James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns)[9].

YOUTH CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION Generation-Z (born after 1998) is much more visual than other generations. They have a fluency in new forms of communication that is amplified by their increased connectedness. Using multiple lenses and multiple views, they begin to build a very complex identity in a digital space. Digital anthropologists categorize who these people are, the identities they assume are expressed by their chosen sociolects, both verbal and visual, and the interactions they have with others that reinforce their them. This generation is also much more strongly visually communicative than other generations. They have

a fluency in new forms of communication that is amplified by their increased connectedness. If we take look at the top platforms in use right now for interaction and socializing, the visual platforms such as Tumblr or Instagram surface out to be the most frequented. This, as discussed earlier, is a new rich new territory for marketing strategists, who have begun to develop ads and campaigns that ‘speak the language of their younger targets, referencing, for example Snapchat messaging formats, and using Tumblr as an ad platform (Calvin Klein).

CALVIN KLEIN X SNAPCHAT CAMPAIGN MARIO SORRENTI

SECONDARY RESEARCH

50 YOUTH CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION Communication and interaction reinforce identity. Much of speech is active social differentiation. We are choosing our content, and thus choosing how we want to be represented. Early adopters take on new technologies: Generation-Z are coming up with their own language devices and slangs — creating comprehension gaps that others can’t bridge. Generation-Z (born after 1998) is much more visual than other generations. They have a fluency in new forms of communication that is amplified by their increased connectedness. Emerging forms of communication, such as emoji and gifs, have their birthplace in the world of digital technology. Generation Z (those born between 1997– onwards) and Generation Y, or millennials, especially late stage (1985–mid 90’s), are extremely conversant in the use of emoji or other net-speak shorthand (yr, tho, lyk, brt, tfw), and are responsible for a huge number of new words, and even word ‘up-cycling’. Youth are the ones who evolve languages. They spend more time experimenting with it, and it is also a form of social differentiation. This is sometimes a source of bafflement and censure from older generations, some of whom see shifts in language as decay. The youth have ways of talking about the world around them that are opaque in meaning to adults. Slang. Slang is language micro-evolving; it is evanescent, ever-changing, but thick with meaning, socially. The words they choose help to frame their identities. It’s the same as wearing a badge, or a label, only this one is fluid, responsive and agile in the context of interacting with others. “Slang is a good indicator of social distance within different groups of adolescent.” (Theresa Labov; Social and Language Boundaries Among Adolescents)[12]. The youth are overrepresented on social media. Many have accounts on Instagram and snapchat with followers always numbering at least in the mid-to high hundreds. On the more popular handles, much of the content, apart from the obligatory “squad”

(friend group) photo are memes in video, gif and image format always captioned in the latest slang or phrase formulations. Examples: “When u [insert description of emotion or activity + incongruous image]”, or “It me”, or [Present-tense description of activity] + “like” + absurd photo”. Or, all caps - not to denote shouting (as it meant not too long ago), but is used by the ultra, subculture hip - just because. This generation is also much more strongly visually communicative than other generations. They have a fluency in new forms of communication that is amplified by their increased connectedness. If we take look at the top platforms in use right now for interaction and socializing, the visual platforms such as Tumblr or Instagram surface out to be the most frequented. Primarily visual communicators, it is fitting that we are making a splashy tech relevant return to pictographs such as emoji. pictographs have long been part of our vocabulary, seen most commonly in heraldry, rebuses (visual puns, using symbols) and in hieroglyphics. These elements help us round out and emotionally contextualize a message, but are not as successful in conveying concise meaning. What we understand from emoji are feelings, moods. Several of these emoji, especially the “smiley” categories are more or less internationally recognized. What we can conclude from this is that physically grounded, visual aids can be very successful tools for translating the nuances between languages. Using multiple lenses and multiple views, people begin to build a very complex identity in a digital space. Digital anthropologists categorize who these people are, the identities they assume based on their chosen lexicons and the interactions they have with others that reinforce their identities.

SPRING CLEANING, 2015 BENEDICT BRINK

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MEMES, INSTAGRAM, 2015 CABBAGECAT, P4RISHYNES

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54 EXPLORING SUBCULTURE “Languages get associated with ethnic identities, and where the viability and desirability of such group identification is lost, language shift typically takes place.” (Dediu et al). Tumblr, Facebook and Reddit are the frothing ocean from which zillions of subcultures emerge, either to be smashed into unsalvageable fragments upon the shore of the mainstream, or be appropriated and transformed into a ‘full blown force majeure’ by the denizens of the commercial mass majority. The definition of a subculture is a group of individuals within a social group that strives to differentiate itself from a parent culture

to which is belongs. Classical understanding of subcultures sees it as form of rebellion, usually by the youth, against the current status quo, the norms. Prominent researcher, Dick Hebdige wrote that a subculture is a subversion to normalcy, due, usually to perceived injustices or dissatisfaction with the ‘dominant societal standard’ (Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Hebdige, Dick, 1979)[14]. Further, subcultures are formed by people who feel that their needs are not being met by the dominant culture. A subculture creates a niche for likeminded people who seek to redefine and freely express their social identities.

DOMINANT CULTURE? What makes a dominant culture, dominant? How does one become a member of a majority? As someone who has always been somewhat attracted to subcultures, and who has avoided being part of a dominant social group – notwithstanding the fact that I am a woman of color – I’ve always been fascinated, and somewhat wary of (here comes my bias!) those who conform. Subcultures and dominant cultures are often at odds with each other, although the interfaces between them are fluid and rather porous. This point of contact is usually where the communication occurs and what sparks innovations in both territories. The desire to conform is what drives and maintains the cohesion of a group. Being part of a subculture means adopting a lifestyle of so-called non-

conformity. Ironically, conformity is a staple of all social groups; as outlined earlier, the process of social differentiation and subsequent group structuring relies on a set of intergroup norms that result in more or less similar outward behavior. Outward behavior, which I define here as markers of a social group, consists of a combination of sociolect, mannerisms, geographical niche, clothing / fashion, music, and other visual affectations such as recreational interests. In subcultures, these are subverted to the norm, highly distinctive and symbolic – often with the aim of standing out from the crowd, the dominant culture (Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Hebdige, Dick, 1979)[14].

YOUTH MODE, 2013 KHOLE MEDIA

SECONDARY RESEARCH

56 SUBCULTURE AND THE MAINSTREAM: COOL, OR NOT? Interestingly enough, the mainstream, as powered by a capitalist agenda, regularly appropriates subculture specific markers in order to appeal to the masses who are continually in search of “cool”. Before the age of digital natives, the commercial appropriation lay within slang, style and music, although now, with the rampant social media use and curated microsocieties, markers such as memes, internet speak, as well as an avid listening into platforms like Snapchat, tumblr, twitter, and interestingly enough, Facebook – which until a couple years ago, was considered by most

to be a bland social media platform cluttered with content from your mom or dad (after a grudging mutual friend add), or pictures from very conservative person you went to highschool with whose boring babies children you actually don’t want to see. The very ethos of a subculture is to be removed from the norm – the process of cultural appropriation can destroy a subculture, but also result its evolution as members begin regenerate, or to seek new modes of individuality of expression, away from the bright light of the mainstream.

