Doors of Perception Report
By John Thackara
May 2007

MAPPING THE NECKLACE
Roam, meet, share, map. By revealing hidden value, maps reduce the need
for carbon-emitting buldings and infrastructure. A gorgeous array of
teams will assemble in Durham for Mapping The Necklace (5-7 May). A Dott
moment, at which all Doors readers are welcome, is on Sunday 6th. One
group will map the most beautiful cows in the park. Other teams will
audio map, using ambient and verbal cues as way markers. Performers will
chart busking spaces in the park. Dog experts will plot dog tracks that
tell what your dog is thinking about. GeoScrooters will share
experiences through photos, art, sound, and poetry. A Gimme Shelter! A
design team will ask if a shelter needs to be something physical or can
it be psychological? Dashing Parkouristes will leap out of trees.
Foodies will map edible bounty in the park, from wild garlic, to
elderflower and fungi. Join us at Old Durham Gardens, Sunday 6 May, or
send a friend. Details from:
beckie.darlington@...

WHAT WILL SUSTAINABLE TOURISM BE LIKE? MAKE IT HAPPEN
We are still looking for visionary and effective young designers to
help us create practical examples of what sustainable tourism might be
like to do, and how it can work as a business. The Dott Design Camp in
July in North East England will tackle five live projects with local
partners: Urban Camping; Allendale Industrial Heritage; Designing the
Agricultural Landscape; Weardale Disused Railway; Wind Power in the
Landscape. if you are interested, or would like to recommend someone,
the deadline for applications is 15 May.
http://www.dott07.com/go/tourism/design-camp

DOORS OF PERCEPTION 9B: FOOD SYSTEMS DESIGN
So many questions and possibilities were raised at Doors 9 in Delhi, in
March, that we will reconvene in October in England. The event will
include a field visit to the Dott Urban farming project in
Middlesbrough,plus time to see the Dott Festival in NewcastleGateshead.
Reserve the dates: Friday 19 to Sunday 23 October. Details to follow in
this newsletter.

THE POINT OF IT ALL
The Picture House exhibition at Belsay Hall in North East England opens
with a Digital Dinner on Thursday 3 May. We'll see and discuss works
that include a kinetic reflection display system called Aleph. The name
(explain the artists, Adam Somlai-Fischer and Bengt Sjolen) comes from a
fictional point of singularity described by Jorge Luis Borges as "a
point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it
can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously,
without distortion, overlapping or confusion". Be there or
be....dis-a-pointed. Contact: beckie.darlington@...
http://www.aether.hu/2006/aleph/
http://www.dott07.com/

CREATIVE COMMUNITIES IN EUROPE
For four years Doors of Perception has been involved in a Europe-wide
project called EMUDE (it stands, clunkily, for "Emerging User Demands
for Sustainable Solutions"). A network of design schools acting as
'antennas', has collected examples of social innovation in a wide
variety of contexts. Many of these seem to be more resource-efficient
than conventional ways of organizing daily life. Such examples are on
the edge of the known world for many urbanites, but we believe these
fringe examples may be the harbinger of wider scale social
transformation to come. You may judge for yourself how representative
these signs are in Creative Communities, the book of Emude that has just
been published. Edited by Anna Meroni and a team at Milan Polytechnic,
Creative Communities is available to download. (It's a heavy file, but
worth the wait).
http://www.dis.polimi.it/emude/book1/

SOCIAL INNOVATION EXCHANGE (SIX)
SIX is a new global network of networks to promote social innovation
across the fields of technology, design, cities, social
entrepreneurship, public policy and business. The Six network spans
sectors as diverse as culture, education, health and the environment.
http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org

GRASSROOTS TO GLOBAL
People from Emude and Six (the two preceding stories) will be in Beijing
for a workshop organized by Honeybee Network to discuss how to incubate
and scale up scale up innovation models that work. The idea is to
facilitate a common incubation platform and develop a longer-term vision
for international cooperation. Information from Anil K Gupta, Professor,
Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad 380015, India. Building Global
Value chain around Green Grassroots Innovations and Traditional
Knowledge being organized in Tianjin, China 31 May 31- 2 June.
anilg@... / anilg53@...

THE POLITICS OF GESTURE
"Small steps - returning your bottles, bringing your own bag, turning
off the water while you brush your teeth - are of such minor impact,
compared to our ecological footprints, that they are essentially
meaningless without larger, systemic action as well". A hard-hitting
editorial in WorldChanging trashes the strategy of recycling, whch is
described as "essentially, the politics of gesture, little different
than wearing a rubber wrist band or a pink ribbon". Doing better, say
the editors, will involve "setting a hard bar against which to measure
our actions". Too true: this is where the line will be drawn.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006520.html

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