#blogposttwo

Following an irreversible depression that stagnates the economy at the hands of late stage-capitalism, my earthseed community will be seeking a shelter to re-build a better society. The first major issue my community needs to rebuild from is the fall of cybersecurity. By this point in the future, the world has gone nearly completely paperless, with every transaction, correspondence, and advertisement being digitized. This total collapse of cybersecurity has led to the constant hacking, selling & trading of private information. The next major issue that compounds on top of the fall of cyber security is the return of Monopolies. With each industry having one major overseer, prices on everyday items have skyrocketed beyond reason, and the tech monopolies have the freewill to make impactful decisions with no pushback (see: the Apple pay sanctions placed on Russian citizens in the 2022 war against Ukraine).

1. “When apparent stability disintegrates, As it must—God is Change—People tend to give in To fear and depression, To need and greed. When no influence is strong enough To unify people They divide. They struggle, One against one, Group against group, For survival, position, power. They remember old hates and generate new ones. They create chaos and nurture it. They kill and kill and kill, Until they are exhausted and destroyed, Until they are conquered by outside forces, Or until one of them becomes A leader Most will follow, Or a tyrant Most fear.” This quote represents the tyranny my community is attempting to escape. The powerful leaders who chose to invest in themselves over and over to build their personal wealth and power, at the expense of the average citizen, are the need and greed that the community needs saving from. While their power multiplies, lower income citizens' autonomy and power diminishes, effectively conquered.

2. “All successful life is Adaptable, Opportunistic, Tenacious, Interconnected, and Fecund. Understand this. Use it. Shape God.” The underwater community does not have a singular God that is being pushed onto them, and every citizen is free to worship as they choose. Within this verse, “shaping God” refers to shaping your reality. The community has been dealt a terrible hand, and is choosing to reshape their reality rather than cower.

To ensure safety, my Earthseed community will create a colony underwater, where no signal could reach. The ocean is expansive and largely untouched, with plenty of edible fish and water that can be made drinkable.

This community is not exclusive, but members will be vetted in a way that ensures no person could provide unreasonable harm to the sanctity of community values and safety. Individuals that display an allegiance to fully digitized services (tech-supremacists) will not be welcome, as well as those who display unhealthy parasocial relationships to the politicians and monopoly owners that forced us out. This is to ensure that no-one attempts to overhaul the community’s mission.

My leadership model for my community will be implementing a hierarchy based on skill. There is no top and bottom for this hierarchy, but whatever skill is needed the most that day. This could be weapon-making if we are under attack, providing first-aid, even being able to play instruments on a day where community members are feeling extra bored and restless. In return for being the most relied on on a given day, you are served first at mealtime, allowed personal time to deep sea dive, and given one rest day when needed (exclusions apply).

A crucial technology for underwater survival would be the ‘oxydome.’ It is a light, portable device shaped like an astronaut helmet, that allows for humans to breathe easily when in water. Our underwater facility has , but with these helmets individuals can hunt for fish and collect fresher water from near the top of the ocean for drinking. 

My earthseed community will be based in the ruins of previous citizens who had attempted underwater living. We would not be the first, but we will have learned from the mistakes of those before us, including: spaced out hunting trips so we don’t permanently scare fish from entering our area (the farther we have to go to hunt, the more dangerous it becomes), stockpiling water purification tablets in the event that we have a system breakdown, daily exercise so the time underwater doesn’t morph our joints, and regularly attending class to maintain a routine. 

Here’s the thing, some people think that if they exercise and eat poorly, they’ll lose weight and/or stay healthy. However, that is not the case, eating poorly and going to the gym five to six times a week will not help you lose weight or maintain a healthy lifestyle. In order to live a healthy lifestyle, you need to follow a healthy eating habit and a consistent exercise routine. You need to think about what you are putting into your body because quite frankly it is very vital to your health. Losing weight or wanting to live a healthy lifestyle does not only include exercising, it also includes eating healthy. Nutrition should be your number one priority and exercise should be your second. As they say, and I’ve heard this about a million times by now, weight loss is usually 75 percent diet and 25 percent exercise. Whether you train really hard or have the perfect training routine, it’s all useless if you are not putting the right nutrition into your body. You have to fill your body with macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and fat); your body needs a lot of them. Macronutrients provide your body with energy, and they are very important to take into consideration when starting to adapt to a healthy eating lifestyle. Although eating healthy or dieting without exercise will help you lose weight, adding exercise will also aid in helping you lose weight, maybe at a slower pace, but it will also increase health benefits such as reducing stress, lowering your cholesterol and risk of diseases as well as improving the quality of your sleep. Like I mentioned above, dieting alone without exercising will help you lose weight but only a portion of your weight loss will be from fat; you will be stripping away muscle. However, if you add exercise to your diet, you will be burning mostly fat. Lastly, to answer the question of whether nutrition or exercise is more important, my answer is nutrition and exercise are both equally important. You need to balance eating healthy and exercising to achieve the best results when trying to lose weight or wanting to live a healthier lifestyle. What you eat is crucial to your well-being and it matters more than how you burn it off, but fitness is also essential to get past your plateaus as well as help you achieve your ultimate goals. 

Brief Three was for us to design furniture to be made from Centriforce material. (http://www.centriforce.com/)

This furniture will be placed on the roof terrace in the festival square of the Manchester International Festival in Albert Square. It will then be hopefully placed up on our roof terrace of the new building for the Manchester School of Art.

At the end of all this we have to present our design and research to a panel of judges in a Dragons Den approach. The Dean of the Manchester School of Art, David Crow and a panel of other creative people within the field of design and Christine from MIF will be the panel we have to impress for our designs to become reality.

Blog Post Two

Working in the smaller groups helped with the definement of our thoughts and research but didn’t help when searching for content for our project as there is a few less people to think and discuss our thoughts. It is neither good or bad to have smaller groups to work with.

Our groups most exciting and interesting concept for the teepee I feel was to bring back a little hint of nostalgia in the form of snip its of the Hacienda décor. The industrial look with stripped back furniture and clean lines I feel was another good idea of ours as it would be plain and inviting to all that would enter the festival teepee.

I feel that my performance within the development of the Teepee concept was adequate as at the start of the development most of my group went to Milan Furniture Fair and after they came back, they came back with loads of great ideas which developed our concept further than my initial thoughts for the teepee. I feel that my contribution to the presentation of the concept of the teepee was good over the two days we had to set it up after we had changed our path on what we were looking and thinking about. I helped source the images for the presentation and help start off the planning for the furniture within the space. I produced the colour blocked plan on Photoshop for the initial plan of the teepee which then led onto Jimeshs more indetail plan of the space once we had figured out the type of furniture we were going to present.