31 Jan 2011

What is Landscape - Will Sandy

Will Sandy - Three Green Dots
  • Focus on social theory & communities
Will talked about how the world today is changing for the bad, he used several examples to show how this is happening:
  • Automation: this is taking away social interaction; the use of things such as oyster cards, self service checkouts, online banking, all of these which reduce the need for human interaction. Soon it will be possible for us to go through a whole day without needing to talk to anyone.
  • Reduction of public trust: public spaces are no longer really "public" due to constant CCTV coverage watching everyones every move, private security companies patolling public spaces with the authority to ask people to leave without question. All of these things reduce the enjoyment & feel of trust that we have as a "public" body
  • Tesco vs. Denmark: Will showed a clip of a video that has been produced as a comical, but true representation of companies becoming monopolies, reducing the ability for small businesses to become successful.




How Many Stops??
This was one of the projects Three Green Dots did in London. It was a observational project to see if they could influence the way people use public transport vs. walking. They wanted to see if they could change peoples' daily routines by simply adding signs to the bottom of bus timetables. The installations were cocky & could be considered rude by some, but I think they were very clever & hopefully did encourage some people to choose to walk instead of hopping on a bus. The stickers lasted about 2 months in central London (along Oxford Street & nearby streets), & some in other areas lasted more than 6 months

Parking Tickets
Another of their small projects was "parking tickets". They produced 200 "tickets" & placed them on cars around the Kensington area. The tickets looked legit, they were contained in a plastic sleeve & had the same text & print as normal parking tickets, however when the car owners opened them, instead of being faced with a fine, they were congratulated for their good parking, & other things. The project was done to bring a surprise smile to people's faces when they would normally suspect the worst. We are constantly being condemned for doing things wrong but we are never congratulated for doing things right. Three Green Dots are trying to turn this around for the few people that have experienced their projects.

Three Green Dots encourage people to think outside the box & be creative in a way that will make people smile!!

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