Another Side Cast: More We Learned In 2016…
Another Side Cast is the podcast that aims to encourage and celebrate side projects. Here we reflect and highlight what we learned in 2016.
The Power of Making
For the pod we interviewed David Giles about his addiction to making. David has been working at MAKLab, taking the impossible weapons from the game Mass Effect and making them in 3D.
‘It takes down a lot of the barriers people used to have. Before 3D printing and Maker Movement people would make but it was more out there in the fringes. People think it’ll take to much time, or they think ‘I don’t know how to do this.’ 3D printing is relatively easy... People can sit at home and make a computer model…’
Everyone is responsible for what they create
‘With NightNight we wanted to shift responsibility from the user, to the company. As a web creator, if I created something that is getting in the way of your sleep then I actually have a responsibility not just for the narrow goals of this website but I have a responsibility for all the potential impacts of my creation. In this instance that includes sleep, and includes the health and wellbeing of the user.’
We spoke to J.Paul Neeley who created NightNight, which is a plugin for websites which causes the website to shut down at night, so that people log off and get more sleep. J.Paul shared the idea of universal responsibility with us. What ever we create and put out into the world, we have to be aware of what the consequences will be. This is why he created NightNight, which highlights the fact that we sometimes value scrolling online over our own sleep.
Products have an environmental impact, which is invisible to the consumer
‘There’s a lot of problems with coffee cups, it’s the fact that you are only using them one time.
All the energy put into sourcing the material, manufacturing it, moving it from the manufacturing space to distribution, distribution to retail, retail to end user, end user to waste outlet, waste outlet to bigger waste outlet.
So if you look at that entire line — energy and material you’ve got very heavy consumption.’
Safia Qureshi is the creator of Cup-Club, a new system which says no to single use cups. Cup-Club recently did it’s first trial at the Royal College of Art, providing a system which means people can buy coffee in a reusable cup which they return.
During our interview Safia highlighted the fact that coffee cups are wasteful not just because of the material used and then thrown, but also the fact that the single use cup must be transported many times during the manufacturing, using and disposal process.
Creative connections lead to fruitful learning environments and interesting work
Our last Another Side Cast interview of 2016 was Bobby Sayers, an artist and curator who talked about running artist residencies; Beta-Beta and Common Ground alongside Nikki Kane and other artists.
Listen to the interview to hear about the joy of creating environments that allow people space to think and make.
Being able to see and facilitate amazing, amazing artists. The creativity that comes out during these projects and gets talked about and expanded upon. You see people develop and progress — and there’s nothing you could be more proud of, helping to be a part of that... You’re just excited that someones gone in a whole new direction and that they’re excited.
Find Another Side Cast and hear these interviews:
anothersidecast.com facebook.com/ anothersidecastsoundcloud.com/anothersidecast
