Hello. This is Matthew Irvine Brown's portfolio.
email matthew@irvinebrown.com
Designer Politics
January 2005
A two and a half-week brief:
"Identify a cult, religious group or political party that made or makes exceptional or striking use of design. Show how unusual ideologies find expression through objects, products, services, imagery, etc. Write your own manifesto (or use an existing ideology) as a brief to design something which transports associated values and beliefs through its functionality."
Research
I identified the Orange Order as a unique organisation which mixes the symbolism of Protestantism and Freemasonry with the appropriation of unusual everyday objects, such as bowler hats and spare materials from shipyards.
A member of an Orange lodge carries a sword as a symbol of protection. Bowler hats
signify allegiance to the British monarch by evoking traditional English values.
Quote above from 'Source' magazine.
Lambeg drums are almost exclusively associated with Ulster: they can be heard from over a mile away. Skilled craft and industrial links are also prevalent in Orangeism.
During the summer marching season, celebratory Orange arches are put up in many rural areas: historically, they have been built and painted using leftover shipyard material.
Protest posters along contentious march routes appear to dehumanise Orangemen by appropriating the language of road sign pictograms.
Orangeism is also subject to local satire ('Orange bastard' being a popular insult).
www.doktormoog.com
Quote above from 'Source' magazine.
Quote above from 'Folklore' magazine
Service ideas
I sketched a series of interface icons to represent new mobile services for Orangemen, and four ideas about new physical functions their mobile phones could have.
Tha Richt Wurds
Can be used to add instant cultural kudos to important PR statements by translating them into the Ulster-Scots dialect.
Route History
Location-based SMS service, used to access (or make up) a 300-year history of the exact route along which an Orangeman marches.
DrumcreEbay
E-commerce service for unexpected
siege situations: buy and sell caravans, petrol etc. Also useful for trading bonfire material.
Ringtones
Turn annoyance into confrontation by composing or downloading all your favourite blood and thunder, 'kick the Pope' marches.
Hall Cam
Networked Orange Hall webcams: keep an eye on graffiti and arson whenever nationalists/republicans are in the vicinity.
Mobile Census
Location-based census information
enables Orangemen to assess the impact of ethnic minorities infiltrating their towns.
Interface
Synchronize information with fellow Orangemen on areas of high or low risk of/opportunity for confrontation over tradititon.
Service X
Secret custom applications can be created by those in authority. Members must perform rites to access these services.
Temperance phones
Limited functionality phones could include one for Orangemen in temperance lodges who are capable of using it responsibly: the phone will not work unless unlocked by a breathaliser in the antenna.
The phone remains locked for as long as it takes measured alcohol levels to return to normal.
Unlock rituals
Key combinations to unlock phones could be longer and more complex: access to all the phone's functions would depend on how far the user can pass through an unlock 'ritual'.
Button-only phones
More exclusive phones could have no screen or graphical user interface, operated solely by secret combinations of keypresses to send covert signals and messages to lower Order brethren.
Orange Arch masts
Orange arches could be embedded with mobile phone masts for increased GSM resolution during marching season, typically a time of heightened tension.
Overall, these ideas - some more serious than others - were intended to contribute to a discussion about how most communications products and services are normally sold to us as some sort of utopian means to open up and cross boundaries of communication: in everyday life, they are just as easily used to help create and exacerbate political and social problems.