INTERNET AND SUBCULTURE

I wanted to take a tour through the current, but perhaps fading – now that numerous articles have covered them, and now that numerous media channels are catching on – music and fashion trends that have their birthplace on the blogosphere. “Unlike the pre-millennial era, nowadays we have a platform through which people can create, share and voice common interests (no matter how eccentric or niche), entirely free from the traditional constraints of location, demographic or distance.” Nico Amarca, Highsnobiety.

57 VAPORWAVE A subculture and genre of music that was relatively short lived, but oh so wondrously distinctive, it splintered off an earlier genre known as Seapunk, that transacted in many of the same visual motifs. Like most genres, it has evolved stylistically, and its followers have taken on slightly different identities. The name of this sub genre comes from the words “vaporware”, which is a term used to describe soft or hard-ware that never gets onto the market. This references the very internet-y, very 80’s future tech aesthetic so emblematic of this niche culture. The sonic content of Vaporwave pulls from the exceedingly cliched and cheesy 80’s elevator or “call-waiting” sound tracks (Normcore: Youth Mode, KHOLE Trend Reports, October 2013), blending New Age music cheesy smooth jazz from the early to late 90’s (often played in my dad’s car), with a several layers of futuristic “technocorporatism”. The aesthetics of Vaporwave saw the almost heretic combining of marble Renaissance busts with 3D renderings of chrome colored shapes, all floating in a glowing grid. These visuals often included glitch art, and purposefully distorted graphics, along with, inexplicably, Japanese characters, and pastel hued gradients. They incorporate obsolete ’90s web design, palm trees and virtual reality renderings from earlier times, which taken together, create an

“mystical, cyberpunk-inspired realm” Normcore: Youth Mode, 2013. The members of this “club” belong firmly in the sub-art world; many members are artists or bedroom producers. The visuals arts members are typically young NYU art students or post grads whose work has recently been featured in establishments like the New Museum, a post-internet, postmodern mecca, or the Swiss Institute for the Arts, whose avant-garde, tech-centric and trend-bending exhibitions draw droves of like-minded creatives. An offshoot of this subgroup are the Sad Boys, popularized by the eponymous Swedish rap group and lead, Yung Lean. Their aesthetic leans towards the nostalgic but future facing. Initially a genre of musician, young males who produce ironically sad, “emotional” tracks, protesting against the machismo that permeates hip hop, or metal, and which may have actually had its beginnings in Drake’s music. The Sad Boy uniform features bucket hats, cargo pants and limited edition trackie bottoms from the 90’s, as well as more futuristic materials such as neoprene, and including gender neutral silhouettes like long t-shirts over drop crotch trousers, and oversized reflector taped windbreakers. Small, circular framed sunglasses complete the look, as well as (increasingly), the downy cheeks of precollege youth.

SECONDARY RESEARCH

LEFT, ABOVE VAPORWAVE, 2014 TUMBLR

YOUTH MODE, 2013 KHOLE MEDIA

ABOVE: SAD BOYS NOISEY, VICE MEDIA SECONDARY RESEARCH

HEALTH GOTH

It is now characterized by sleek black asymmetric or geometric silhouettes, neoprene structured sweatshirts, black and white color and material blocking, black baseball hats, monochromatic sports gear and brands like Adidas’ Y-3 and Nike, the swooshes and stripes comprising the main symbology of these urban tribes. It has been mainstreamed / popularized by designer Rick Owens – guilty of multiple counts of subculture appropriation – and by more subversive brands like Hood By Air. Some echoes of the original Health Goth ethos are still found in this incarnation, plastic chains, latex mouth guards, (mouth guards and face masks), sterile, but sleek and seductive, and sometimes NSFW, BDSM-tinged editorial content. Health goth has been diluted down for the masses, the dominant culture. Now, fans may purchase health goth inspired items of clothing from H&M, and Forever21, or be outfitted in the latest by Alexander Wang and Rick Owens, which favor sportier and more accessible interpretations of the trend.

As it hit the mainstream, Health goth evolved away from its original tenets; a preoccupation with human evolution via bioenhancement, anti-aging, visual commentary on transhumanism and the design of 3D-rendered dark landscapes tending towards science fiction futurism and the like. First introduced by a trio of Portland musicians, whose Facebook group ‘Health Goth’, is home to many followers, the modified version of Health Goth has spread through the fashion scene like wildfire, with major hubs located in urban centers like New York, London Stockholm, Paris and Tokyo – and of course, the internet.

HEALTH GOTH; COTTWEIL, COMPLEX MAG Secondary Research

62 NORMCORE Finally, there is Normcore, a fashion and ideological trend that endeavors to be the antithesis of subculture – it is anti-trend in its philosophy. At its zenith, Normcore is the return to normalcy – the ultimate coolness, is in embracing uncoolness, conformity and blandness. The ultimate individuality is to actively embrace the norm and “master sameness” (KHOLE). This movement sought to

NORMCORE / YOUTH MODE, 2013 KHOLE MEDIA

expose just how fluid and ephemeral the visible trappings of our social identities truly are. It is viewed as a return to suburban roots, complete with white keds, formless blue jeans, khaki trousers and comfortable sweatshirts. As High Snobiety editor Nico Amarca puts it: “Normcore moves away from a coolness that relies on difference to a postauthenticity coolness that opts into sameness.”

Secondary Research

4.0 INTERVENTIONS AND LENSES

Over the course of my thesis year, In Flux has seen several incarnations. It has been imagined as a product (non-profit, for profit and crowd-funded/sourced), a service, a social good platform, a campaign, a brand, and as a business. We were encouraged to explore the territory around our thesis and develop further where it seemed appropriate. The second semster saw me dive deeper in identity, place and bias, with all of my interventions tackling some aspect of my theis statement. set, a geosocial app bypasses stereotyping and aesthetic bias by abstracting user profiles into colored shapes; Where We Are What We Speak, an experiential event, challenges visors biases

by making them listen to conversation snippets from around the city and guessing where they originated from; Dicto helps users embody the culture whose language they are learning by teaching them mannersims and posture, [decocder] allows ethnographers to dive deeper into their subjectsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lives; and Transceiver, a protofuturist object collects and averages the sound of usersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; daily routines and shares them to other users so that they can live vicariously through their sonic patterns, and learn out that we are not so different from each other, after all.

INTERVENTIONS AND LENSES

ANDRE ELLIOT; ACOLUTHIC REDUX

67 GESTURE I was also fascinated by the notion of hand gesture as communication, looking at the ways our relationship to technological devices has added to our gestural vocabulary. I made a short video that explores a series of hand movements that we can only attribute to the use of digital screens, things like volume control on electronic devices.

