Retro Metro

Out last thursday at a placed call the 'Metro' in Malmö. Very retro - think 70's. Here's me with my Hoegaarden in an immense novalty pint glass come plant pot. Put back 2 of these bad-boys. I like a glass that needs two hands to carry it back to the table.

Public hacking

If one person stands in a square and raises his hand no one really gives a toss. If 140 people stand in a square and raise their hands people stop. People get worried, "what am I missing?", "why?, "should I raise my hand?". This was the topic of the day on Friday - crowd dynamics, people hacking, behaviour subvertion - these are the best terms I can come up with. The idea is that you take a large group of people (140), set them simple activities (as a group) in public environments and see how you can change the social enviroment, put people on edge, change their behaviour and outright screw with their heads. Good fun - and a novel tool for your subversive political type who wants to create a bit of trouble.

The previous day the 140 of us were divided into 9 groups and given a part of Malmö city each. Each group was to choreograph an activity that the full group would do on Friday. The whole group would move from each activity to the next for approximatly 10 minutes each.



My group were the first off the rank and we started from the university. Everyone was to form 2 lines and walk to the wooden bridge near by... Notice the sexy beast 3 people back in the right hand line.



As we approached the bridge the first couple formed an arch and the following couple went under to form an other arch and so on...



As the last couple walked through we completed a line of people accross the bridge to form a tunnel. The bridge is the only way accross to the university from this direction so the public would have to through the tunnel or try to get around. The plan was to hold the tunnel for a minute or so and see what happens. We did get a few brave soles but the rest stood around shaking their heads muttering that this sort of thing never used to happen in Malmö. '

Put 140 people in one continous line, make each person put their hands on the shoulders of the following person and march them 150 metres throught the city - see how much traffic you piss off. This was the next activity - it's difficult to get a completely perfect march but for about 20 second we did and it had a kind of beauty. All 280 feet tramping the ground at the same time. At rap-up at the end of the day we noticed people distinictly taking absolutaly no notice at all - almost blocking out the huge line behind them. But it definently attracted an audience. (no pics unfortuantly)



Stand in one long row, make a paper airoplane and throw on command. Simple but seeing all the planes take off at the same time was neat.



Into the city square now. We're doing the tunnel thing again but this time we're continuosly moving it along by making the last couple run through to re-form at the front. Neat idea and it moves pretty quick.



Make 4 rows of people and have them march in time down the main street of Malmö. Does it remind you of anything? Bring back any old memories for the older members of the crowd. The icing on the cake for this was the leader of this activity shouting out 1,2,3,4 in german. In the rap-up we discussed this one and the activity leader said it was ok for him as he possesed an "ethnic alabi" - aisan descent swedish. Twas pretty funny. The backdrop to all this is that the elections were being held that weekend and a very nationalistic party was gaining more power. Ever wanted to truly panic a crowd? - take your 140 people and tell them to sprint down the street for about 70 metres. People go nuts, wide eyed looking everywhere. Watching a crowd come rolling over you must be some experience.

Walk forth my christain soliders. For something a little more relaxing give each person a balloon, blow it up and walk through the city in two lines. Silent protest against what? Finishing with a circle around a large fountain where we slowly let the air out creating a huge fart. London Tate - eat your heart out.

Mobile symphony. Make three lines and select your favourite ring tone on you're mobile. Hold it high and let that 80's classic ring load and clear.

Now to chill. Everyone take a newspaper, sit down on the grass and, on command, sleep with the paper over your head.

Form 9 lines and hold the sholders of the person infront. Now run like lunatics through the city - be a snake. Pensioners and small dogs be dammed!

The last activity was a fitting end to the day and, I think, was the most effective crowd manipulator. The entire group was to walk back to the uni saying "hey hey" (hi) to anyone we passed and smile and wave. When a 140 people smile and wave at you - you have to reply.

