'Labshop: Eat Yourself' was developed by Thomas Goldstone and Lavinia S. Tinelli during their studies around body and gender as part of their word-alchemist practice. It is a project aimed at encouraging discussions around issues of labelling, stereotypes, ‘othering’, and self-identification. It hopes to promote a greater reflexivity on individual embodied experiences of self. The design of Labshop is heavily grounded on the belief that personal agency and awareness of self can counterbalance the use of language as means of re-perpetration of societal power structures. These beliefs are being looked at through a post-structuralist perspective. In order to carry out this project, Goldstone and Tinelli have researched into topics around gender and sexuality, BMI (Body Mass Index) and body perception, and social linguistics.
Project Brief
ISO presides over a multitude of technical standards that establish criteria for everything from roller bearings and refrigerants to lubricants and footwear. There are technical standards for the parameters of a JPEG (ISO/IEC:15444) or an MPEG (ISO/IEC 21000), for cooking pasta (ISO 7304-2:2008, and even a standard glass for wine tastings (ISO 3591:1977).
Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft
Standards homogenise products and practices to ensure a basic level of safety, quality, dimension or aesthetic. They are necessary for a product, practice or behavior to take part in a global economy, yet their presence largely goes unseen. Though standards are voluntary / advisory, those who make the standards hold an immense amount of power. In her book ExtraStateCraft, Keller Easterling investigates the activities of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) – a privately run global institution which governs these rules, and the international bodies who maintain them. To “meet the standard” is a certificate of legitimacy and trust, a form of currency. “If law is the currency of governments, standards are the currency of international organizations and multinational enterprises.” Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft
Standards also produce us, and our behaviour: the typical passport photograph demands a rigorous set of rules that regulate the precise dimensions, position and expression of a face in the photograph, so it can be read by facial recognition technology. Standards determine the dimensions of our built environment: the Neufert is an architectural handbook setting out optimum distances between bodies and architecture and ideal dimensions of furniture. Standards curate the everyday aesthetics of supermarket produce: US Agricultural Standards define what is the acceptable shape, size and texture of fruit, from strawberries to cucumbers. More generally, language has its own standards that may limit the way we think or express ourselves - for example there are four words for love in Greek and only one in English; whilst human behaviour has its own history of standards from rules on etiquette to the legal criteria of an ASBO.
Standards are so intertwined with our daily lives and practices that they often go unnoticed and unquestioned. For designers, these parameters come to establish the usual way of doing things, shaping how we think, and can ultimately limit the variability or ambition of our work. “Standard Practice” ensures a ‘bare minimum’ is met – but often the bare minimum becomes the standard. As designers we should attune ourselves to the standards that affect us, be conscious of how we act within them, and decide if (and how) we want to challenge or move beyond them.
Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft
Standards homogenise products and practices to ensure a basic level of safety, quality, dimension or aesthetic. They are necessary for a product, practice or behavior to take part in a global economy, yet their presence largely goes unseen. Though standards are voluntary / advisory, those who make the standards hold an immense amount of power. In her book ExtraStateCraft, Keller Easterling investigates the activities of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) – a privately run global institution which governs these rules, and the international bodies who maintain them. To “meet the standard” is a certificate of legitimacy and trust, a form of currency. “If law is the currency of governments, standards are the currency of international organizations and multinational enterprises.” Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft
Standards also produce us, and our behaviour: the typical passport photograph demands a rigorous set of rules that regulate the precise dimensions, position and expression of a face in the photograph, so it can be read by facial recognition technology. Standards determine the dimensions of our built environment: the Neufert is an architectural handbook setting out optimum distances between bodies and architecture and ideal dimensions of furniture. Standards curate the everyday aesthetics of supermarket produce: US Agricultural Standards define what is the acceptable shape, size and texture of fruit, from strawberries to cucumbers. More generally, language has its own standards that may limit the way we think or express ourselves - for example there are four words for love in Greek and only one in English; whilst human behaviour has its own history of standards from rules on etiquette to the legal criteria of an ASBO.
Standards are so intertwined with our daily lives and practices that they often go unnoticed and unquestioned. For designers, these parameters come to establish the usual way of doing things, shaping how we think, and can ultimately limit the variability or ambition of our work. “Standard Practice” ensures a ‘bare minimum’ is met – but often the bare minimum becomes the standard. As designers we should attune ourselves to the standards that affect us, be conscious of how we act within them, and decide if (and how) we want to challenge or move beyond them.