Friday, January 29, 2010
Collection Synthesis
Our collection consists of voided checks, written and signed by their owners. The collection is an examination of the mind of a thief, utilizing his work position to gather checks from unsuspecting people and the using those checks to maintain a life style much finer than any he could alone afford. The collection is a plan to highlight the information localized on the check itself, providing thieves with information. Not only bank account information, but personal information that can be used to exploit the victims.
Our collector is one Sean White, a college drop out who is utilizing his job position at a few different locations to steal checks to further his own goals. Though he has dependents, he doesn't steal to make their lives better, only his own. His collection would be interesting to the people from whom he has stolen, the police, and other identity thieves.
Money generated by part-time job goes to his child support and drinking and gambling. Lacking the drive to pursue an actual career, Sean has turned to Check Fraud. He maintains a college student life style, living in a single person apartment, though he splurges on fancy appliances (car, speakers, computer)as he likes to own nice things. If not readily apparent, Sean is interested the get rich quick schemes. Often, he gambles and bets in an attempt to increase his income, though he rarely pays his debts, and having avoided the law so far, Sean has proven capable in avoiding the repercussions of his debt. Using his position at work, Sean is able to copy down information from voided checks, providing him with billing addresses, license numbers, signatures, and account information.
Our intent is to deal with the idea that a single common document can provide enough information to disrupt your life. A check is a unique document as it contains your bank information, your personal information, and even a small glimpse into your personal life. Does you check has a picture of a car on it? Is it blank? Personalization of checks suggest something about the person who owns the check. Still, checks are still an acceptable form of payment. People willing hand their checks over at stores, along with their license, providing potential thieves both the opportunity and the materials to steal.
Do we expect people to stop using checks? Certainly not. However, we simply wish to make people aware of the dangers of identity theft. The average number of hours victims spend repairing the damage caused by identity theft is 330 hours. Identity theft is on the rise, affecting almost 10 million victims in 2008. ID theft can happen to anyone, and it can come in all shapes and sizes. For example, your credit card digits could be stolen and used to make online purchases; a thief could impersonate you to open up a loan in your name; a felon could commit a crime and pretend to be you when caught; or someone could use your personal information to apply for a job. More than one third of victims report that identity thieves committed check account fraud.
Our collector is one Sean White, a college drop out who is utilizing his job position at a few different locations to steal checks to further his own goals. Though he has dependents, he doesn't steal to make their lives better, only his own. His collection would be interesting to the people from whom he has stolen, the police, and other identity thieves.
Money generated by part-time job goes to his child support and drinking and gambling. Lacking the drive to pursue an actual career, Sean has turned to Check Fraud. He maintains a college student life style, living in a single person apartment, though he splurges on fancy appliances (car, speakers, computer)as he likes to own nice things. If not readily apparent, Sean is interested the get rich quick schemes. Often, he gambles and bets in an attempt to increase his income, though he rarely pays his debts, and having avoided the law so far, Sean has proven capable in avoiding the repercussions of his debt. Using his position at work, Sean is able to copy down information from voided checks, providing him with billing addresses, license numbers, signatures, and account information.
Our intent is to deal with the idea that a single common document can provide enough information to disrupt your life. A check is a unique document as it contains your bank information, your personal information, and even a small glimpse into your personal life. Does you check has a picture of a car on it? Is it blank? Personalization of checks suggest something about the person who owns the check. Still, checks are still an acceptable form of payment. People willing hand their checks over at stores, along with their license, providing potential thieves both the opportunity and the materials to steal.
Do we expect people to stop using checks? Certainly not. However, we simply wish to make people aware of the dangers of identity theft. The average number of hours victims spend repairing the damage caused by identity theft is 330 hours. Identity theft is on the rise, affecting almost 10 million victims in 2008. ID theft can happen to anyone, and it can come in all shapes and sizes. For example, your credit card digits could be stolen and used to make online purchases; a thief could impersonate you to open up a loan in your name; a felon could commit a crime and pretend to be you when caught; or someone could use your personal information to apply for a job. More than one third of victims report that identity thieves committed check account fraud.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Gender Roles in Collecting & Collecting vs. Consumption
I feel that the board is pretty evenly weighted with collecting in gender roles. The people I know go from my grandfather (on my father's side) to my mother to any number of men and women I can think that collect things. Some of them are obsessive, while most of them are reasonable. The readings seem to suggest that the different in collecting between the different genders deals a great deal with WHY people collect things. Men seem to collect things to own the object. It is a power play, a sense of masculinity and control. Meanwhile, women, so it seems to suggest, collect as a way of revering or protecting the object, preserving it for it's beauty.
