Social Media for Social Change

Curation as Message

Posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 5:30 pm by Alie in research | No Comments

I’m in industrial design, so I’ve been narcissistically relating the SMSC issue to our personal problems.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the way our department and the design community in general has been trying to make itself known to the public in recent years, most of which is through curated shows and the massive Design Philadelphia series of exhibitions. Anyway, the question always is how do we get people who wouldn’t normally be interested to attend these things. The two things that helped the senior show last year was the location on Broad Street, which was completely open and heavily trafficked, and the relevant design topic, which was design for the aging. The seniors emphasized the issue of our growing and diproportionate population of 65+ citizens and highlighted the significance objects, and therefore design, play in distinguishing the different stages of development in our lives. For example, when we outgrow a tricycle or training wheels and step up to a two-wheeler.

What I think is important about this is that there were several levels of information/interaction going on here: There are the individual objects, each of which relates to a specific topic (i.e. menopause, empty-nesters, hippies, snowboarding enthusiasts.)  There’s overarching idea of the aging population which drives the exhibit. There is the exhibit itself and the role of design in our lives. All this gave visitors something to discuss from a variety of perspectives while they were there and later on. I know there are a lot of other examples of this idea of curation as sort of a thesis in itself, but like I said, this one’s about two feet in front of me.

I know this is more disorderly and not maybe helpful for any cause and effect relationships, but I found in more relevant Nick’s comment about the commons being some place maybe you don’t always go to all the time.