Newsletter - 13 June 2017

We are delighted to be able to share with you the words of the students who received funding from the Tom Fund (see below). The Tom Fund has been a joy. It is a pleasure for us to remain connected to the department and learn more about why Tom felt it to be an important place bubbling with creative ideas and interesting people. It is also a privilege to see at first hand the work of the third year students forming and developing.  We have had wonderful feedback from both students and staff confirming that the Tom Fund is valuable, welcomed and working. Thank you to you all for helping us and helping those at Goldsmiths.

The Goldsmiths Third Year BA Design students are hosting their Degree Show from Friday 16th June to Monday 19th June from 10am to 7pm  (4pm on Monday) at The Truman Brewery in Brick Lane.

Mark, Emma and Anne will be there on the Saturday evening from about 7pm (James will be going on Sunday) and look forward to seeing some of you there. You are also welcome to attend at any of the opening times from Friday to Monday.

You are invited to join the students and staff for a Family and Friends evening from 6pm to 10pm on the Saturday evening. The recipients of the Tom Fund awards will all be there to explain their projects and the impact receiving funding made to them. The Degree Show is called Hyphen, a neat name explained in their own words, The space of the hyphen positions us dialectically between things; things in apparent opposition, division, contrast or antithesis. This tension demands attention. Habitual patterns of thinking and everyday ways of doing are jolted out of sync. For the 2017 graduating BA Design students at Goldsmiths this space is where their practice is defined.

The Hyphen website is here.

Featured
Service with her Smile
Service with her Smile

Hayley Bruford and Lilias Adair

‘Service with her Smile’ is an investigation into the emotional labour that is required of those who operate within the service industry. We approached this by deconstructing repeated elements of the performance of labour and redesigning them, using the material cultures within those spaces. We used Taylorism - a model of efficiency that was used in manual labour spaces after WW1 - to look into the efficiency of the service worker script, as a character or persona that becomes saturated over time. One such persona we focussed on was the flight attendant, specifically in terms of their script; the service with a smile, and their physical performance of work.

Whilst initially investigating this through representations in popular culture, The Tom Fund enabled us to experience first-hand a short British Airways flight attendant training course. Without this opportunity our understanding of the industry would have been based on assumptions and generic social understanding of the role. The fund supplied an enriched experience of the expected occupational performance in the airline service industry which has been imperative to the project development.

The training enabled us to both experience a corporate training system which asks one to edit yourself into a stereotypical character. It’s this self editing and curating, for a job, that our project critiques. Moreover, the experience of having to perform ourselves, whilst attending the course has become an incredibly meaningful and poignant moment in our project research. As serious as it all sounds, it was also just a fascinating experience, learning about different planes, emergency landings, survival skills and of course meeting all the interesting people that were aspiring to become BA flight attendants - it really was brilliant.

As you might expect, with the good there comes the bad, and for us there have been some moments of struggle and doubt within the project, however The Tom Fund gave us something incredibly enriching and poignant - not just for our project but also for us as designers, beginning to engage in the world through the material we create and we’re incredibly grateful for it.

Ingenious-Spectacular
Ingenious-Spectacular

Raoni Azevedo

In this project I worked with the telling one's own story as a path for self reflection. I looked into the way our collective imaginarium is crowded with alien fictions, be them from Hollywood, politics, or Netflix. Even though we amplify our 'selves' on social media, our stories never reach the same level of production, creative consideration or spectacle that these external narratives get. Inspired by Don Quixote I wanted to look for the spectacle in my own story, overriding reality with my ideals. So I used design to craft my self narrative as a Hollywood movie, with a crew formed by close ones; designing sets, casting characters, reliving key moments, writing the storyline, battling giants and windmills. Having to continuously retell my story; ingenious like Quixote, spectacular like Hollywood. But just as in Cervante's book, reality is a tough contender, putting every dream to the test, making the outcomes deeply ambiguous.

My name is Raoni Azevedo, I'm a 27 year-old Design student from Brazil and Tom's Fund helped me return to the UK to present at Goldsmiths the project I started six months before. This has been an intense process of self-reflection and through the making of the film it has also impacted a number of other people, from Rio to London, clashing both realities.

cargocollective.com/raoniaz

Human Nature
Human Nature

Gabriella de Rosa

Nature is intrinsically woven into our lives; our survival depends on the survival of our environment. However, humanity’s lost connection with nature has corroded the biological diversity of our Earth. It seems indisputable that human activities are the immediate cause for biodiversity loss. Therefore, solutions should be found within the context of our own behaviour.

