Pre-Berlin Update

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Before heading to Berlin, I thought I better make a quick post-new-years-post. I got back from the UK and Germany and ended up getting straight to work on the final two weeks of our toilet-sign-switching project that I discussed before. We’ve officially named it the Ladies and Mens Room Mixup (LMRM) and spent the first week back finalizing the prototype and testing it out at the club. It went pretty well, we had three elements, the automatic door switching, a wheel with a lever so people could choose which mode they wanted it in (boy/girl, girl/boy, girl/girl, etc) and the touch sensitive poles. People were strangely afraid to touch the poles thinking they’d get electrocuted or something, and it made it more difficult that I, an English speaking, non -drunk-at-a-night-club person was trying to convince them to touch giant metal poles and hold my hand at the same time. This worked remarkably well with one fellow, who was intent on holding my hands but could not focus on holding my hand and the pole at the same time, and was far too gone to realise that any of this had anything to do with the toilet signs. Sigh.

So we did our prototype, then had a lovely evening of trying to catch a bus back to Lund, which would have been easy, except that we decided to do a walkabout tour of Malmo trying to go to the train station instead, and ended up back home around 7am. Painful. Spent the rest of the weekend working out kinks in the article-writing process to document our work, and then spent the remainder of the week glued to my kitchen table, writing and rewriting the article endlessly until I wanted to never see it again.  We had our final presentation on Friday at the night club (called Inkonst by the way) and it went really well. We presented a video which you can see here: http://madshobye.blip.tv (ladies and mens room mixup2). The rest of that evening was spent in the bottom of a pint glass. As a class we went to a nearby pub and had a couple glasses of beer, then I got bored of playing nice and bought a round of tequila. Then the night got started.  Then I bought a bike. (It was pre-arranged, not a drunken crazy bike buying spree). Then we headed to a place called Volyme which charged us $100 for 6 mojhitos. Thank you Mojito buyer. On the plus side, I met a lovely Italian man with a proper London accent who’s lived in Sweden and dislikes Swedish fashion as much as me. It was wonderful.

This week has been spent at school, researching radio as that’s our next exploration, mass media and how we can use it. The exciting part of all this is... I had a meeting with the night club InKonst, where we test-drove our project, and talked to them about installing our toilet-switching package permanently and they agreed, and agreed to pay for materials. This is awesome, really awesome. For everyone who’s confused, this is a fantastic, great, amazing thing. My team’s work, our art, our installation, is in one of the biggest culture centres in Malmo, Sweden. Permanently. It’s a good thing. I’ve told a couple people back home and they were like, oh yeah. Hm. The proper response is actually, holy crap! Way to go! That’s freakin’ awesome, yay! Now you know. This means I have a wicked awesome portfolio piece. Yes, I’ve used the word awesome five times now. The website will be coming out soon, about the project, not the word awesome, and then you’ll be able to see what all the fuss is about.

So, Sunday I’m heading to Berlin with my class. We’re going to an arts festival called Transmediale. Its a big festival of art, design and interactive stuff, and we’re going to see what its all about as we’re all entering design competitions and hoping to attend stuff like this because we’re invited rather than just as visitors. It should be amazing, so should Berlin, as this time I won’t be a tourist, but rather the friend of someone who lives there, and it will be a completely different experience. Yay!


It’s all coming together...

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