GESTURE

SOUVIK PAUL; HANDS

GESTURE

71 DICTO Dicto is a cloud-based A.I. companion for people who want to learn a new language, but have no time to go out and do it the best way: immersion – being around native speakers. Converse with Dicto at home, in the shower, in the living room, or in the kitchen. Outfitted with a broad range of language packs, Dicto speaks pitch perfect everything: listening as you stammer your way through a new language, it checks your grammar, conjugation and accent, making sure you hit all the right notes. Speak to learn: practice makes perfect. For this project, I imagined Dicto as a campaign, with a series of print and poster ads posted across the city. Dicto’s personality here as reflected by the copy and color way is conversational, bright, playful, and a little saucy. The posters pictured here explore the use of two different typefaces:

Sofia Pro - Bold (sans serif) and Adobe Caslon Pro - Bold (serif). They pair well together, combining modern approachability with an edge of serif-induced elevation. Physically, Dicto what’s inspired by Dieter Ram’s radios, which were sleek and utterly functional in form. Dicto was a more playful and colorful take on his designs and further iterations Incorporated modified grill patterns. I revisited Dicto in the second semester, this time in a humorous video ad campaign that fully fleshed out its capabilities. Dicto reappears as a hypothetical Amazon Echo language module, outfitted with subscription-based language packs; $25 per month for one language pack, $80 per month for unlimited language packs.

DICTO

76 SET One of the lenses covered in our thesis process is design for screens, learning how to communicate intelligibly through digital interaction design, be it an app interface or a digital display. This course, taught by Brent is a second semester course that provides us with a framework to “understand, discuss and create effective interactive designs on digital displays”. The course immersed us within the current culture of screen design through a series of lectures, collaborative studio sessions, open discussions and thorough critiques, so that we would be able to develop fluency in digital screen design as well as articulate our products through the lens of current trends. I wanted to create a platform that simulated the principles of social identity theory. As humans, we assign value to being in an in-group versus being in an out-group –– people outside one’s immediate social circle. We need to belong, and belonging in one place is at the expense of belonging in another. As empathetic creatures, we negotiate constantly for the roles we play when interacting with each other. The roles we slip into are also to a large extent, responsive on outward pressures, be they overtly negative or implicit / ingrained in the environment in which we find ourselves. Our social self expression is constantly in flux; moderated by social context, but identity is not solely an abstract, malleable thing. Identity is expressed outwardly: dress, manner of speaking,

speech content, language and choice of space. These are markers which help to define the boundaries of a social identity. (I liken them to a role that must be performed by an actor.) These markers help highlight the differences or similarities between the performer and perceiver. Naturally, these markers are evinced in social context, where people have a chance to interact with, and interpret the various aspects of an individual’s identity, and their effectiveness depends on another social being’s familiarity with the markers, or social lexicon. This leaves room for misinterpretation: individuals not privy to the lexicon contained within the roles being played often misconstrue their significance, leading to avoidance, exclusion and discrimination. I initially designed an app that would help marketers determine where and what target users lived, traveled and were interested in. It was a geo-social app that scraped social media data. Based on my working thesis topic, which explores the relationship between language, identity and place, I wanted to explore how we use language, both physical and verbal to express our social identities and exploring how they are both imposed and self-constructed. Talking to Katie Hillier, a digital anthropologist at WhatIf Innovation, I learned that developing social listening tools, as well as providing platforms to would help social researchers innovation and marketing firms better understand their target groups, are key places to innovate in or disrupt.

I learned that many of the platforms used are outdated, and rather complicated to use. With this in mind, the platform I originally designed was an app that uses information from social media, be it slang, words and hashtags on Twitter, or memes and geolocated images from Instagram, to track the flow of social trends and communities through time and space. This I imagined, could hopefully be a useful tool for marketers and advertisers who need to conduct user research or develop personas for targeting content. Users would be able to filter their search based on geography - by navigating the google powered map -as well as age, race, gender, language and mood (via emoji, phrasing). The results on the map would be time scrubbable, to track the spread of trends. I then learned through further stakeholder interviews with Katie Hillier (WhatIf Innovation) and Ingrid Fetell (IDEO), that though this was a viable, and even desirable product, using an app in the context of research was not something they normally did. From further research, I identified that although the market I was trying to enter is unsaturated, I would be getting into steep competition with successful, and well designed platforms like Infegy. I had wondered about reducing the cost to entry and simplifying the app to help people traveling throughout a city learn more about their neighbors. This did not appeal to me, to say the least. Thus far, my designed interventions had all been academic, heavily specialized, for niche populations like researchers, marketers, ethnographers and sociolinguists. Ingrid Fetell also generously challenged me to explore a more urgent and

SET

socially beneficial use case for set. I wanted to broaden my reach by broadening my audience and injecting meaningful playfulness into my product. “When people who are talking don’t share the same culture, knowledge, values, and assumptions, mutual understanding can be especially difficult. Such understanding is possible through the negotiation of meaning. To negotiate meaning with someone, you have to become aware of and respect both the differences in your backgrounds and when these differences are important. ” (George Lakoff, Metaphors We Live By). I reimagined set as a geo-social puzzle game that simulates social group formation. It uses social media data (words, phrases, geotagged images and memes) to map, track and categorize its users. The platform is inspired by social identity theory which describes how people group together based on the characteristics they manifest within their constructed social identities. It’s important to understand that our social identities are very fluid; understanding how we take on different roles depending on different social contexts could go a long way to reducing intergroup conflict. set is about building empathy by exposing our commonalities and rendering the differences between us joyful and colorful. Avatars With color and play in mind, I designed tangram inspired user avatars. These are various brightly colored shapes that are generated based on social media attributes, the content we share online such as geotagged images and phrases.

SET SCREENS

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SET SCREENS

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;Right now, just from your pattern of likes on Facebook (and without relying on status updates or comments), an algorithm can determine with eighty-eight-per-cent accuracy whether you are straight or gay. Sixty per cent of the time, it can tell whether your parents were divorced before you turned twenty-one.â&#x20AC;? NICK PAUMGARTEN, THE NEW YORKER, 2014

These would be generated based on an algorithm that scrapes and processes key components from a user’s social media output. The idea here is to abstract away from more defining characteristics such race, ethnic group or religion, or even simply social group. In app, users can begin to cluster and match themselves with other users based on the characteristics set has identified. While users navigate the area around them through set_, they can bump into other users with similar interests. From there, they can begin to converge into new shapes – in real time. This activity fosters compromise and teamwork by simulating group dynamics and group formation – the role playing and social maneuvering that would occur in the physical world. Potential Users Ingrid proposed that set be developed as a tool

to help youngsters in kindergarten or first grade become comfortable with the notion of race and ethnicity. If I remove the social media aspect of set, it could be used played in kindergartens – where we all first become aware that not everyone is like us. It could spark accessible ethnic and racial dialogues in class. The personality data could be gathered through simple pictorial questionnaires, much like personality tests, administered by teachers in the classroom. As iPads are becoming more and more prevalent as communication and play tools among young children, it isn’t very difficult to imagine the set app for iPad as a viable teaching tool. I also see set as a fascinating tool for people traveling about a city. By simply and colorfully exposing commonalities between people around us, I also see it as a way subtly expose and counter the prejudices we form against people outside our immediate social circles.

SET

86 SERVICE DESIGN AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP: [DECODER] One lens of the thesis is service design and entrepreneurship, a class taught by Steven Dean. “Services have a significant impact in our everyday lives and in great measure determine the quality of our well being as we interact with the world around us. As we are called upon to imagine and design increasingly complex product-service systems, we need new frameworks for understanding and tools to steer us toward better outcomes, more meaningful service experiences, and greater chances for viability of our businesses.”

