1A2 - Inspiration

The silent movie Man with a Movie Camera by the brothers Dziga Vertov and Mikhail Kaufman is a treasure chest of inspirational materials for the associates at 1A2. A very obvious source of inspiration for our ordinary product are the wall-newspapers, in the NEP-period of the early Soviet Union. 

Whenever someone had written an article s/he could contribute to the wall-newspaper by posting it in a box (cf., our product description of the ordinary in the post below):

• Then someone would do the lay-out:
  

• And would have this fantastic handcrafted finish:
  

• Keeping such newspapers were considered a local social duty:
  

• Of course, this does not correspond to the present state of our society. Yet, there is much of the duty to society in the early days of the Russian revolution that we can keep as duties to ourselves. 
  

• The box and folders of the ordinary are created to facilitate this kind of post-for-montage cycle in our everyday life. If your ordinary weekly, you can make exactly 4/year: which means that you have materials for a quarterly wall-newspaper, that will enable you in claiming your weeks and your months. Do it on the floor, or on the wall in your basement.
  

• The ordinary – the 1A2 product on top of the list – contains 13 folders that are specially designed to author contents for your quarterly montage. It's a little extra work, but it's really a great gift to yourself: you allows you enhance or remember your sense of public culture. 
  

• Do not hesitate to initiate contacts with 1A2 associates Theo Barth and Bjørn Blikstad, at the Oslo Academy of the Arts for an exchange. 
  

1A2 products: the ordinary

Mission Statement: 

Our products are never hi-tech, and always low-fi. They are simple to make and use. Once you've bought one, it'll last your life-time (if you take good care of it). We use low-obstruction materials and tools, with the aim of enhancing simple but important skills (enabling and empowering the user). All our products and services are created to spur and support design-authoring.

Product Description:

The ordinary is the equivalent of the dictionary in the area of ordering. In standard version it comes with 13 hand-sown folders (made up of 3 lined and 3 blank sheets plus a cover). The ordinary comes with an instruction manual about how to make new folders, and a method to develop your ordinary. This means that after the initial cost of € 63 you're on your own.

Our first customer at 1A2 is Professor in Social Anthropology Thomas Hylland Eriksen, who recently commissioned an ordinary from us (in deluxe-version).

Prof. Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Need Assessment:

In the eyes of the associates at 1A2 there is currently a need to conceptualise the transformation of information into data: we call this transformation design authoring. We live in a world where yesterday's information appears as today's noise. And an increasing number of people experience trouble to even remember yesterday's information. 

This is because remembrance requires techniques, rather than technology: simple manpowered machines rather than automation, with tangible or malleable interfaces (i.e., low-fi pre-structure). We need artefacts of this kind to feature the work of remembrance, and make effective claims to knowledge. Design authoring therefore should be understood as a category of intellectual work – a job that needs to be done.

As long as knowledge is information it belongs to someone else. Before it gets passed the threshold of authoring the knowledge you add to information is (and remains) alienated. The ordinary is accordingly created to support you in remembering yesterday's information and generating your data for tomorrow. 

Outside the context of remembrance and claims information is noise. By designing a context for your information, you transform information into data. And you are thereby at liberty of making new uses of your knowledge, which – henceforth – is yours. The ordinary comes with the following quote of Walter Benjamin on a sticker:

The card index marks the conquest of three-dimensional writing, and so presents an astonishing counterpoint to the three-dimensionality of script in its original form as rune or knot notation...

(the rest of the quotes comes with the methodology we deliver with the ordinary).

1A2 associates: Theo Barth & Bjørn Blikstad.