Human Nature is an article of living fashion that enables humans to become agents of biodiversity within the concrete jungle, in order to promote London’s native environment. The living clothing incorporates UK native seeds and plants into the design, that address the biodiversity issues London is currently facing.

The Tom Fund enabled me to fully immerse myself within my concept, providing me with the opportunity to investigate the specific UK native plant species my concept depends on. My project is centred around the significance of a coexistence with nature, influenced by the site-specific, biodiversity science of London. Therefore, without your funding, I would not have been able to explore this core aspect of my work and relate my scientific research to my final outcome.

I really appreciate your generosity and the help you provided with my project, thank you so much for your kindness.

gabrielladerosa.com

Project Mike
Project Mike

William Francis

Mike is a project revealing the unrealistic fantasies of adverts. To do this I created a character completely shaped by sports adverts and brands, more specifically Nike. I picked Nike because the branding is aimed so heavily at me, a 21 year old man, so I feel I have throughout my life been sold the Nike lifestyle. Therefore it seemed like a logical idea to form the character Mike. Mike believes he is in an advert at all times, everything he does must be advert quality and he must be the sporty star of the show.

I used the Tom Fund to move this character from story boards and my own performances by employing an experienced actor called Liam Duffy to perform as Mike. This was an essential part of my project as I find acting very anxiety inducing. With the help of Liam Duffy I was able to make a short film called Mike, this film directly exposes the unrealistic fantasies and expectations created by adverts, it shows what Mike thinks of himself, how he appears in reality and the adverts he bases himself on.

wnfdesign.tumblr.com

Urbem Feram
Urbem Feram

Lauren Davies

Nature is intrinsically woven into our lives; our survival depends on the survival of our environment. However, humanity’s lost connection with nature has corroded the biological diversity of our Earth. It seems indisputable that human activities are the immediate cause for biodiversity loss. Therefore, solutions should be found within the context of our own behaviour.

Human Nature is an article of living fashion that enables humans to become agents of biodiversity within the concrete jungle, in order to promote London’s native environment. The living clothing incorporates UK native seeds and plants into the design, that address the biodiversity issues London is currently facing.

The Tom Fund enabled me to fully immerse myself within my concept, providing me with the opportunity to investigate the specific UK native plant species my concept depends on. My project is centred around the significance of a coexistence with nature, influenced by the site-specific, biodiversity science of London. Therefore, without your funding, I would not have been able to explore this core aspect of my work and relate my scientific research to my final outcome.

I really appreciate your generosity and the help you provided with my project, thank you so much for your kindness.

cargocollective.com/laurendavies

Aliens/Algorithms
Aliens/Algorithms

Tom Robinson

Throughout my final year I have been working on the first implementation of real time virtual reality, a system which transports a user to a new world and a portal to an alien environment.

Everyone knows that algorithms exist, they rule our social media lives - but how do they work?

Everyone knows it’s logical to assume that we’re not the only planet which sustains intelligent life in the universe - but where are the aliens?

This project aims to explain algorithms through attempting to create an experience of alien existence. The user becomes the alien to the outside world, whilst the world they interact with through the headset is their own alien environment. The algorithm in this work is the software that transfers individual depth points captured through the headset into a single mesh which can then be seen by the user, making it clear how computer generated environments are created.

This system is also the world’s first implementation of real time virtual reality, opening up the possibility of living fully inside a virtual world for the very first time, along with giving the computer industry the opportunity to create truly limitless computer generated environments.

The Tom Fund has allowed me to create this system by providing me with the funding to get my own VR headset which is the key component, before this I was having to guess and hope that what I had created would work but once I got hold of the headset I was able to complete my project and get in touch with industry and media in order to spread the project further in a more professional manner.

contact@t0mr0bins0n.com

t0mr0bins0n.com

Face De-Perception
Face De-Perception

Jin Seung Jang

Basically, my project is about changing our perception of people’s faces and appearances which causes discriminations. Machines and technologies on face recognition are in the centre of our lives and also discrimination, at the same time, it does have the power to recreate our perception. Therefore, by deconstructing and reconstructing the system using machines could possibly contribute to the transition of the mindset taking out out unconscious consciousness that interrelated to diverse social and cultural issues.