Bikes at the beach

Hi All

Last weekend I went out for bike ride with couple of friends from my dorm. We headed south from Malmö toward the bridge that links Sweden and Norway.

Hope you enjoy the pics. Cheers to Floor who took the piccies but never appeared in any.


Me, Hanna (Yellow shirt) and Ninnka (Green Shirt)


Looking for rats.



With a dumb look on my face.



Off again up the road. Theres lots of camping spots around here.




Hanna spotted something - maybe a rabbit.




This is about as far as we got. Next time I'll go beyond the bridge and see where the path goes.'

Mice on a plate

This is Pildammsparken or "the plate". It's is an imense hedge of trees that runs a full circle enclosing a grass area. There is 4 entries into the plate and it is incredibly quite inside. A very nice place to spend the afternoon. So it was here that we placed our next project in Interaction Design.



If you ever walk into the area you feel (or at least I felt) incredibly small. It is a place of scale and. The purpose of this assignment was to alter a public place in some way to make people react or feel differently about it - to change the state of mind and create a new concept of how that space could be used. At least I hope that was the purpose - the description was in Swedish and I was going on second info but the teachers seemed happy with our end result.

So our group (Andrewa, Esta and I) decided that we'd use the imense scale of the place, along with some extra props, to actually make people feel like they walked into a 'different' place where their own scale had really changed... we added giant mice.



The practical implecations of doing this where beyond our 2 day limit so we had to give a visualisation instead. As means of putting an idea in peoples heads it seemed to work - better than interprative dance. Musfällan means "mouse trap" and the poster shows a panoramic view of the part and an illustration of what we thought we'd do with the giant mice if we could make them.



This is me and Esta carrying the sign in. I carried this sucker halfway accross the city. 'Save the whales'. Malmö has a pretty cool workshop where we built the sign - will be usefull for other stuff.



The finished product. We were very proud and sat quietly under the trees hoping people would go see our sign.

Ant Stump

better keep my teachers happy...

On Monday we were given a little assignment to create an item that would assist us in our future careers - purposefully vague and open to wide interpretation the requirements were thus:

• Invent + design a low tech product
• That doesn't look like anything else
• That has no purpose or meaning to anyone else
• That would help in my future profession

This is the sort of thing we industrial designers and interaction designers revel in. I could understand the more practical trades out there borking and asking questions about yearly budgets and the delegation of resources to particular university courses. But if you consider how many odd gadgets and do-dars populate your profession and that repetitive task that only you do because of the situation you find your self in the "useless tool" does become useful.

Tasked with this purpose I went to work considering my day, my future and the small, simple things that might make it better:

On your average "Queenslander" (traditional Australian house from the colonial era) you'll find mettle caps one the top of each supporting stump. The house is raised above the group and sits on the stumps. The caps keep the termites, ants and other creepy-crawlies out (I think). On my desk I often find my coffee cup (I drink tea) besieged by ants attracted to my 2 teaspoons of sugar. So why not adapt those cap things underneath my cup? Now I can leave my cup sit there for days on end in the comfort of knowing the little guys can't get in. The ant stump has 4 little rubber feet for stability, a wood base (card board here), a polished mettle cap that the ants can't hold onto and a rubber pad to stop your drink sliding off and making a mess.

Ta-dar! It is small but it's this sort of thing that you shell the dosh out for in Ikea and fills your cardboard boxes each time you move house. And maybe someone will take this in a direction that could truly help humanity.

Deprived digital citizen

A fellow student recently asked me a question about my laptop. When I replied that I do not have one and nor a computer I was given an odd look and the response that I was 'unique'. I'm starting to feel a little unique as well - in my dorm I must be one of a handful of people who do not own their own laptop and I must be the only one who uses a 'quaint' film camera. Why is this? - am I an old fart before my years?

