In 1986, this anti-smoking commercial was released detailing how in the future, humans would have new features and adaptations that allowed them to be “Natural Born Smoker”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPl7KE_CVPc

Features include a larger nose to filter smoke, self-cleaning lungs, extra eyelids to protect from smoke, and a natural resistance to heart disease and lung cancer.

Based on this idea, and related to my individual project goal of creating a public health campaign around guns, I thought it would be interesting to explore how in the future, human could be adapted to live in a world with guns.

“Natural Born Shooters” 

What if we were adapted to best utilize guns? How would our bodies physically change to accomodate the gun, rather than designing objects to fit our existing physical form?

Features might include: extremely strong and dexterous thumb and pointer fingers, extra padding on the palm to make a tight grip more comfortable, extra muscles in the hand for a sufficient grip, larger eyes, enhanced eye sight, and perhaps the ability to “zoom in” to increase target accuracy, extra padding in the hip area to increase comfort when the gun is holstered

“Natural Born Victims”

How might physical features change to allow for better chances of survival in a gun-centric society?

Features might include: Larger eyes and ears to better anticipate surrounding dangers, a protective layer around the torso as a sort of ‘built in’ bullet proof vest, enhanced reflexes to dodge oncoming bullets

How would these adaptations exist? Would there be some people adapted to be natural born shooters or some adapted to be natural born victims? Would there be groups that did not have either adaptation and how would this effect interactions with those who did? What if both adaptations existed in the same society, creating a sort of duel race interplay?

Other considerations include the cultural implications of these adaptations. A follow up “Natural Born Smoker” video considers how children in such a society would be raised, learning in school how to hold a cigarette and best inhale smoke. Perhaps in such a society, children would learn how to hold guns in kindergarten and shoot in second grade? How would guns change or adapt along with the people who use them?

Finally, in relation to my individual project goals, I need to consider whether a visualization of these potential adaptations would be effective in bringing attention to the possible consequences of an increasingly gun-centric society.

• What will your individual exploration of the issues in this class focus on?

My individual exploration of the issues will focus on visualization of facts to distribute the ideas of the gun issues around our society. I realized that our society knows that there are serious issues related to guns, yet there’s not much effort made to generalize the issue for it is too furious. People from different cultures and social status do not face the issue where gun-related issues happen in many places to everywhere. I would like to represent the issue in easy, simple, and quick series of posters with motivational quotes or simple facts to effectively inform the issue to public. 

• What is it that you want to know?

I would like to know how the series of posters can be published. We have social networks, advertisements on the Internet, buses, or other public transportations. I would like to find more effective ways to distribute the informative posters.

• What is it that you want to do?

I would like to help our society to read and understand the facts that they have to know about gun violence and acknowledge simple ways that they can do about understanding the issue. From studio’s lectures and readings, I found many phrases or notions that provoked me the idea of why guns are dangerous and what is going on in the world. If our society could listen to what I summarized in essential, Also, we and specific gun protection groups know the issue well because they spent whole a lot of time to read and learn, yet our society is too busy for it. Seeing the series of posters that are simple, educative, and attracting will help them to know about the gun issues.

• What will your reference material be for this? (readings, designers, writers etc.)

I would like to refer to the lecture notes I have taken and readings that we have done in class. I am also planning to phrase the words of the interviews that are scheduled to happen this week with Vanessa and the police, so I get more provocative and informative phrases. 

• What will the material outcome be?

The outcome will be series of posters with simple images, graphics, and word phrases that both educate and interest society. 

• What is the scope of this investigation? How big will it be? How many components, words, minutes?

I am planning to adjust the sizes of the posters as I find ways to display them. I am going to try to simplify the images, words, and phrases so that they are easy to be read and easy to be understood. 

• What is your timeline for progress through this?

I will start with collecting facts and phrases under some categories, and sketching out the posters. I am planning to work on this until the spring break, so when April comes, I plan to have rough images and phrases. During the last weeks, I will finalize the images and posters, and find out how the posters can be distributed and displayed. 

