Design solutions for post crash civilization
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Ark Inc., by Jon Ardern, looks at our small and ineffectual attempts to live a truly sustainable life. Despite repeated warnings that we are fast approaching a point of no return, the world's governments (and ourselves) pay these issues little more then lip service. The Ark Inc. project suggests that we adapt our life style to life "after the crash", to the time when our actions have exhausted the resources of the Earth upon which we depend. Jon has imagined products and services for a cult-like investment company, called The Ark, that keeps you up-to-date on how badly the world is doing while reassuring you that your investment in post-crash life is doing well. Introductory video.
In Jon's words: ARK-INC. is an organization that provides a range of products which include manuals and books, radio station broadcasts and services that help mediate the transition to post apocalyptic living such as holidays in apocalyptic locations. Ultimately, ARK-INC. becomes a proponent of intrinsic value, helping customers realize their potential worth in the "prophesied" paradigm of global change and upheaval. The project stems from a long-standing frustration with how the status quo responds to matters of wider and far reaching importance: environmental issues and sustainability. While people "do their bit for the environment": recycling what they buying fair trade, switching lights and trying to share cars, there does not seem to be a vehicle for public discourse that allows the debate to move on. I have aimed to explore and expand this debate by reevaluating the issues of value and how value may change as the factors that influence it also change; or more explicitly "intrinsic value" versus "abstract value". Ultimately I want the my audience to feel that it is necessary to move beyond the old concepts of sustainability and face the reality of our situation with real solutions not lofty rhetoric. I hope to inspire in the audience an understanding that events are not going to stand still, and that we need to meet the coming changes in new imaginative and unusual ways. Crazy times call for crazy solutions! Context and Influences: The context is the sustainability debate and the end of life as we know it. I am also interested in the tension between capitalism and grass roots movements. This tension is crystalized clearly in aspects of the new age movement where capitalist intrusions that are arguably at odds with the root motivation of the movement share what I see as an uneasy relationship. I don't really want to be quoted as pointing the finger at individual cases, but here is one example that strikes a cord: zaadzs and here is another more mainstream example: Blackspot Shoes. Neither are out and out wrong, in my opinion, but there is something not quite right either... My main influences come from broad social and political issues, science, the media and those who critique these areas. However two key influences that directly relate to ecological issues come from James H. Kunstler and his book The Long Emergency, for its pragmatic look at what it may mean to live through the coming century and James Lovelock with his book The Revenge of Gaia, one of the first, I found, to not only discuss the idea that we may have already hit a tipping point in globe heating but also advise swift and pragmatic actions to save what we can. I have also explored groups and movements such as spiritual progressives and the permaculture movement, because they take a stand of readiness to change as opposed to fighting against change. This has been described by some as a change in theologies from David & Goliath as a meta-narrative to resistance to that of Noah. I have incorporated these group and movements into the project under the names ark and The ark collective. ARK-INC is an organization that seeks to capitalize on the ark movement and the potential of dramatic world change by offering the aforementioned products and services, they publicly state: We are representatives of the Ark moment. We comprise of practitioners, facilitators and elected representatives from many ark groups and collectives. Our primary purpose is the progression of the Ark movement and the values it holds. However I see its relationship as little more ambiguous and an expression of my interests in the tension between the grassroots movements and the capitalism of ARK-INC. Perhaps one final source of inspiration worth mentioning comes from the images of Elena Filatova as she rode across what is left of Chernobyl. Her photographs from this journey portray a stark glimpse of our possible fate. Key points within the project Disaster Tourism. Simply the reasoning that a disaster is not the event itself but the impact that the event has. By adjusting to the forthcoming events now, your lifestyle will not change as the world does. ARK-INC has services such as holidays in apocalyptic landscapes, and consolations to help you adjust and evaluations to help you gauge how well adjusted your life has become. It offers alsol books such as “Learning to love the crash, staying positive in the face of adversity� designed to help mediate you response to disaster. Intrinsic and abstract value The value of something is intrinsically liked to its relationship with its external environment and although abstract value or money currently holds an intrinsic value as it relates to our current world system, that system, I would argue, is inherently unsustainable. As the project proposes that this system will soon crash the value that that abstract value holds will crash with it. Therefore, within the context of the project, there is space for a new definition of value. The �Intrinsic value� is a value pushed by ARK-INC. as it seeks pragmatic ways to gain capital leading up to and beyond “the crash� it could ether be seen as a new more holistic approach to value or a pragmatic evolution of capitalism as it relates to a given set of external circumstances. How it works - The Paradigm index The paradigm index is a reworking of a stock-market/share index. It is a way of measuring your investment. However you are investing in intrinsic value as it relates to world collapse, as opposed to investing in abstract value as it relates to market growth. The paradigm index takes a set of date from C02 level rise, peak oil production predictions and social and political trends such as wars and social break down. It works as a means of gauging your investment in a certain scenario or set of scenarios. As intrinsic value is linked so closely to a certain set of external parameters you can gauge its increase against proof of the manifestation of those external parameters. I see ARK-INC. roll in this as three fold: 1. Selling of services that increase your intrinsic value and certifying that you have gained that value or potential of value. Future avenues for the project The project is an ongoing piece of work, and although it reached a certain point of conceptual and physical resolution for the show, I hope that that was just a stepping stone in its progression. The first step is to get a well represented web presence that gives a clear sense of what ARK-INC. is. With well documented products and services that seem to be real. The aim being that the wider public interface with it as a real entity and not simply as a though provoking piece of Art or Design. I feel this is important if it is to have some impact outside of the Art and the Design world. From my observation it seems much harder for the public to dismiss or disengage with something that seems real then it is to dismiss what could be see as �just art�. The paradigm index, this has and still is a labor of love, and sometimes hate. I have worked with professional graph designers and a student form the, Oxford Said Business school to calculate all the factors involved into an easily understandable format but there is still some work to be done. Ultimately I would like an online chart that calculates all the data involved and is updated daily or weekly. This would then act as both a key part of the project and as a form of global feedback that would hopefully stair people into some form of positive action. I would also like to create a membership and networking element to the website, that would also interface with the P-index “intrinsic value� side of the site so that members could track the value of the current life style against possible future scenarios and hopefully make appropriate lifestyle changes or at least see what the effects of a possible life style change would have. I’m hoping that this side to the project will sit somewhere in-between, a carbon calculator and the eToy share system . I have a background in fine art, and although I have enough technical knowledge to know what is possibly and some of the technologies needed to make it happen I am looking at present into finding the needed collaboration to make it happen. Images from the RCA show. |
Another project from the Interaction Design department seen at the 
I had the same idea as this paradigm index. Optimistically I would see it as way to display a price for a product in "sustainability currency". With cellphones reading bar codes people could easily get this price and make on the spot decisions. Money is a poor indicator of value.
pessimistically though you can find me in my shack up in the hills. i'm a wait till cycle change wipe y'all out.