In this class we began by learning how to explain our theses to outsiders clearly and carefully. We started by pulling out key terms and phrases from our theses in order to develop a consistent vocabulary with which to describe the concepts within our topics. this required a careful filtering out of what was unnecessary and what needed to be defined more clearly. from there, we began to develop thesis statements that would clearly articulate our goals, hypotheses and motivations. After this, we were tasked with creating system map representative of our theses. This was a tool for illustrate the relationships between the people and objects, or objects and processes and people and processes, in order to reveal opportunities for improvement through design. The interactions between each element could be characterized as conversations; the more clearly needs and goals are communicated, the more efficiently the conversation will go. and the more rapidly a need would be fulfilled. To that

end, we were asked to build upon opportunities for conversation, to see where the dialogue (so to speak) in the current system breaks down, and to pinpoint where the products and services we would design could most effectively intervene, and facilitate successful “conversations”. The problem statement I developed to help me concept a service was this: Sociolinguists and anthropologists study culture as it relates to language and geography. Unfortunately, many lack the streamlined and easily accessible resources required to work as efficiently as they would like. this observation stemmed from a series of observations, both from past experience and from interviews. traditionally, the social studies fields see significantly slower patterns of innovation or the implementation of new technologies. This may be as a result of receiving less funding than what is allocated to the sciences, or simply a function of the archaic structure of academia. Probably both. Notwithstanding, there are inefficiencies in current ethnographic sampling practices that lead to longer periods of time in the field, as well as difficulties surfacing out deeper insights without having to extend field time. With this is mind, I concepted [decoder], an ever-evolving multimedia research database. It simplifies access to research materials and serves as a flexible repository for data gathered during field work.

[DECODER]

STATE OF THE ART: ETHNOGRPAHY RESEARCH DATABASES

Issues with current platforms From my research, I learned that most databases are private and paywalled. They are not always accessible to academics outside a proprietary institution, and require extensive permissions to access them. This does make sense, if only in the highly political world of academia, researchers often jealously guard their research, for fear of competition from rival labs. Competition for resources such as funding, and all the benefits acclaim could bring a lab. I also found that the data collected is not updated as frequently; the data is often “stale”, having had to pass through several hoops. There is a lag between information acquisition and application that can be explained by the lengthy periods can ethnographers spend in the field, but more so by the difficulties they may have in excavating enough data from their samples. Scouring internet offerings, it became clear to me that the current platforms and databases in use are clunky, and ironically, are not designed as per human centered design principles, given that my users are primarily investigating human behavior. Speaking to Katie Hillier, I learned that current database offerings have somewhat steep learning curves, or s she puts it “high cost to participation”. Search is conducted using Boolean queries, which are not in and of themselves complicated, but require awkward syntax that is unintuitive. Future, given the fact that visual data is more digestible than grids and words, databases

remain drab, multi buttoned, laden with dropdown menus and inscrutable results columns. Currently there are no opportunities to visualize data on maps or even to navigate screens the same way you would navigate a physical space. This is despite advances in technology, particularly in virtual reality and augmented reality. After identifying which target user and stakeholder pain points manifest most frequently and meaningfully along the ethnographic research process, I began to put together a list of parameters within which the practice should revolve. Additional researched helped me solidify the needs of my user groups. firstly, ethnography requires a rigorous process of data collection and analysis using a scientific method, prior to immersion into the field. Ethnographers need to enter the field with some notion of context, although, not too much, lest their expectations bias their observations and insights. Ethnographers also, funnily enough, need to devote more time to the process of data analysis than to the fieldwork itself, which speaks to the issue I discussed at length previously. A lengthy sampling period points to inefficiencies and perhaps, time wasted. A ethnographer needs the ability to flesh out contextual information about targets quickly, taking into account how people move through space, and observing how the things in their environment may impact their behavior, thoughts and motivations.

[DECODER]

Decoder is both a desktop platform and a mobile app. the former is a flexible database that pairs with the latter, a mobile ethnographic sample recorder. It allows researchers to 1) create context around their subjects more easily by making information easily accessible through tagging and crowdsourcing, and 2) record the environments and subjects being investigated in 360Ë&#x161; for later immersive playback. The goal of this intervention is to reduce the time and energy spent conducting ethnographic research by streamlining, aggregating and organizing information in a visually pleasing way. [decoder] will make current research practices run more efficiently by helping to sequester relevant data in one space. Speaking with my sociolinguistics expert, Gregory Guy, I learned something interesting about the impact my concept could have on the field. Apart from the positives, previously enumerated, I would probably come up against issues with informed consent. If an interviewee has agreed to have their physical space and their voices recorded, does that consent extend to other researchers using the platform? How can I meet the expectations of privacy

required to work in the field? There are two paths I could take: the first path would be to implement a face and voice masking filter on the recording portion of the app, and the second would be to remove the crowdsourcing functionality of the platform, and engage users (primarily universities and marketing firms) individually. Another issue that surfaced was cost. [decoder] would be somewhat more expensive than the databases already in use because of the sheer amount of data and developing that would need to go into it. [decoder] will make current research practices run more efficiently by helping to sequester relevant data in one space. It reduces the time and energy spent conducting ethnographic research by streamlining, aggregating and organizing collected information in a way that is clear and easy to access. The mobile plugin will allow users to recreate the spaces and contexts they were immersed in. This will help surface out more insights about their target audiences.

set

DESODER MOBILE SCREENS

[DECODER]

[DECODER] DESKTOP WIREFRAMES

[DECODER]

[DECODER] DESKTOP WIREFRAMES

[DECODER]

99 WHERE WE ARE WHAT WE SPEAK The research finding that challenged and angered me the most was the notion that linguistic profiling based on content of speech, accent or dialect is one of the most insidious kinds of discrimination in the workplace. One part of the thesis work involved designing an experiential event. For me, the event was the central metaphor of her thesis brought to life; physicalized, so that outsiders could be immersed within the idiosyncratic world I had created. Experiential design is a powerful means of parsing out what information is actually going to be useful to your audience. It is relatively simple to concept an event, but crystallizing ideas into a physical and or digital experience

requires a lot of planning, feedback, experimentation, prototyping and paring down. My classmates and I were challenged to design experiences that evoked an emotional response and provoked a transformation in their guests. To begin with, we brainstormed event typologies ranging from games, to speakeasies, to themed gallery shows. Understanding the typology of my event helped me to conceptualize the accessories and props required to give life to the idea. One of the main themes in my thesis statement is the link between the expression of a identity through speech and the how others judge us based on the content of our speech. To that end, I designed “Where We Are What We Speak”.

