IvyLight

Norway is the contry that uses most energy for lightning pr person in the world. I wanted in this project to make a more energy friendly lamp, both in the choises of the materials and in the amount of energy use. I also wanted to inspire the user to be a part of the energy saving, and therefor I have made IvyLight interactive. IvyLight is a lamp consisting of 6 leafs, 3 of them can be taken of. Because the light sources is LED, I use batteries for the parts that can be taken of. Instead of having many different lamps in your house, you can take your light around with you where you most need it.

Design as a new language

While traveling with the Dean of my faculty
I learned quite a lot. He's Islandic and he
told me good stories from the island.

One is that they try to give all new words
that dosn't exist in the islandic language,
an islandic word. While working with issues
as carbonprint, he and his friend came up
with the islandik word sotspor.

It made me think of design to everyday life
as a new word to a language.
If the design is beeing used, it meens it works.
It dosn't really mather who came up with the idea,
because the point with design is that it will be
used, not who used it first.

It dosn't mean we all have to like it. Like in the
norwegian language people have started saying
shcøkken instead of kjøkken. I don't like it, but
for 100 years ago they probably said tjøkken. It's
develpoment, and it works.

As designer we have to think about all aspects of
the new design, like invironment issues, conseptual
issues and contextual issues. In the end, the
design it's only a new word that people will choose
to take into their grammar or not.

I will try to get sotspor into the norwegian language

help me?/

Layers and connections

Within each country it exists many cities, and
Within a city it exists many different worlds.

Each of this worlds have their own daily routine. Some
people manages to keep a floating barrier between two
or more worlds, but many people never even notice. They
can live a hole lifetime in this world, not knowing anything
else.

This is not mainly only because people don´t want to
know, but that they have now reasons to know. I´m not
saying this is bad or good, I only think that designers
should be aware of this, because problemsolving and
solutions can´t be build on one of these worlds point of
view only. If you see these worlds as layers, you can also
easily see that if you take one away, you would not get the
hole picture.

Of course you should see the layers on their own, but it´s
important to see the connection between.
A phonecompany here had a campain. The campain was to make
people use this phonecompany more, so they made the first 30
seconds of the phonecall free of charge. What happened was that
some people started calling each other saying one word and then
hang up.

I´ve been told the story, and I don´t know every detail, but I´m
shure the phonecompany didn´t think of the worlds that really
can´t afford all this use of phone that exists today, and they
also didn´t think of the connection between the worlds. because
you find friends across the barriers, imagine when your friend
always call you to say one word and you have to call him up,
you will start doing the same. A habbit in one layer is connected
to a habbit in another.

The phonecompany lost alot of money, and had to stop the campain.

Good design? /

Good Morning /

My window is not there. I was just about to close it the other
day, because it´s starting to get colder here. Then I discovered
that there was now window there, only the frame and the mosquito
net, that keeps all the mosquitos on my side of the wall.

Thursday the sky opende up, and it stayed open for 12 hours.
It actually rained into my room.. Kind of funny, but not today,
because I woke up with the worst throat ever. In Africa, 30 degrees
I really don´t feel like getting a cold. I would rather save it for Norway
where I could feel like having a good reason for a cold.. like snow or
something like that. I vote for cold as a norwegian sickness.

Saturday we went to a private party. It was in the suburbs, and because
of the rain, many of the streets are destroid. We were driving slalom
between the humps and the bumps and the shooes and the leather
couches they sell in the streets..

At the party we were served Mozambiquan food. Mozambiqan kitchen is
fabulous!! :) just to make you jelous. Anyway, we were listening to music,
eating talking and having fun. Then the electrisity went of, and everything
went black. I have never seen so many stars in my life, it was beautiful.

The rest of the night we spent singing, dancing and drinking, actually
much more fun than when the electrisity where on.

Having fun /

If I only...

Today, for the first time in my life,
I thought "if I only were a boy"...