I'm sure this reading would offend many a feminist and probably a few other people. I can't really say if I agree. Both of my grandfather's collected things. One had a collection of ships in bottles. Most of which he built himself. I'd say that this collection was less about owning them, than admiring them. The same can be said for the other grandfather, which had a collection of blueprints, engineering documents, and similar papers. Though their beauty was lost on a lot of people, my grandfather enjoyed their logical and aesthetic values.
Meanwhile, my mother collects everything, though in moderation. I was raised in a pack rat household, which is not to suggest that my life was ever harder due to the amount of stuff that had been collected, but rather, there was always excess of something available. I'm not sure why my mother collects. She has butterflies and insects, which is likely for the beauty, but also books, lots of books. We literally have a library at home. My mother has even Dewey Decimal'd the whole collection. But she hasn't read it all. Not even near 50%. Which leads me to believe she enjoys the idea of owning this knowledge. She is intrigued by the knowledge offered by the books, for sure, but the actual knowledge needn't ever be released from the pages because she owns the book know.
For similar reasons, she pursues our family tree, delving ever further into books and records most people have forgotten about to find some name, or marriage, or death. Of all of her collections, I find the family tree most intriguing and most fruitless. The knowledge gained by exploring our genealogy will be utterly useless in almost any regard I can think of (barring some GATTACA future where jobs and performance are based solely on your genes). I think the temptation of knowledge that only she can figure out is tempting in a way.
There is a lot to be said for the collection of books. It ties directly into the discussion of collection being tied to consumption. The ability to buy something and literally own it is definitely an attractive portion of collecting. It is possible to collect without purchasing something, such as pursuing butterflies, beetles, receipts, or grocery lists. But on the whole, our modern world seems to find such thing as creepy or some juvenile or perverse behavior. The standard has moved away from hobby pursuits to shopping pursuits. I'd say in this way, many people in the US suffer from this mind set. The ability to buy and own things allow people to pursue objects that serve no purpose other than to entertain themselves. Given people's general lack of time to have a personal life, money becomes the new exchange tool for your collection. At one point in time, pursuing your collection wasn't a monetarily pursuit, but one of a hobby or something to do in your free time. Given the paradigm shift focusing on the gathering of money in exchange for less personal time, it is a relatively simple matter that collecting would change as well.
That being said, I think the collect and consume approach takes something away from the collection. I can personally say that my personal collection is easily expandable, all I need is money to do so. But it's not nearly as interesting or exciting as finding or making something to expand my collection. This though also depends on your collection. My collection of watches isn't something that is likely to expand on my skill level or in any monetarily free way, since every watch requires money. But if my pursuits were more based on insects or stories, finding them myself would provide more meaning and detail to the collection than just purchasing something ever could.
I'm sure this reading would offend many a feminist and probably a few other people. I can't really say if I agree. Both of my grandfather's collected things. One had a collection of ships in bottles. Most of which he built himself. I'd say that this collection was less about owning them, than admiring them. The same can be said for the other grandfather, which had a collection of blueprints, engineering documents, and similar papers. Though their beauty was lost on a lot of people, my grandfather enjoyed their logical and aesthetic values.
Meanwhile, my mother collects everything, though in moderation. I was raised in a pack rat household, which is not to suggest that my life was ever harder due to the amount of stuff that had been collected, but rather, there was always excess of something available. I'm not sure why my mother collects. She has butterflies and insects, which is likely for the beauty, but also books, lots of books. We literally have a library at home. My mother has even Dewey Decimal'd the whole collection. But she hasn't read it all. Not even near 50%. Which leads me to believe she enjoys the idea of owning this knowledge. She is intrigued by the knowledge offered by the books, for sure, but the actual knowledge needn't ever be released from the pages because she owns the book know.
