Final countdown

It´s over now. A five weeks course consisting of four workshops and a weblog reflecting my
experiences and moods come to their end. What lasts? I don´t know. I did lots of stuff I wasn´t used to do. I opened my mind. I learned. I got to know some great people. I had the privilege to work in groups that combined the most widespread skills and a real nice team spirit. Last not least I had fun. Not the worst balance to strike after five weeks.
Only a few sentences about today: Many things were going on at K3. Some I missed because they were too early in the morning or to far away. But I still saw a lot of good stuff, an awesome children´s book, a hilarious 'secret tree', a test of wine from unexpected countries (Iraq, North Korea etc.), a dark room and so on.
Finally we had our presentation. It worked very well. Maybe our chosen time wasn´t perfect because at 14.15 on a friday most students are either at home, on their way home or they are really in a hurry to come home. Nevertheless we did our stuff, feedback wasn´t just overwhelming, but as it Kami said: "Hey, that´s life".
Life goes on, but this Blog ends exactly HERE.

The end is neither

Nacho did a good job on his computer this morning. Now we are back on the map - returning from our video idea which had needed more time than we had. It´ll be an interactive map and we are on the finetuning for the final presentation, talking about slogans, colors, effects, fonts etc.
Yesterday an Interaction Designer named Björn gave us some new motivation and inspiration. Our special maps could be a worldwide phenoma, he said. But first we have to finish it on the local scale.
Tomorrow this workshop and the whole course ends. It will be a final firework of 20 different projects. I hope to find the time to see as many as possible.

Don´t look back in anger

Our project goes on. We do our best - returning from a deep valley of frustration yesterday.
Leo rescued some of the recordings, Lisa motivated us, Nacho got the programmes he needed. Everything´s getting better again, let´s see what tomorrow happens.

Anger

Fucking shit! What a start of the week.
There is our brave little group who managed to make the taciturn people of Malmö talk and there is a stupid little box pretending to record everything while deleting most of it. This sucks!!!
But how can I complain while Juan broke his camera?
Now we have to scale down our high expectations. How often this happens in ones lifetime, but - being honest - you never get used to it...

Words don´t come easy

Another day of many small steps. It´s so easy to take pictures, buildings, trees and signs can´t complain. But if it comes to people it´s getting harder.
Come on, people of Malmö, talk to us! We are really nice and we won´t sell your picture to the yellowpress. So tell us your little stories and we make a fine piece of art out of it.
If only everybody was as communicative as the Malmö hobos - you almost can´t stop them talking and they are never in a hurry.

Small steps forward

Puh. Exhausting day! Malmö is a comparable big city if you discover it by bike and by the advise of people.
Lisa liked our changed plans very much and so we started quite confident.
After a while we had to accept that not everybody was interested in talking to us, some were in a hurry, some didn´t want to be recorded, one guy told us honestly that he had "no memory" (!!!). Nevertheless we moved from one point to another, talked to people, recognized new sites and took lots of pictures. I enjoyed it very much but I wish I spoke some better Swedish. Leo and Juan had to do most of the talking. Tomorrow we´ll go on. Then we are going to split our group for practical reasons. Making mental maps takes its time.

Free mind mapping

Lisa is right. She wants us to put more of a concept behind our idea and to leave the mainstream of touristic points of interest a bit.
New plan: Let people guide you. Ask them for places they like/don´t like/find interesting/typical etc.
Idea behind: Every suggestion forms a piece of the puzzle of an alternative city map. It´s not about finding the beach or the Turning Torso the fastest way. It´s about discovering new sights of Malmö and giving meaning to places maybe ignored by all the others. The total view consists of all the different individual views. We don´t decide where to go. The last person talking to us decides. We don´t only see the places. We connect the places with the words of people. We want to make maps in mind visible.
Now we are looking forward to getting our sound recording equipment tomorrow. Where are we going to then? We have to ask.