I would gladly have a laptop if I didn't need to fork out a substantial quantity of the cash which I've been saving for the last 3 years and which will keep me going for the next 5 months. Malmö seems a bit skint on the computers - I suspect QUT spoilt me rotten with its constant access to good software on fast computers 24/7. So far I've only found one descent lab where the security settings aren't set to extreme paranoia. Maybe the status-kwo is to have your own equipment here... The library is only good for word processing and email. The good labs must be hidden around here somewhere.

The hole film camera business stems from a personal gripe of being blinded in bars by people with those annoying multi-flash cameras and then having to see how dumb I look after 3.5 beers. That and I have a soft spot doing developing my film after my holidays and putting it away in albums never to be seen again. Something just feels off about going to some beautiful city or piece of country and taking dozens of pictures (each individually inspected) – it’s as if what’s in the box is more important than what’s actually there. What would I do with a personal photo collection 10-20 times the size of any album? Pour over it for days a time - is possible that any one digital photo (out of a 100+ in a collection from a trip) can have the same emotional connection as 1 or 2 film photos in a collection of 30? - same amount of vodka, just watered down...

But I don't have a digital camera and maybe I'd think this is a long drivel if I did. I'll have to wait till I break under strain of coolness and buy my "no red eye" 5megapixel and blind those gits in the pub.

hearts on sleaves

I've had at least 2 people approach me now about some of my comments from a previous post (week 1 - a brainfull) both in good humor but both in talking about brief references that I made to fellow flat mates in my dorm. I thought about just editing the passage to remove the comments but they are my first expierences - what I thought and how I persieved those people. The comments are hardly riveting stuff.

Since those experiences I have learnt more about the people I work/learn with and they have started to reveal truer colours - which, happily, makes them better people for me. I suspect this is because I've met people along my way who take the line of being load and abrassive as means of standing out and climbing to the top of the social hill. Its really hard to find out anything about them because you're never sure where the person starts and the crap stops. Ie "the load french guy" really does wear his heart on his sleave - the little guy seems to be a limitless font of energy who openly (to a degree) expresses it.

Anyway - thats enough face saving :) I suspect I'd better change direction now for a post or two and start writing about course related stuff...

week 1 - a brainfull

Infact I'll do it today. Appologies to those I might offend here in Sweden but it was my first impressions. Some have changed since. I',m posting now but this was writen weeks ago so the tense might not make sence in some parts...

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I made it to Sweden! I arrived on the 9th of August and stayed in a hotel for the night and wanderered around town (Malmö) finding out a little bit about where I shall live for a while. On the 10th I rocked up to Malmö University Reception and found out where I was living and a few other bits of information. There's about 120 of us spread out across the city in 4 main buildings. I was told I was living in a place called Rönan with about 40 students accross 2 floors. Gulp...

We were each alotted to a 'fadder' which is a previous student who can help you out with questions and problems etc - i'm not to sure who mine is but I seem to have survived so far by trial and error. Our fadder (for that day) piled about 6 of us into a people-mover along with half tone of bagage and set off accross town to Rönan. There is some kind of collective agreed madness that governs the road rules here and I had to constantly stop myself from informing our driver that he was on the wrong side of the road.

We arrived at Rönan. It's a 10 story retired hospital now put to use as a vacination clinic and highschool. It's still under costruction to it aquire its new purpose so we were lead through a crowd of workmen, patients and equally confused looking students. Up a big lift and onto 6th. The rest of my group got off on 5 so the janetor gave me the 30c tour - hall, kitchen, your room (in swedish).