“There is a stigma associated with sounding different. Linguistic prejudice is one of the most insidious forms of discrimination.” GREGORY GUY, NYU

WHERE WE ARE WHAT WE SPEAK

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INSPIRATION BOARD; SOURCE / PINTEREST

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Secondary Research

102 WHERE WE ARE WHAT WE SPEAK Where We Are What We Speak was a multimedia sculpture installation; a tour of the city through people’s conversations. On display was a series of eavesdropped conversations gathered from different neighborhoods around New York. I invited visitors to walk around the space through the white noise of the city to try and identify where each conversation had taken place. Visitors navigating the show interacted with the speakers for a short amount of time before moving along to the next station / neighborhood. At each station, visitors have to tally their selection on worksheets located to the right of each concrete tube. It was an exploration of different social groups based on speech content and place. While it tested my visitors’ knowledge and understanding of the social makeup of their city, I used the experience to successfully provoke curiosity and self reflection, confronting my visitors with their own biases. When we eavesdrop, we are automatically outside a conversation, which is the contractual interaction. From the outside, we hear only a fraction of what is being communicated, but the tidbits we hear are enough for us to develop extensive narratives about the people we are listening to. We judge immediately– we can’t help it. What I would like to do is provide an arena for people to be confronted by their willingness to judge and develop a greater empathy and understanding for others, especially since what we express is so fluidly linked to who we are.

THE INVITATION WAS IN .GIF FORM. THE BUILDINGS FLICKERED, AND THE PIXELS GYRATED. I USED WHITE NOISE IMAGERY AS A METAPHOR OF THE SOUNDS OF THE CITY WHERE WE ARE WHAT WE SPEAK

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CONCRETE AND STEEL, METAPHORS OF THE CITY

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CONCRETE AND STEEL, METAPHORS OF THE CITY

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111 PHYSICAL PROTOTYPING - A FUTURING EXERCISE 3DPD2 was a class that challenged us, my fellow Products of Design graduate students and I, to develop physical, meaningful products relating in some way to our thesis. these were meant to be conceived with the utmost care and attention to detail; to eventually become as realistic and sellable as possible. The course was initially grounded in the Dunne and Raby school of speculative design, where we were to design thoroughly science fiction products which asked pointed questions about current society – taking cues from science fiction and other pseudo-scientific, futuristic literature. We were to imagine futures far away from today’s present and create a product / societal paring based on either our thesis statements or another lens, be it service, interaction or experiential design. We were also encouraged to pull from the previous semester’s work– especially if it still made sense. After months of connecting in the digital, screen based space, we were relieved and excited to find ways to communicate our theses physically. The theme I selected for my product was identity. We were then asked to imagine two future worlds that this product could exist, either dystopian or utopian, and to formulate the rules and cultural ecosystem that the product would potentially follow. This exercise proved an especially helpful means of elucidating the functionality of our products. I later developed two storylines in which to incorporate the theme of identity into two speculative futures. The dystopian future I imagined, Babel Resurrected depicts the dampening of singular identities – I told a story of conformity enforce by a heavy-handed dictatorship. In this scenario, in the far far future, after the earth has gone through a series of cataclysmic events, both manmade and natural, an uprising led by two academics, a neuroscientist and sociologist, marks the end of freedom of speech – literally. Here, the unsanctioned use of slang and jargon was punishable by public mutilation and / or torture. Individuality is frowned upon, because any deviations from the norm could result in alienation or

other such conflict. The product in this scenario was the mentis, a portable brainwave scanning device. Its role is unclear, or at least not fleshed out, because I chose to develop it in my utopian future. The second short story describes a utopian society structured much like in the far past – a nod to hunter gatherer societies that were comprised of relatively few (unlike today) individuals who all shared a familial, or at least close to familial bond with one another. Thoughtsong takes place in the far reaches of the future, again post-cataclysm Earth. The Earth’s population is enormously diminished, and the small communities that remain are locavores, both in culture, materiality and produce, with trade being somewhat limited, but not prohibitively so. Thoughtsong describes a day in a life of a family as it revolves around the product accessory pairing I chose to create. The mentis, as described before, is a highly portable brainwave scanner in the form of a wooden, or other material, wand. The mentis is used to capture thought in the form of wave patterns transform it into a tune: thoughtsong. Thought song would then be played back on a device called the cantic, a specialized speaker owned by every household. Thought song is an alternate form of communication, truer than speech and more beautiful, engaging with listeners’ emotions more strongly than normal speech. It was a new form of rhetoric that had applications in the political sphere; individuals with the most charismatic or compelling thoughtsongs were most trusted as it it nearly impossible to lie to a brain scanner. The part of the story I most enjoyed was the notion of a tapestry of sound; townships would hold monthly recitations for families to showcase their compositions.

3DPD2

112 PHYSICAL PROTOTYPING - A FUTURING EXERCISE [DYSTOPIAN FUTURE]

BABEL RESURRECTED ___

“We are all united under the same tongue.” It was the year 2275. One hundred years before, the Vox regime had come to power, after a vicious, brutal and world destroying coup. They had identified that conflict is bred of difference. As vast as the world was at the time, so too was the variety of languages spoken. The answer? Long ago, before airplanes and hover cars and AI and breast augmentation and space travel and industrialization and and and… Once, an unknown God of a long ago people had cursed humankind to lifetimes of misunderstandings. Once, all had spoken the same tongue, thereafter, none did. The Tower of Babel. “But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other. So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.” Over time, the scattering of the people led to the different cultures that had once existed in the past. Different languages, and customs. From one to many. All this led to violence and strife. Time and time again, there were wars, terrorist attacks, plagues of treatment resistant diseases, inhospitable swathes of land which rendered millions unable to feed or shelter themselves.

Most of the world’s population came to an abrupt end– the earth’s climate, becoming more and more hostile and perverse, had swept massive populations to their deaths under water and mud. In other places, the oil and mineral plundered earth had bucked and seethed and raged, shaking off its inhabitants like fleas. Those who survived created factions, each more radical and extremist than the last. Life was a mad scramble for resources and community. Finally, the Vox regime rose to power. A regime led by two: a neuroscientist and a sociologist, who reasoned that peace would come through eliminating multiculturalism. If all spoke the same language and followed the same rules and tenets the same way, there would be no more conflict. They decided to prevent those under their rule from speaking other languages, which was easy enough to do since the world’s population had been reduced to close to 1 billion. All had to learn Universal, a bastardization of what was formerly known as English. This was the least complex language to learn; it was the most stripped down and was already being spoken by a large population. Universal did not only language also included gesture and facial expressions, as well as intonations. All speakers were required to participate in rigorous “maintenance exercises” in order to keep their speech patterns and physical expression consistent with the law. Maintenance exercises were headed by the Vox mentors, who were dispatched daily to the small town centers located around the Vox regime headquarters. Language purity was essential to maintaining the peace. The human knack for competition with others was crushed. Any dissenters who insisted on speaking or reading the old languages were publicly put to death or tortured.