The fund was used for purchasing several machines that are directly connected to the outcome of this project. These machines are a speaker and an oscilloscope. Also the polaroid films were purchased as well in order to document the project. Again, I feel so thankful to receive this fund which has supported this project.

jinseungjang.com

Techno-Psychedelic Therapy
Techno-Psychedelic Therapy

Conner Eastwood

Techno-Psychedelic Therapy (TPT) is a technological form of psychedelic experience that utilises advancing technologies to change and augment physical reality. Responsive uniquely to each user’s brain waves and stress levels, TPT takes an experimental approach to tackling common yet complex mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression. Inspired by the institutionalisation of psychedelic drugs as a form of medication for mental health disorders, TPT attempts to revamp the prevalent characteristics of a psychedelic trip through a series of cohesive designed mediums, improved by data gathered from first and third person experiences of psychedelia. Techno- Psychedelic Therapy constructs a unique body and mental experience that not only deeply meditates the user, but is enhanced by its use within the natural world. Technology is becoming embedded deeply within our culture as a species, but as we evolve can we use it to create a future that allows technology and nature to work harmoniously together.

I used the Tom Fund to buy the main working parts of my project: The Oculus DK2 and EEG Brain sensor. From this it enabled me to create a piece that I would have never have expected myself to create. The Tom Fund truly enabled me to achieve something I would have never expected to achieve. My project is based around treating anxiety based disorders, and addressing the age of anxiety that we are in, with the help of the Tom Fund, it has facilitated me to take a huge step towards creating something that genuinely makes a difference.

I’d like to say thank you, to all who were a part of the Tom Fund. What you are doing is truly inspiring and I can’t say thank you enough.

connereastwood.com

Newsletter - 24 March 2017

It is with great pleasure that we can report applications are coming in thick and fast, and awards are being made from the Tom Fund.

In this first year of running the fund we were not sure at what point students would wish to apply for funding and quite when it would start making a difference. The third year Design students at Goldsmiths submit their dissertation early in the calendar year, and then start working on their final year projects. These are completed in May ready to be exhibited in June.

We have established the fund with the aim of Third Year BA students, working on their final projects, overcoming financial barriers to realising an important aspect of their project. The award can be used for, but is not limited to, acquisition of materials, travelling to undertake site specific work or hiring of equipment.

The Tom Fund administrative team, consisting of Tom's Goldsmiths friends, his tutors and us, his family, work together to approve or reject funding requests swiftly enabling momentum to be retained on project work.

We have been asked to fund a great range of items including;

  • Oculus Rift virtual reality systems,

  • UK native plants and seeds,

  • polaroid film,

  • equipment to build an oscilloscope and sub-woofer,

  • the hiring of an actor,

  • a wireless bird box camera,

  • a trail camera, and

  • a galvanic skin response sensor

Each recipient has been asked to write a small article to explain how the award has helped them. In due course we will be circulating these. In the meantime, I would like to pass on thanks from everyone involved, and the current third years who are extremely grateful for this financial support.

Newsletter - 16 August 2016

A huge thank you to the very many people that have donated so generously to The Tom Fund. It means a great deal to us and we are extremely grateful for your extraordinarily kind donations. 

We have spent some time over the last months working out exactly how the fund will be administered and what its aims are to be. 

We agreed swiftly that the fund would be held by the finance team at Goldsmiths, allowing Gift Aid to be claimed and for the funds to be securely held. It was also easy to agree that the fund would be administered by a combination of Tom's closest friends at Goldsmith's, the Design Department staff and Tom's family. It became clear quickly that it would be an award for Third Year BA Design Students, working on their Final Projects, to overcome financial barriers to realising an important aspect of their project. Tom was working on his Final Project and often mentioned how much he would like to be able to hire a piece of equipment, or visit a particular place or, meet a particular person. The fund will enable future generations of third year students to do just that.

The Fund has a figure approaching £13,500, including Gift Aid, and the intention is for this amount to be added to over the years and become an integral part of the Design Department BA Program. Additional fundraising is already underway from the sale of the Known Unknowns' exhibition book and one of Tom's oldest friends is planning to run a marathon in October. 

As ever, it is the details that matter and much discussion has revolved around ensuring student's creativity is enabled by The Tom Fund but at the same time ensuring that it doesn't become the easy option curtailing creative thought, experimentation and exploration of ideas. Once the new academic year has started we will let you know further details about the fund and exactly how it will be awarded. Newsletters will then keep you updated as to how it is being spent.