Personally, this is the week with the swift passage of time, being informative and filled with tasks.

Start with the Tutorial

We put our all-round “Jack” mind map on the table. I felt inspiring when Josh linked our theme with Renaissance and the Enlightenment, compared the mode of starting with the problem versus with the discipline, and gave constructive suggestions on our definition of Jack. Should we view Jack as an individual or a situation in the workplace? To address all the uncertainties, it is still necessary to find a concreate workplace as a base to develop our abstract ideas.

Coffee Houses

Since I have been a caffeine addict for a couple of years, I tended to be especially interested in the BBC broadcast program on coffee. Therefore, I attempted to structure the edition and shared among our reading group.

Which I perceived useful for us to reflect on in this theme is the relationship between coffee, space and information. Coffee houses used to function as a new place for de-centralized information exchanges through conversations or periodical literature, to some extent functioning as a second workspace for businessmen. For Leica Store London Mayfair, the place we are going to visit, I’d like to explore if its attempt of gallery/academy settings with retail space will generate brand new scenarios for working mode.

Our discussion on Tuesday was also funny and I think worth documenting: Would we work less than 40 hours a week with the support of technology? What if coffee houses are all replaced by sleeping capsules? What if nobody has ever found the caffeine from coffee/tea/cocoa? 

Episode: The Attempt to Find a Workplace and an Interviewee

When I was trying to use my past workplace network to build contact with my previous boss in China and Leica staff in London, I felt it a bit challenging to form the wording to raise our requests. Meanwhile, paying attention to all participants’ feelings was the second task (participants refer to our team members, my previous boss in China, Leica hr in London office and our interviewee Renz, the assistant store manager). I should be cautious enough to prevent myself from being arbitrary to make the decision.

Preparation

When everything goes further, it is impossible to expect everything developing within our expectation. For example, during the prior email communication in these days, We were declined by Renz about our request to make video records. But I am still happy about all our efforts to go by step and mutual understandings among our team members when everything does not go smoothly.

And although the mind map was born from our collaborative brainstorming, everyone might have differences in focuses, leading to our different opinions in developing the interview structure. However, the process of discussing, persuading and compromising among us was a precious experience for me on Thursday. It is absolutely nice to be peaceful, but the collision of ideas sometimes might lead to more exciting chemical reaction to generate our consensus.

We finally decided to both focus on Renz himself and his views on the Leica / Store Mayfair / Photography as a whole.

Btw, It is surprising that every Thursday discussion contains an unexpected “easter egg”: the sunlight on last Thursday, and the romantic dancing couple we captured on this Thursday : )

Tomorrow

Hope this Sunday can be a rewarding day and the interview process will be worth documenting as Journal 3!

This is the week I found everything intriguing, especially the charm of group work.

Reflection on Group Work

I still remember my confusion about “collective vs. individual reflective practice” in the article What is Reflective Practice, which MAAI students were required to read in week 1 and I asked Elizabeth during tutorials. After experiencing this week, however, I came to know that the unit 2 is absolutely the best practice for the intertwining collective and individual reflections. 

In the reading group session on Tuesday, group members’ different understandings on the carrier bag theory were the most interesting part from my own perspective, empowering our consequent ideas in the group project. The workshop session on Wednesday and our group meetings on Thursday enabled me to amazingly realize how our different life experiences, cultural backgrounds and focuses of interest can contribute to our collective thought developments (care, de-centralization and Jack!). Meanwhile, I found such a group discussion is really a fantastic way to break my information cocoon and approach the information I have never known (for example, Ars longa, vita brevis mentioned by Kyungmin). Happy to cooperate with my knowledgeable teammates!

Reflection on Reading Group, Seminar and Workshop

I would like to list some points which I noted down during these sessions for self-recognition or future use:

· The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction enabled me to shift my sights from heroic narratives to all the subtle elements and helped me reconcile with myself. I used to perceive myself as an anomaly because I am never interested in popcorn movies of world-saving superheroes…

· Everyone’s positionality leads to everyone’s imagination toward future.

· Be aware of stories we tell everyday, and give agency to stories, and change them.

· Pay attention to the canon events of the present/past: what will happen if they are slightly changed?

· For future speculation, think about children.

Reflection on Myself

I neglected the power of my daily focuses. Most of time when I browsed social media pages, hung out with my friends and watched variety shows or drama series, I only viewed them as ways of relaxation or entertainment in the past. However, they are the muses for me to generate ideas and inspirations. For instance, I learned the concept of solopreneur through a small influencer called Jian in a China social media platform which I put forward through our group discussion. Simultaneously, the previous working life which I disliked are the precious experiences to reflect on. It triggers my way of looking forward to the ideal future pattern of work.

There is also some unrelated discoveries of myself hahaha…My mood is quite driven by weather and sleep quality. Weather on Thursday and Friday was super good and it nourished me a lot! At the same time, I finally got better sleep quality after I recovered from a cold. I should take more care of my physical health  and cherish sunny days!

BTW, I escaped from London on Friday. The country landscape I saw in the train was quite healing and I’d like to share here!

Development of my question:

How can we build the partnership with our outfit?

How can we benefit from our outfit?

How can our outfit trigger something?

How can our clothing trigger communications internally or externally?

My Action1: a small experiment with my friends

I invited 20 friends to take part in a small experiment which ask them randomly create their comparison group for items in their clothing. They need to wear the item they disliked on the first day while wear the liked one on the second day, and observed whether something special happening in lives. After two days, they were asked to share their feelings with me.

Findings:

• External communications ultimately seem to be internalized.

• The small experiment functioned as a way of raising people’s attention to their clothing, maybe more reflective practices on clothing.

Problems:

• The intervention was a bit subtle to get rewarding new knowledge.

• I cherished my friends because they indeed tried their best to give me feedback much as possible, but it led to a problem that they somehow intentionally built connection between clothing and some episodes in life even if the connection was weak. 

So I proceeded with Action2

My Action2: Wear to be Weird

I created a small “Weird Stall” in Applied Imagination classroom filled with several items for choices. All were invited to freely decorate themselves with these items which could make them look abnormal or even weird at that moment, and then have a wander around CSM or adjacent public spaces if they were willing to. Through this process of changing the clothing, people were encouraged to find some interesting interactions with others as well as grasp some special personal feelings. A QR code was attached on the board to collect feedback through a small questionnaire.

The outcome of the action

Personally, there are some points to find and reflect on:

• Most participants tended to pick items which can generate positive feedback from others or were perceived suitable to wear by themselves

• Some classmates found potentially suitable items by trying them and got inspirations for their future clothing

• Only one student tried to leave the classroom because of an interesting coincidence that there were piles of dirty plates outside the classroom while she was wearing the dishwashing gloves.

• The QR code could not function as an effective tool to collect feedback since seldom participants remembered to scan it. Direct chats with participants were more informative.

What to do next?

· I should wait feedback from Sasha for more insights.

· Through Action1 I have actually collected a lot of texts from my friends. I think they are worth spending time reading and analyzing to find paths to narrow down my question.

· More secondary research. Since timespan of project 4 will be approximately two months, I feel it is good to give longer time in reading and thinking.

I got a piece of paper in a charity shop near Baker Street Station last Friday. It informed a big second-hand camera event in May. The trigger was the camera on my back which was seen by the shop owner. He then took an empty receipt and wrote down name and time of the event to me. Really an interesting experience and I will definitely visit the photographica 2024!