For similar reasons, she pursues our family tree, delving ever further into books and records most people have forgotten about to find some name, or marriage, or death. Of all of her collections, I find the family tree most intriguing and most fruitless. The knowledge gained by exploring our genealogy will be utterly useless in almost any regard I can think of (barring some GATTACA future where jobs and performance are based solely on your genes). I think the temptation of knowledge that only she can figure out is tempting in a way.
There is a lot to be said for the collection of books. It ties directly into the discussion of collection being tied to consumption. The ability to buy something and literally own it is definitely an attractive portion of collecting. It is possible to collect without purchasing something, such as pursuing butterflies, beetles, receipts, or grocery lists. But on the whole, our modern world seems to find such thing as creepy or some juvenile or perverse behavior. The standard has moved away from hobby pursuits to shopping pursuits. I'd say in this way, many people in the US suffer from this mind set. The ability to buy and own things allow people to pursue objects that serve no purpose other than to entertain themselves. Given people's general lack of time to have a personal life, money becomes the new exchange tool for your collection. At one point in time, pursuing your collection wasn't a monetarily pursuit, but one of a hobby or something to do in your free time. Given the paradigm shift focusing on the gathering of money in exchange for less personal time, it is a relatively simple matter that collecting would change as well.
That being said, I think the collect and consume approach takes something away from the collection. I can personally say that my personal collection is easily expandable, all I need is money to do so. But it's not nearly as interesting or exciting as finding or making something to expand my collection. This though also depends on your collection. My collection of watches isn't something that is likely to expand on my skill level or in any monetarily free way, since every watch requires money. But if my pursuits were more based on insects or stories, finding them myself would provide more meaning and detail to the collection than just purchasing something ever could.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Demographics
A demographic is any group of like minded individuals. Whether they are a subculture of their own, or a weekly ladies' book club, a demographic is a collection of individuals that identify themselves by standards, such as income, fashion, location, or standard of living.
The three readings are all about people, how to categorize them, and then how to approach them (usually for reasons of marketing). The overlap between the three readings is entertaining because it talks all about how interconnected people are in different ways than before, and how impossible it is to standardize people. People continue to affect each other, effect the ways they interact with each other and finally, how they pursue their goals.
I find it intriguing that there is such a variety of opinions of all of these subjects. Not that I expected it to be cut and dry, but the fact that the organizations that it make it their business to try and categorize people fail to work together, and more importantly, cannot complete their job in an manner of finality. I realize that that is simply an effect of dealing with people, who on their own are often chaotic and unpredictable. I really enjoyed the discussion of video vs. book. vs. radio/podcast. It was a debate often held in the Computer Animation department and it is entertaining and insightful to listen to the opinions of different people over the same movies and books. The vastness of opinion is delightful and somewhat frightening. The ability to write a book, with a set idea in mind, and then find an entire portion of your fan base not only miss that idea, but come up with a completely tangential one is both infuriating and exciting. The idea that we as designers will be asked to design to try and appeal to a single demographic is a challenge that seems fun to meet, albeit difficult.
The three readings are all about people, how to categorize them, and then how to approach them (usually for reasons of marketing). The overlap between the three readings is entertaining because it talks all about how interconnected people are in different ways than before, and how impossible it is to standardize people. People continue to affect each other, effect the ways they interact with each other and finally, how they pursue their goals.
I find it intriguing that there is such a variety of opinions of all of these subjects. Not that I expected it to be cut and dry, but the fact that the organizations that it make it their business to try and categorize people fail to work together, and more importantly, cannot complete their job in an manner of finality. I realize that that is simply an effect of dealing with people, who on their own are often chaotic and unpredictable. I really enjoyed the discussion of video vs. book. vs. radio/podcast. It was a debate often held in the Computer Animation department and it is entertaining and insightful to listen to the opinions of different people over the same movies and books. The vastness of opinion is delightful and somewhat frightening. The ability to write a book, with a set idea in mind, and then find an entire portion of your fan base not only miss that idea, but come up with a completely tangential one is both infuriating and exciting. The idea that we as designers will be asked to design to try and appeal to a single demographic is a challenge that seems fun to meet, albeit difficult.
