Serendipity Now

Writing up and reading through my initial research again, I have decided to vocalise my thought process.

I can now say with confidence that interaction within the wider architecture community is of obvious benefit to students, and that not everyone is making the most of the opportunity to "learn by word of mouth". Knowledge seems to become gathered into little pockets, held by and not shared outside of small friendship groups. I am very interested in disseminating what is already shared knowledge more widely, and am keen to explore ways of provoking spontaneous interaction within the school.

I have seen some students are more isolated than others, and feel that a system relying on spontaneity has the potential to overcome the social factors that currently pigeon hole knowledge. A tangible system based on distributing information that may be of interest, rather than being a searchable database would also seem to bypass some of the basic organisational issues that seem to plague other efforts to coordinate amongst students.

If I could design an installation that could do this, I think there would be a value to remaining academically aloof; the most popular attraction that the recent Part 2 degree show was a ping-pong table. "Parents" on the student pastoral scheme had talked of using the interactions with their children as procrastination. There is scope for a device or even a piece of artwork that could distract people from the stress of their school work, yet still be helpful. I'm starting to think of it as a form of subliminal messaging!

The questions that remain are to do with data capture, but I am wondering if that is really a huge issue. Do I need to refer to ongoing work? We already exhibit finished work to varying extents, would a wider dissemination of this completed and already catalogued work not be of potential value if it could be used to guide or inspire others? Or even as a point of reflection to the author themselves?

I had an idea a while back to explore a sort of architectural speed dating, that I think may be a useful way to explore this notion further, and for my part may be a useful way to seek feedback on any installation or system that I design.