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Rows upon rows of helmets, gleaming in the wan light of the sun. A slight mist rolled through the arena, dissipating immediately after the horn blared. Four by four, eight by eight, twenty by twenty, concentric squares of Vox mentors stood at attention as the Vox Ducibus prowled through the ranks, their scanners leveled at the receptor bays on each helmet. “Greatness is in oneness”, the Vox Dux, proclaimed from her elevated platform at the lip of the gathering dome. “We must be in accord with one another. Accord in behavior comes from accord in thought. Accord in thought comes from accord in speech.” The Vox mentors then dispersed to their target communities, where they would remain for the week, monitoring speech, and leading maintenance exercises. One tongue good; many tongues, bad. The second short story describes a utopian society structured much like in the far past – a nod to hunter gatherer societies that were comprised of relatively few (unlike today) individuals who all shared a familial, or at least close to familial bond with one another. Thoughtsong takes place in the far reaches of the future, again post-cataclysm

Earth. The Earth’s population is enormously diminished, and the small communities that remain are locavores, both in culture, materiality and produce, with trade being somewhat limited, but not prohibitively so. Thoughtsong describes a day in a life of a family as it revolves around the product accessory pairing I chose to create. The mentis, as described before, is a highly portable brainwave scanner in the form of a wooden, or other material, wand. The mentis is used to capture thought in the form of wave patterns transform it into a tune: thoughtsong. Thought song would then be played back on a device called the cantic, a specialized speaker owned by every household. Thought song is an alternate form of communication, truer than speech and more beautiful, engaging with listeners’ emotions more strongly than normal speech. It was a new form of rhetoric that had applications in the political sphere; individuals with the most charismatic or compelling thoughtsongs were most trusted as it it nearly impossible to lie to a brain scanner. The part of the story I most enjoyed was the notion of a tapestry of sound; townships would hold monthly recitations for families to showcase their compositions.

3DPD2

114 PHYSICAL PROTOTYPING - A FUTURING EXERCISE [UTOPIAN FUTURE]

THOUGHTSONG ___

Olu took the mentis from his grandmother’s mantelpiece and, giggling, pressed it against his temple, mimicking the humming tune he’d heard the older members in his family make . Their “song”, the pass-song that would unlock the mentis. Each family in the small community had one. A different one, carved out of wood every twenty years by an elder. That same elder was responsible for maintaining or evolving the tonal pattern required to unlock it. In this way, no two family mentii were the same. The mentis housed a complex technology capable of recording thoughts, stories. Each family took part in the recording and collection process, but twelve years old, and no younger, marked the beginning of each mentis relationship. Olu, at eight years old, would not be able to access it, and so it remained an inert wooden object, its functionality incongruous with its form. In Olu’s family the mentis was made out of mahogany wood, rimmed with brass, and then topped with a silicon coated receiver. Their family symbol

was notched into the handle. His family favored the natural, wood and other earth grown materials, an indication of their primary profession, natural medicine. His friend Yara’s family had one made completely out of rubber; they ran the small rubber tree grove that supplied the needs of their village. The mentis, or its technology, had been developed in the early 2000’s, when neuroscientists had begun to experiment with brain to brain communication. By the mid-2010’s, it was possible to decode images from inside the brain using brain scans. Initially, the machines allowed researchers to predict and reconstruct images of a person’s dreams after having been taught to recognize and categorize imagery based on a complex, self learning algorithm. The way the mentis worked was to collect the user’s upper most thoughts and parse through them to make a thread. The concepts a user learned or employed throughout the day, as well as emotions or stray thoughts were also collected. These entries, once summarized, would then be processed algorithmically into tones, clicks and whirrs interspersed with words. This was called “thoughtsong”. (The actual words used to summarize the entry were kept, because without a certain level of experience, or skill it was difficult to accurately translate Thoughtsong into everyday language.)

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The mentis served as a family’s way of recording their stories and immortalizing their past. It also served as a way to educate younger listeners through the recounting of experiences. It was an integral means of enabling cumulative cultural adaptation. Within communities, knowledge would be shared and passed down efficiently through word and song. This did not negate the need for reading and writing, but communities privileged thoughtsong and storytelling as they were more effective at creating and enhancing social bonds. They were also effective means of preventing crime and generating empathy for others. Another function of thoughtsong was in elections. Nominated individuals would gather at “hearing places”, and play their prepared thoughtsong to the audience. Political rhetoric in the strictest sense, stripped down to emotion sound and intention. The most talented could sway masses, but unlike the spoken rhetoric of the past, thoughtsong was more honest–unembellished truth and intention. The speaker with the most powerful thoughtsong would win: the strength of a thoughtsong

depended on its replicability as well as the emotions it was able to arouse in its listeners. It was a form of communication similar to that of birdsong or dolphin speech. The musicality of the language conveyed a wealth of information–emotion, state of arousal and intention. The layering of the tones ensured complexity, and as with the mentis, no two thoughtsongs were exactly identical. Aside from intra-family sharing, towns held what were called “minor recitations”, where all would gather to perform thoughtsong. Family thoughtsong was frowned upon–it was to be kept private unless otherwise encouraged; attendants could either withhold song, or compose a “segment” for the recitation. Most groups composed segments, as the feeling of oneness within the collective was irresistible. The end result of was an intricate and beautifully woven, multi note tapestry of song. Communion sonified.

3DPD2

New York, New York––Next week, Vox Dux from New Oregon, New San Francisco, New Dakota, New York and New Florida territories will convene in the Central Hub for the 50th annual Recitation Summit. This meeting marks the 10th anniversary of the 2201 assassination attempt that took place on the steps of the Recitation Dome in the Central Hub. A somber day for many, it is also a day of accord. The Vox Dux will hold discussions about local policy measures such as the implementation of age restrictions on thoughtsong practice, the long-term implications of truth-speaking criminals, the new policies regarding greenhouses, as well as the terraforming and geoscaping of New Los Angeles.

“COMMUNITY LEADERS GATHER FOR MAJOR RECITATION, HERALDING NEW AGE OF RHETORIC”

Based on one of our futures, we were tasked with creating a series of newspaper clippings that featured our object. The purpose of this exercise was to get us to imagine thoroughly imagine a scenario in which our product could exist. This meant that we described anything from sports to science and health to gossip pages, to Arts and culture. Using headline stories, we engaged in thorough world-building, creating ‘plausible’, and holistic realities around our product concepts. The product I imagined with was the cantic. The cantic was the tool that users could employ in extracting their brain waves into sound. Here’s a sample headline story:

PHYSICAL PROTOTYPING - A FUTURING EXERCISE

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119 FROM FUTURE TO PRESENT 3DPD2 was a class that challenged us, my fellow Products of Design graduate students and I, to develop physical, meaningful products relating in some way to our thesis. these were meant to be conceived with the utmost care and attention to detail; to eventually become as realistic and sellable as possible. The course was initially grounded in the Dunne and Raby school of speculative design, where we were to design thoroughly science fiction products which asked pointed questions about current society – taking cues from science fiction and other pseudo-scientific, futuristic literature. We were to imagine futures far away from today’s present and create a product / societal paring based on either our thesis statements or another lens, be it service, interaction or experiential design. We were also encouraged to pull from the previous semester’s work– especially if it still made sense.

for my product was identity. We were then asked to imagine two future worlds that this product could exist, either dystopian or utopian, and to formulate the rules and cultural ecosystem that the product would potentially follow. This exercise proved an especially helpful means of elucidating the functionality of our products. I later developed two storylines in which to incorporate the theme of identity into two speculative futures. The dystopian future I imagined, Babel Resurrected depicts the dampening of singular identities – I told a story of conformity enforce by a heavy-handed dictatorship. In this scenario, in the far far future, after the earth has gone through a series of cataclysmic events, both manmade and natural, an uprising led by two academics, a neuroscientist and sociologist, marks the end of freedom of speech – literally. Here, the unsanctioned use of slang and jargon was punishable by public mutilation and their compositions.