Finding out I was going to live in a dorm was a little bit of a shock - finding out I had my own room and my own bathroom made the world a nicer place. The momement I closed the door the chaos outside disappeared. My room is about 8 metres by 4 meters - i have a single bed, big desk, shelves, bedside, wardrobe and a great big view of Malmo city. It is a mercy to be able to colapse into my chair and watch over my domain at the end of the day. Anyway after brief inspection and unpack my room was adjusted enough to call mine. Were do I cook my food?
There are about 20 peole on 6th floor and we share a big kitchen with 2 cookers, 4 fridges and a big table, dozens of cupboards and a balcony. It is certainly a place of socialising. Most of the population is female and I'm reguarly informed of whos top is the prettiest today, who ate too much cake last night and what the latest discovery from 'willies' (shopping centre over the road) is. It is a place off parties and the organisation of parties. As I write this there will be one tonight for some guy who lived in Ronan last year and is now leaving - i don't know why. Dinner is an act of supreme organisation - aquire the required hardware from dishwashers, sinks, cupbourds, other people, get your food together, find the the oil, stand near a cooker till it comes free, cook and get out. Breakfast is easier - I have that down pat and people aren't such big chatters in the mornining.

There is a big Ozy contigent in Rönan (about 15) so you wont find me coming back with a sweet Swedish accent - probably a stronger Australian one. We've got a bunch of primary school teachers from Tasmania and all sorts of odds-and-ends from Melbourne and Sydney - only two of us from Brisbane. The rest are European of one-sort-or-another. There's a noisy French guy downstairs who's trying his accent on the ladies but I don't think he's had much luck. There's one guy who has lived (by choice) in the dorm for the past 4 years. The general aggreement is that he just picks off the best peices each semester and has his Swedish way with them.

I own a bike now and it takes me about 10 minutes to get into to uni each morning. It has also taken me to many other bits of town and to all the bits of the Swedish festival (further on). At the moment we're all doing a Swedish culture course. This includes lots of interesting excursions to other bits of Sweden (one to a place called Lund last week). The bit that I dread, though, is the Swedish language content. We have to spend approximatly 2.5 weeks doing an emersive language course each morning for 3 hours. Emersive in that the teacher does everything in Swedish with a big grin and expansive hand gestures. Swedish is a beautiful language (i think) full of song like sounds and melody. I approach it with all the charm of a blind butcher holding a ruster cleaver. I dread the moments shes squares her cross-hairs on me asks some simple question in Swedish. These days I stay away from the front rows and always try to look busy - failing that I sit there with dum look on my face like a rabit caught in the headlights of a car. I think she avoids asking me questions now - we're both tired of correcting my pronunciation.

The highlight for this week has been the Malmo festival. Its a bunch of big-top-tents, stages and other venues spread out accross town showing concerts, theater, film, music etc etc all free. All sorts of cultural stuff. I saw a good film yesterday called "look both ways" (Australian) and and band called "Tiger lo" on Saturday night. Also saw a two peice thrash mettle\goth thing for something different. One guy stuts back and forth across a stage growling into a mike wile the other bangs away on a electric drum kit to a tchno backing beat - lots black leather, chains and big guys with long black hair at that one. Had to walk away after 10 mintues.

The highlight of the festival (so far)has to be a the Swedish orchestra doing the theme tracks from well-known video games and movies last night. The dj was Swedish so I couldn't catch all the titles. Meddle-of-onnor, everquest, many from the commodore 64 days, final fantasy and the highlight of the night super mario bothers - best cover ever.

Well that covers what I'm up to. This Thursday I'm on an excursion around the tip of southern Sweden for the day. This friday a big party is being organised, as part of the program, by the students. There's already a bit of argy-bargy as the alpa males and femails start pushing their views on who should do what and how it should be orgainsed - will be good to watch that one play itself out.
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There you go...

Hello all ye ande welcome..

Hello all ye,

I've started this blog as easier way of telling you all about what I'm up to and because its part of one of my units in university. I'm currently doing university exchange program with Malmö university in Sweden (I normally go to Queensland University of Technology). Some of this will be a little irrelevant to some of you - to bad.

I hope to move this blog into my personal website at http://steven.gistbusiness.com/ so always make sure you go there first. I hope to move it soon.

I've been here a month now and the place is starting to make a bit more sense. I'll post a small essay about my first few days here tommorrow. Some might recognise it from an email i sent out a few weeks ago.