It has nothing to do with discrimination
or any thing like that, it´s only the fact
that beeing a boy is more secure. I was
just talking to a photografer called Carlos,
and suddenly I thought; I could never have
this liberty in going around taking photos,
I would need a bodyguard to be safe enough...
But then I thougt that the limit for
robbing a woman may be higher than for a man,
and that sometimes a woman get´s away with
anything with a smile...

The conclution? Well, there is good things
in beeing a man, and from my point of view,
beeing a woman is even better;)

Que confusao

Yesterday I kind of invited myself to some Mozambikquan friends.

They came and picked me up in the center of the city. Then we took
one of these chappas to get to their house. If I have never told you
about a chappa, I will gladly give you an description.

Chappa:
this is a 3rd hand minibus. 2nd from china to south africa, 3rd hand
form south africa to mozambique. It´s room for 12 people inside, but
normally you´ll find 25 people on top of each other. it costs
1 norwegian kroner, and you´ll pay when you get of. If you are sitting
in the back of the chappa, everybody has to go out to let you of.
This is a bumpy ride, but worth trying.

Anyway. We reached my friends house, and I was invited into the
livingroom. This is the first room in the house. His mother, sister
and another friend was there. I sat down, and tried to feel as
comfertableas I possible could.

We sat there for a while, and it was really nice. Then my friend started
to make food for me. We ate and I tryed to eat as much as she did.
She ate kind of slowly, and she didn´t really finnish her food. So I didn´t either.

Then after maybe half an hour, I saw they were kind of looking at each
other andthat they didn´t know what to do. It suddenly stroke me that
I´m the one who issupposed to say I should go!! I had been sitting there
for one hour, and normally I think they would stay maximum 20 minutes.
So the last half an hour they had only been waiting for me to say
" well then, I think I have to go" You can´t imagine how imbarrased I was.

Well...

Better luck next time /

today well lived...

just to tell you /

Thursday I was at Radio Mozambique (RM). A beautiful place
with interiors that had survived the 60´s...
I met Rosa Langa, a journalist who has wrote a book about
mozambiquan women. I knew about her because in Norway I
helped translate some pages of her book to norwegian.
She was one of the sweetest woman I have ever met.

A guy at RM wanted me to give a talk about norwegian
journalism and the education of journalists in Norway.
Why not I thought, that wont be to hard? I started
rethinking it a little when i found out it was at a
university..

Later that day we went to Noel Langas house with Victor.
Noel Langa is a big artist, and a really sympatick man.
We´re gonna make a workshop in his house where we will
make different sorts of mozambiquan food. And he will tell
stories, and I will record.

The days runs to fast, I wish you all could be here!!

have a nice day /

Blend My Mind

The small things in life /

Strange when you see an idea and you think; why didn´t I think of that?
It´s not really all that strange, because it works like this:

Say you live in a city with all the facilities you need around you. When you
go to the toilet you may not remember if you have flushed or not. When
you coock dinner, you don´t really pay much attention to what kind of
tools you use. Of course, you see the things around you, but you don´t see
them in the way you would if it was the first time you saw them. They are a
part of your everyday life, and your everyday life is not that interesting really..

That´s where you stopped beeing curious and started stopping the ideas to
flow freely.

The secret about the design that make you feel "ahh, why didn´t I think of
that",is the secret of curiousness and time. That you take your time to let
things just happen, and let your eyes see what they see. When you force
ideas or look at only the things you think inspires you, you yourself wont
be able to see all the details around you, because your to focused on what
you want to find. And the things you want tofind, is not the things you
thought you wanted to find in the first place.

So, be easy, be curios and wake up everyday with new eyes. Don´t take your
environment for granted.

Just a thought /

my family /

I will introduce you to my family here in Maputo.
First you have sista britt -already intorduced in former
blog- who´s a crazy biker, and a proffesora at the art
school. We have 2 projects togetherwith the students
from that school, and we are trying ourbest to look
angry when the students are misbehaving...

