Ethics
Design Ethics
Joaquin Rosas
I have been working this whole master in seeking what is the relation between music, sound and the material world. for example when people go to a music concert, if its a rock band concert, the grass of the field will be much more destroyed than a classical music concert. Because of the jumping, the energy of people moving around, the wastage of the field will be notorious, Affecting straight into the physical world. logically it is obvious but to understand that kind of relations is very interesting to me. Another example is how the sound of airplanes engines affect the local ecosystems, like animals behavior, trees and noise pollution. In a way there is a misconception that the sound is kind of a “side effect”, but today is normalized because of the fast growth and people who don’t care about that subjects. So it becomes an ethic matter.
Sonic Ecologies, is the project that im working on for presenting in MDEFest this year. The project aims to find the lost sounds of natural matter in a cyclic way bringing them to the city, to express and tell how we have lost that connection and how we can make that connections again to understand that life and ecosystems outside the city are crucial for an harmonious way of living.
As I defined the project as a cycle, with human intervention opening and closing the loop, It is necesary to define it by three main stages.
Stage 1: Recollect clay from Collserola Park. These is a natural park in the surroundings of Barcelona that in some areas, have Clay soil that is used for crafts and fabrication. During the recollection of clay, the natural sounds of the place will be recorded to use them for the exposition.
Stage 2: The Clay will be installed in different metallic and conductive totems, in a specific space in the city. these totems will be connected to an electronic system that will be throwing sound signals when the clay is touched, so it will be modeled in a collaborative way by people that will be participating in the expo. It’s expected that the resulting shape will be abstract like sculptures.
Stage 3:There will be a hike organized to Collserola park, where every participant will take a piece of the clay that was made by different people the day before. The pieces of clay will be installed up for a music performance that will be played there. After the performance, all of the clay pieces will be returned to the park as little sculptures, as nendo dango seeds, or as traces of human intervention. So with that approach the object will have its own natural cycle, where it was taken, used and returned where it belongs.
I think that this project represent how I want to strive forward, because it questions a lot of concepts that today we as designers are fighting for change. First of all I want to change or make a meaningful statement is our relationship with our senses. The meaning and importance of sound of everything in our lives is something that we have make ourselves so comfortable, that we are use to it. But in certain situations that it bother us, or like us, we pay attention to it. For example the other day we were having a meeting with classmates in Poble Nou, but when somebody started to speak, the huge noise of the machines of a construction site, started to work, so we couldn’t hear anything. So in particular that moment changed our reality and behavior, so we had to leave. I was very annoyed because it is a thing that is not taken in consideration by the design of the construction plans, or the machines at all, to lower the noise of the construction site. I imagine the neighbors having a very rough time all day because of that “fault” of consideration by the construction industry. So there is a huge opportunity for designers to try to change or improve that kind of issues.
Another topic that im questioning with this project, is the way we see and interact with everyday of objects, creating this instruments of clay, in a way is a statement against the status quo of why all things have to be made by materials that last forever and contributes to an industry that is polluting everything, like plastic, steel, etc. Maybe in the future we will return to the use of noble materials and we will be able to grow , use and return to earth based products. with open source technology as Arduino, today is possible to use a piece of clay to make music, and to revive that relationship with earth that so much people have lost, making the relation with natural elements strong again in an ecological way.
I hope that in 10 years from now, these topics and other ones Im trying to demonstrate, resonate much more with more people, and make sense to the ones that are seeking ecological ways of living and interacting with their own subjects, not necessary in a profesional way, but in a way of seeing life. that everything lives in a cycle, and eventually vanishes into the ground, to start again.