After months of connecting in the digital, screen based space, we were relieved and excited to find ways to communicate our theses physically. The theme I selected

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121 FROM FUTURE TO PRESENT The second short story describes a utopian society structured much like in the far past â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a nod to hunter gatherer societies that were comprised of relatively few (unlike today) individuals who all shared a familial, or at least close to familial bond with one another. Thoughtsong takes place in the far reaches of the future, again post-cataclysm Earth. The Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population is enormously diminished, and the small communities that remain are locavores, both in culture, materiality and produce, with trade being somewhat limited, but not prohibitively so. Thoughtsong describes a day in a life of a family as it revolves around the product accessory pairing I chose to create. The mentis, as described before, is a highly portable brainwave scanner in the form of a wooden, or other material, wand. The mentis is used to

capture thought in the form of wave patterns transform it into a tune: thoughtsong. Thought song would then be played back on a device called the cantic, a specialized speaker owned by every household. Thought song is an alternate form of communication, truer than speech and more beautiful, engaging with listenersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; emotions more strongly than normal speech. It was a new form of rhetoric that had applications in the political sphere; individuals with the most charismatic or compelling thoughtsongs were most trusted as it it nearly impossible to lie to a brain scanner. The part of the story I most enjoyed was the notion of a tapestry of sound; townships would hold monthly recitations for families to showcase their compositions.

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123 PHYSICAL PROTOTYPING - A FUTURING EXERCISE 3DPD2 was a class that challenged students to develop physical, meaningful products relating in some way to our thesis. these were meant to be conceived with the utmost care and attention to detail; to eventually become as realistic and sellable as possible. The course was initially grounded in the Dunne and Raby school of speculative design, where we were to design thoroughly science fiction products which asked pointed questions about current society – taking cues from science fiction and other pseudo-scientific, futuristic literature. Students were to imagine futures far away from today’s present and create a product / societal paring based on either our thesis statements or another lens, be it service, interaction or experiential design. We were also encouraged to pull from the previous semester’s work–especially if it

still made sense. Introducing, the Transceiver: The Transceiver is a device that records a user’s day-to-day sonic activity in the home. Over a two week period, a user, be it a family or individual, the rituals patterns of sound associated with waking up, getting ready for the day, returning from work or school, cooking, entertaining, or resting are recorded. The Transceiver is linked to a dedicated Soundcloud account, where users from all over the world can upload their daily rhythms. Every two weeks, users from different countries are paired. By listening to and enacting the actions heard in the recorded audio, users live a day in a life of their partners, and learn what it means to be a person on the other side of the world.

Secondary Research

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TRANSCEIVER IN PROGRESS

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TRANSCEIVER AS PRODUCT

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TRANSCEIVER MECHANICAL DRAWINGS

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129 I designed a webpage where the Trasceiver product and service oculd live. An offshooot of Soundcloud, users can upload their tracks, listen to other usersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tracks,

explore geographies and imagery, purchase the Trasceiver. Off course, all is available through login. Transceiver facilitates communion through sound.

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5.0 AUDIENCE AND LANDSCAPE

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5.0 AUDIENCE AND LANDSCAPE

135 The product and service explorations in this thesis address a particular marketplace. Entities and individuals whose interests, both economic and personal, rely on an understanding of how different groups communicate with one another. The marketplace therefore consists of marketing professionals, those in strategic sectors of advertising, writers / novelists and anthropologists, all of whom have a vested interest in learning about the verbal and nonverbal ways in which we interact with each other, the ways we build up our identities and the unseen ways we communicate meaning to each other. Users and Personas An important aspect of my thesis research is identifying my user groups and stakeholders and checking in regularly with my subject matter experts. I find that my subject matter experts also happen to fall into the two categories of people who will interact with my thesis products and interventions. A 3 hour ranking exercise with a group of classmates helped me reveal who my top three to five users or stakeholders were. This group is comprised of sociolinguists / anthropologists, design researchers, marketing / advertising professionals, particularly those in

strategic and creative positions, and finally, a group I term “explorers” – people who have no career related interest in studying the social implications of language. These are to be the basis of personas I will create and refer back to over the course of my research for the rest of the semester. Personas are simple sketches of fictional characters used to exemplify a type of user–of a product, service or system. These are used in usercentered design and advertising to develop the most relevant products for a target user. Personas reflect the goals, needs, and behaviors of a user group. Developing these will help guide the design of my products and services. I know a little bit about the user groups I am most interested in, but will need to dive deeper into their lives and behavioral patterns in order to develop accurate personas. In essence, a persona is an amalgamation of a multitude of data gathered from interviews, observation, secondary research and responses to surveys. A persona is more or less a symbolic representation, an archetype.

5.0 AUDIENCE AND LANDSCAPE

136 Sociolinguists and anthropologists: For the purposes of my thesis, this group includes digital anthropologists. They are engaged in the study of humans, the ways in which we live day to day. Our habits, cultures and how those inform the interactions with people around us. These people are important to me because much of the work I have done so far is related to theirs. As true experts in the field, I use refer to their work. However, since they are sequestered in academia, they are not normally as engaged with the day to day. Their goals are to study a group of people, gain insight into their behaviors, publish their findings, teach and find tenured positions. Design Researchers: This group distills human needs and goals into actionable, and often marketable insights. Like anthropologists, they need to conduct interviews and other in-depth research to understand their target groups. Unlike most anthropologists, this research takes place in businesses, NGO’s, or consultancies. And unlike anthropologists and marketing professionals, this output requires empathy and a deep user understanding. The input data is “narrative”.

5.0 AUDIENCE AND LANDSCAPE

Marketing and Advertising Professionals: “A strategist develops opinions on the future direction of a company or brand, based on existing and predicted conditions, other known variables, intuition and research.” David Lyall, Creative Strategist. Their goals are to develop (and sell) campaigns or products by building narratives that entice and respond to cultural trends, consumer trends, consumer wants and aspirations. They leverage trend analysis to both predict and effect change in culture. Good strategists in marketing and advertising are able to guide the synthesis of a product that speaks to the emerging desires of a target stakeholder or user. Explorers: People without a financial or career based interest in language. This group simply wants to see the world from new perspectives. They are creatives, introverted or extroverted who are open-minded. They attend things like seminars, regularly go to museums, dream of travel if they don’t have the means, read a many books, or engage with many different social groups, friends or acquaintances.

