Digital Disobedience

I met with digital/creative agency Syrup Sthlm today for a portfolio review and was exposed to some pretty interesting digital work – among other things a random dude blogging while traveling Sweden and trying out different youth hostels on behalf of the Swedish Tourist Foundation (see the blog in Swedish here).

Even more interesting though was a campaign encouraging people to perform “digital disobedience” to show their disapproval of the FRA-law (a very controversial law that would give the government authority to go through regular citizens´ e-mail/Internet/phone communication in search of suspicious activities). The project is posted below:

This digital disobedience-spirit is very much all over Sweden these days – apart from Swedish party Piratpartiet (The Pirate Party) just recently winning a seat in the European Parliament, a coalition of Swedish “pirates” called “Embassy of Piracy” are currently taking part in the Venice Biennial (an annual art event) promoting a free Internet and a larger vision of a free world where knowledge is shared and spread without restriction.

The idea is to use a tiny paper pyramid as a symbol of the Embassy of Piracy and allow people to copy this shape, modify it as they please and place it wherever they want as a symbol of the boundlessness of the Internet. The “official song” of the Embassy of Piracy is included below (the beautiful voice belongs to my friend Mai Ueda, Japanese artist living in New York and everywhere, very boundless person herself ):

Pulling faces and Stockholm proportions

I also checked out the final exhibit at Berghs School of Communication (design school craze is almost over now ) and would like to share my two favorite projects.

The first project is a communication campaign for an IT consultant firm. The campaign aims at questioning the pricing of the industry and making the point that this particular IT consultant firm doesn’t charge a higher rate than what the market deems appropriate. So, the whole idea is to have an online auction where the consultant is the auction item. The picture below is from the banner campaign leading to the campaign site – it displays the face of one of the consultants and shows how you can drag and pull the poor dude’s face with your mouse as if he was any product on sale. Interesting and funny idea that would probably only work in a country with strong trade unions and high minimum wages and worker’s rights. Come to think about it, it would probably only work with male auction items too. Oh well, I love the pulling and dragging the dude’s face either way .

Second project is a Graphic Design-project expressing the city of Stockholm through a typeface named Stockholm Sans. The design student told me he researched old street signs from the “folkhemmet”-era (the building of the Swedish welfare state in the 50s) that all expressed a modernist kind of standardization. He also incorporated the proportions and shapes of landmark buildings in Stockholm, and allowed some “flaws” to symbolize the modernist folkhemmet-approach that maybe didn’t always live up to its own expectations. Pretty clever .

Digital Death

Went to the graduate show at Beckmans (one of the major design schools in Stockholm) and found the project Webwill to be one of the most interesting projects. Text translates “What will your online presence be after your death? Where do all the images, blogs and accounts go? With the new service Webwill you can take control of your digital life after death”.

The student project then outlines how you can set up your gmail, facebook, myspace, twitter, skype and whatever else accounts to do whatever you want after your death with one activation click (which I suppose you would leave to a government agency or a loved one as your digital will). You wanna send out e-mails to the people you care for? Change your facebook status to “Heaven exists, I´m there, see ya later “? Post your favorite music video? Post a slideshow of your life on Flickr? Twitter consoling words every day for a month after your death? Or why not twitter on with predetermined words of wisdom for years to come?? Another option is obviously to just shut everything down .