Community and Group Processes
Ideally, this project will grant us the chance to work on a number of different medias (of the group's choice). The project will, within the next week or two, begin to gather focus, and then the group work will become apparent as we search for presentation materials. It is unclear right now what we are expected to produce from the project, which is worrisome, as whether we need to make a book, website, pamphlet or what about our characters and collections.
There are plenty of pros and cons about working in groups. One advantage is being able to rely on another person to assist in the workload, to provide a different voice, ideas, and style. This is always excellent to provide a diverse project. However, on the downside, it is rare that people are able to completely agree on an idea. Projects get torn asunder as people disagree on methods, goals, and their importance. Artists, in particular, have trouble compromising. Another fear is style. Artists become used to a certain style and then suddenly, trying to merge to unique styles, or simple work in another style is difficult and usually unappreciated by the alternate party.
There are plenty of pros and cons about working in groups. One advantage is being able to rely on another person to assist in the workload, to provide a different voice, ideas, and style. This is always excellent to provide a diverse project. However, on the downside, it is rare that people are able to completely agree on an idea. Projects get torn asunder as people disagree on methods, goals, and their importance. Artists, in particular, have trouble compromising. Another fear is style. Artists become used to a certain style and then suddenly, trying to merge to unique styles, or simple work in another style is difficult and usually unappreciated by the alternate party.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Readings
Response
A collection is a group of items that are brought together to be preserved, usually related to each other through a theme, though why a collection exists is often unique to the collection.
Of the collections mentioned in the reading, there was a nature collection, a gem collection, a jewelry collection, a blue enamel collection, a ceramics collection, an art collection, and a book collection. There are more, pertaining to statues, animals, mutations and oddities, antiques, plants, shells, birds, coins, and stuffed animals.
Most of these people pursued their curiosities, and collected for a quest for knowledge, or for the pride of being the only person to own such a rare oddity. Some of the readings speak of the passion for collecting beyond what is healthy. An all consuming pursuit of life that gives them little pleasure, yet it consumes their lives. This passion, which use to be a rarity and mostly depended on the financial standing of the person in question, is now more and more common. Hoarders are more and more evident, as spoken about in the third collection. Hoarders often collect that which few others view as valuable. Broken odds and ends, receipts, tuna can labels, and so on.
The pursuit of defining and defying nature was the goal of scientific collection. It was an attempt to capture a view of all of nature, its oddities and its unique creations. It was not only a defiance of nature, but a pursuit of classism, showing off the ability to afford such a collection. Collecting was the pursuit of nobles, people of power and affluence. To show off such a collection was to show your money and power, and ability to have others collect for you.
Many people have collections nowadays, even if they don't necessarily see them as such. I have a pack rat tendency to hold on to old handouts and worksheets, figuring that they'll be useful at a later point, regardless of how long past the class I am. I still have my Physics notes and textbook, despite that class having occurred 8 years ago. I have a collection of photographs on my computer, both ones I've taken and ones that are of interest to me. I own a large collection of Magic The Gathering cards, and a collection of fantasy books, and D&D books. These are all things that interest me, and while they don't get used on a daily basis, the thought of getting rid of them seems wasteful.
Reasons to Collect & What Kind of Collections
Memory – Souvenirs from trips
Interest – Baseball Paraphernalia
Future Use – School handouts
Protective Nature – Antiques
Connect With a Time or Place – Photos/Video
Horde – Toys, Misc.
Intent to Steal Information - Credit Cards > Bank Accounts > Junk Paper \ Mail
My Brother's Cabinet of Curiosities - Snake head, snake skin, snake rattle, monkey's paw, alligator's claw, snake blood, dead insects, shrunken head, witch box, medical journal from 1870's on making zombies
Things People Collect
Technology – Cords, motherboards, cables
China Collectors – Plates, Glasses
Business Cards/Calling Cards
Obsessive Diet Recipes
Metal Collectors
Medal Collectors
Used Cigarettes
Art Collections
Lottery Tickets
Energy Drinks
Pocket Knives
Cat Lady/Man
Bottlecaps
Hot Sauce
Weapons
Knives
Liquor
Cards
Hair
Beer
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