Then we have paolinho, a brazilian balle dancer who teatches
at the dance school here in Maputo. He´s just hired a chef
to cook for him 3 times a week. He´s also my spell checker in
portuguese.

At last but not least we have diretor victor. This is pronounced
diretor vitor. He´s the real boss of everything, You don´t really
notice it, but if you are doing a project well, you can be shure he´s
had something to do with making it happen. If it wasn´t for him,
the city would be a hole different place. And we love Maputo the
way it is now.

Then you have the uncles! Now I´m talking about the uncle police.
I´m mentioning them as my familiy, because we have been
staying at the police station alot latly. And since we are in
africa everything takes time, and the winners of this timerobbing
people must be the police.

We were only reporting a stolen cellphone really, but it took us
3 days and a h... lot of papers. And it costs.. And you get stamps.
Because the pollice station is in a building with 8 floors, and the
offices we had to go to were in the 1st floor and the 8th floor, we have
kind of lost a few pounds while running up and down those floors.
If you had seen the elevator, you wouldn´t even think what you are
thinking now.. taking the elevator.. I leave it for the ones who like
extreem sport. Well, anyway, at the last place for stamping papers
I had to translate for my sista, and since I´m a white girl, I´m an easy
catch.. Somehow he got me believing he would need my sista´s
phonenumber.. sitting there sweating of all the stair-running, I
thought of this as normal. That the police in charge of the office
needs her phonenumber to call her personally when the case is
closed. Yeah right.

After some time with his nose in her passport and at her beautiful green
eyes, she got her stamp, and he got what he believes is a chance to
call a green eyed norwegian.

On the way down the stairs, I took my camera and started photographing.
A police station of 8th floors and no computers, a bathtub, and an abselutely
beautiful veiw... a policestation where nothing is fixed and wires hanging
all over, not seeing an electrishian since the portuguese was here.. you can
imagine how my photographheart wanted badly to take pictures..

hehehe... "estat chirando photgraphias?" are you taking photos?
" ehhh, no... I was just looking at some funny numbers... "
We were now in the 5th floor.... Lying to the policeofficer..
"are you taking photographs?" "nao nao nao, eu so vejo ums bonitas
letras que eu nunca tinha visto antes" no no no, I just saw some
letters that I had never seen before...
" this is a police station, you cannot take pictures here"

Well well way to go, we got out at last, with a heart beating and
one fan richer..

até mais / untill later /

At the police station with sista n family /

Right before the policeman came... read more in / my family /

sista n sista biking /

Goood eeeevening:)

I have been walking all around town today to find abacaxi...
but what I really wanted was abacate...

Sista Britt, the lady I'm staying with, have a bicykle.
Normal white people in Mozambiqe use cars.. Britt dosn't.
She rides her bicykle. And, since Maputo is quite a big city,
and since I was asking for the wrong fruit and didn't know
I was, we made alot wrong turns.

In Maputo they sell fruits at the streets, and you have to be
familiar with the place to know where to get the exact things you
want. We don't and we wanted to go home and eat abacate. we never
really found one, but we have an appointment with a street seller to
meet us tomorrow at the corner of some place to sell us abacate...
ahhh

this is the picture: Me at the back of the bicykle, two white
LADIES riding in the middle of the streets, cars driving by using
their horns in 60 km/h. Alot of people in the streets looking at this
strange couple, the only white ones where us. I was laughing so much.
You know, mozambiquan should behave. Anyway, we're Norwegian.

read more tomorrow about;
-the flying plastikbag birds

keep on riding /

Gooood moooorning Maputo!

:)

I´m here, just woke up.

what´s the point with mosquito net when all
the mosquitos are on my side of the net?

it´s gonna be a warm day! ;)



see you soon /

masterblogg / description

I will use this blog as a diary from my master field trips.
I'm leaving saturday 23'rd to 37 degrees :) beat that!

keep on smiling /