• How will you know that you are making progress on this?

In order to finalize series of posters, I will have many mock ups and sketches of the posters. I will need to discuss the visuals of the images with Laurene, Anna, and other classmates.  

• How will you measure your success in realizing your ambition?

I would like to show the posters to people who are not in our studio and not know about gun facts or issues well. They will be representatives of the public I am targeting. I would observe how the posters inspired or educated them easily and quickly, which is the ultimate goal of my project.

So for my project, I decided to sort out the logistical problems first, to see if I could reach the greater Pittsburgh area, since I have the skills and resources to be able to create a website for it.

I’ve started to look into mass mailers, the University of Pittsburgh has a program for non-profits, so I may be able to get a cheaper price with them.  ->  http://www.pts.pitt.edu/mailserv/bulk/index.html

I also found a local pittsburgh mailer that also has the same kind of program -> http://www.pittsburghmailing.com/casestudies.php

My biggest problem currently is getting access to the database of addresses of Pittsburgh and then how do I distinguish what neighborhoods to send it to?

Once I figure this out, this local information can be paired with the greater website. I was also thinking I could let people download, print and send if they want to mail it in rather than uploading an image or writing a story.

My search for addresses continues!

Looking at existing visualizations such as Periscopic, the NRA, and Deaths since Newtown

Periscopic

• overall very cool, interesting, engaging
• plots age shot vs. life expectancy
• filter by different categories
• still want more explanation, more detail

NRA

• plain map of the US
• color coded by state/House district
• passive, boring
• it tells me that liberal states are liberal

Deaths since Newtown

• feels one dimensional
• filters 4 different categories
• dangerous cities are dangerous

Since exploring visualizations, some possible collectible quantitative data

• age
• family members
• location
• income
• race
• gender
• gun type
• NATURE OF CRIME (accident, homicide, suicide, gang shooting, robbery)
• date of crime
• law enforcement involvement?

Still to explore

• memorials, living memorials
• semantics of language with respect to crimes
• differences and relationships between individual, community, and society

One of my interviews really inspired me. The person we spoke to talked about the root of the problem being support, through family, through your neighborhood, and without that support people make poor decisions. He said that people constantly talk about how they don’t know what’s happening in their neighborhood, and said, if he had the resources we would find a way to create the connections between the people who need support and those who are giving it.

I wonder what opportunities can be created, there are several websites that talk about pittsburgh arts events, music events and lectures, but not really support or local events.

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Within my individual project I’m interested in building empathy through narratives and perspectives.

I’m really captivated by an individuals personal experience with guns, whether it be, hunting, debating suicide, ownership, accident. Empathy seems to be the biggest disconnection between guns and people because of the distance between the shooter and victim, it’s seen that the gun is committing the act of violence not the person. To me, it seems like the best way to build empathy on the gun issue is through storytelling.

I want to understand people’s relationship’s to their guns, if their friends, foes, or enemies. Do they scare or protect? Do they share the blame? How do people talk about their gun experiences good and bad? And then with these answers I want to see if other people can relate to these answers, so that hopefully they can build a more full perspective for themselves.

I want to create an open space that promotes sharing without aggressive debate or bashing.

CMU has a facebook site called CMU Confessions, where people confess anything they want to other students. It’s supportive at times, scary, unsupportive and also misused. But the defining factors of the site are very interesting, a lot of people read it to find something they relate to and for entertainment. If there was a gun version we could get some very interesting data from what’s collected, but it could become out of hand depending on comments and arguments which could ruin the site.

It would also be curious to see other, more local methods, of attaining this information Possibly through submitting postcards to overcome the limitations of technology. However their could be issues with users wanting to be anonymous, but then it could be as simple as becoming a voice recorder, or a place where you can handwrite your stories.

The information gathered also helps humanize statistics through telling and sharing stories.