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6.0 MOVING FORWARD

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In Flux is a continual work in progress, occupied as it is with exploring the multivariate social identities we manifest over the course of our lives. I am particularly engaged by youth culture and the roles they play as incubators of subculture movements. Many, if not all of the social trends we see bubbling out of the Internet are the result of the newer generations, and their propensity to explore and pioneer. They also happen to bathe mist diverse, yet unbiased group, embracing their fluid identities and freely merging with others. They are shape-shifters. I would like to gear the remainder of my time towards developing digital products and services that replicate, in a microcosm, the processes behind their brand of social differentiation and innovation. Political Impacts The political impacts of In Flux are subtle, but valid. Learning to see others for their multifaceted identities, learning to hear them and not the stereotypes will result in a empathetic outlook that grows from the ground, up. It could improve the way cities and communities are run. By confronting, or illuminating issues of bias within communities we can begin to mitigate the inequalities generated by friction between social identities and cultures. This is especially true in the workplace, where discrimination against minority identities still occurs. [decoder], an intervention concepted for anthropologists and ethnographers could have far reaching effects on policy. Much of what we know about different cultures comes from the enduring study of humankind. This has not always been positive; many anthropologists of the Western World popularized racist and of course,

completely wrong, theories that became embedded in the popular cultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s psyche. With [decoder], I aim to help capture more accurate portrayals of different cultures, helping ethnographers to develop empathetic insights that will later, invariably, trickle out to the general population. Social Impacts set, is an app I designed to help people make friends outside their established social circles. User avatars are abstracted from their personalities online; colored shapes inspired by tangrams. This is to eliminate the shallow judging that often takes place in real life relationships â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not to speak of on other friend making applications. The social impacts of influx are on the day today level. We in by learning about other people and building an understanding of their habits and by learning that our social identities are constantly in flux, evolving, adapting and reasserting. Knowing this, we can begin to more fluidly navigate the spaces within which we coexist, suspending judgment, and accepting the celebrating the difference. Environmental Impacts Materially, my thesis consumes very little. The physical product I designed for the making portion of my thesis exploration is a luxury good produced in small quantities by a small product design team. The materials used, are, however, costly: copper is expensive the practice of copper mining has disastrously polluted waters, severely degrading water quality and killing aquatic life. New materials may be a next step for me in terms of remediating the contribution I have had in this.

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GLOSSARY OF TERMS Identity: Includes self-identity and social-identity. I define it as the collection of system of characteristics such as preferences, behavior and conception that define an individual. Self-Identity: Collection of system of characteristics such as preferences, behavior and conception that define the conceptual boundaries between an individual and others. Social-Identity Theory: Describes how people form groups based on belonging to similar social categories. Verbal Communication: A form of communication that includes words, syntax, grammar and structure. Non Verbal Communication: Non-verbal communication involves more than speech; it encompasses body language, gesture, tone, rhythm. Language: Includes various communication systems, verbal – spoken, written, and non verbal – gestural, tonal. Content Words: words that have a culturally shared meaning. Examples of these are nouns, regular and action verbs, and modifiers such as adjectives. Function Words: what we use to connect and organize content words. Without these, sentences and phrases make no sense. Examples are “of”, “that”, “in”, and “for”. Culture: A system of beliefs, processes, language, ritual, rules and interactions that characterize and govern a society, or a large group of people.

Cultural consequence: That which has cultural relevance and significance. Lost in translation: When nuances of a concept are not completely communicated to another individual because the machinery to describe the concept does not exist in the other language. Social differentiation: The act of setting oneself apart from other individuals by virtue of one’s adopted social identities. It is the creation of social subgroups within a larger system. For example, iron workers are differentiated from baseball players. Tribe (digital): Community of people who share a common interest, and who may to collocate IRL, but are usually affiliated through online mechanisms. Sociolect: A language variety spoken within a social group. See; social dialect. Social dialect: Language variety that include words usages specific to a social group. Social lexicon: Vocabulary, content words used specifically by a group of people. Subculture: A system of beliefs and behavioral processes that deviates form the majority culture’s norms. Social subgroup: A cluster of individuals who have differentiated themselves from the mains social system by virtue of their social identities. Mainstream culture: The dominant culture within a society.

Ethnography: Investigations of cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. It is immersive, in depth research methodology. Evolution: the gradual development of, in this case, language and identity, which gives rise either to completely new forms, or incorporates old and new modifications. It is the change undergone by something or someone over

Group dynamics: A system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group, or between social groups. Social category: A collection of individuals who share at least one attribute or characteristic, but otherwise do not necessarily interact. For example, teachers.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY (Robert Lane Greene, You Are What You Speak.)[1] (George Lakoff; Metaphors We Live By.)[2] (Christian Rudder, Dataclysm.)[3] (Make Me a Match, Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker, 2014)[4]. (Mark Pagel, 2011)[5] (Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size and Language in Humans, Dunbar, Robin et al. 1993). Researchers call it ‘the social brain’.[6] (James W. Pennebaker. “The Secret Life of Pronouns”)[7] (Testosterone affects language areas of the adult human brain; Hahn, A., Kranz, G. S., Sladky, R., Kaufmann, U., Ganger, S., Hummer, A., Seiger, R., Spies, M., Vanicek, T., Winkler, D., Kasper, S., Windischberger, C., Swaab, D. F. and Lanzenberger, R. (2016)[8]. (James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns)[9]. (AUDIENCE-MODULATED VARIATION IN ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA. American Speech; 2015)[10] (Studying User Income through Language, Behaviour and Affect in Social Media. PLOS ONE, 2015)[11] (Theresa Labov; Social and Language Boundaries Among Adolescents) [12] (Normcore: Youth Mode, KHOLE Trend Reports, October 2013)[13] (Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Hebdige, Dick, 1979)[14].

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References (Colloquial Icelandic, Daisy J. Neijmann, 2001, Routledge). NPR’s A Way With Words (Make Me a Match, Nick Paumgarten, New Yorker, 2014) Hahn, A., Kranz, G. S., Sladky, R., Kaufmann, U., Ganger, S., Hummer, A., Seiger, R., Spies, M., Vanicek, T., Winkler, D., Kasper, S., Windischberger, C., Swaab, D. F. and Lanzenberger, R. (2016), Testosterone affects language areas of the adult human brain. Hum. Brain Mapp.. doi: 10.1002/hbm.23133) (What Does How You Talk Have to Do With How You Get Ahead? Caroline Winter, Bloomberg Business, 2014 PODCASTS Lexicon Valley A Way With Words The World In Words Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker The Story Of Human Language, John McWhorter What Language Is, John McWhorter You Are What You Speak, Robert Lane Greene The Information, James Glieck Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech, Edward Sapir The Secret Life Of Pronouns, James Pennebaker Dataclysm : love, sex, race, and identity—what our online lives tell us about our offline selves / Christian Rudder __

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I would like to thank my Products of Design family for an amazing, insane and completely life-altering two years. I want to thank my family and friends for coping with my abandonment of them – without their support and continued understanding, I would not be here, at this point in my life. Product of Design is a baptism in fire; I cannot wait to see what the next generations have in store for us. ALLAN CHOCHINOV, ABBY COVERT JOHN HEIDA, TAK CHEUNG, BORIS KLOMPUS, POD STAFF, SINCLAIR SMITH BRENT ARNOLD, ANDREW SCHLOSS, KATIE HILLIER, GREGORY GUY, GEORGE LAKOFF, INGRID FETELL LEE, CHARLIE MCKITTRICH, LAURA MACMILLAN, VALERIE PASSANO, ALL THE UBER DRIVERS, MY BED – WHEN I COULD GET TO IT.

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