6. Platform part 1

Reflections

Before choosing a specific platform, I tried to understand what a platform is, what are its characteristics, so that I would know how to approach or view a certain thing as a platform, how to make it a platform through how I use it.

The essence of a platform for me is to get through to someone, to make your voice heard, to share or express something without necessarily getting input or feedback. Communication in this case can perfectly work one way, and engagement is not vital (thinking about a ted talk for example). And to be honest, that’s what makes me feel safer working with this than a network.

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When looking through different keywords related to a platform, my attention was drawn to certain words and their particular synonyms:

• exhibit – expose to view, unveil
• display – make evident, manifest, reveal
• voice – to express attitude or opinion
• spread – circulate, communicate, make known
• communicate – share, convey, evoke understanding
• realise – discern, notice, become conscious of, become aware of

In this view, a platform is a space or opportunity to make something known, to make readers or listeners aware of something, to make them realise something.

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A topic close to my heart that has surfaced in my work at MA is raising self-awareness, which basically means becoming more aware of oneself, gaining understanding of oneself. If a platform’s purpose is to make audience aware of something, it seems an interesting twist to make them more aware of themselves. I guess I like the irony of external help needed to go inwards and make sense of one’s inner life.

I think that a pretty valuable realisation for me was to understand that often underneath my emotions lay certain statements, beliefs that are not true, that built up over the course of my life (especially in childhood), and I perceive them as facts without knowing. Stories, as I called them in my earlier work.

Personally, finding a way to make people aware of their own inner stories and patterns feels meaningful, interesting and challenging. Even more so, that giving information is just one way of evoking understanding. There are other ways to guide someone’s thoughts to a certain territory, and make the realisation on their own, without giving it on a plate. Not through preaching, but through providing tools, space and methods to help someone reveal what’s deeper inside them. Like prompting reflections, asking questions, giving a vocabulary & framework to name phenomena, and navigate through what at first sight seems vague and unexplainable.

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At first, I thought about Instagram stories, especially that they offer things like polls, questions etc, and because they’re called ‘stories’, and are somehow related to creating self-image or identity. Later, my thoughts went in the direction of modes of distribution, like leaflets, for example.

But then later, I started considering card sets for reflections. Because they are like flash cards, short and concise, and focus on prompting thoughts rather than giving information. Or they might introduce a term or a phenomena that opens a discussion, or gives vocabulary to think about a certain topic through new lens.

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Some examples

Using spectrum to see one’s mindset, behaviour, approach from a wider perspective.

Translation:

‘Find yourself on the scale. My communication most often serves:

convincing ________________________ verifying what I already know

perpetuating ________________________ changing

totalising the topic ________________________ opening new threads

reconciliation ________________________ antagonism

judging ________________________ describing’

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Setting a context first through a statement, quote or a term, and then relating to it.

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Finishing the sentence or filling in the gaps.

Translation:

‘Finish the sentence.

I’m stressed but at least…’

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Short snippets of thoughts – that change the way of looking at a problem.

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Formal ideas

Looks a bit cheesy but could be a way of categorising and dividing visually things like: areas of life, parts of psyche, basic emotions.

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Further ideas of how to divide, categorise, break down.

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A couple of many movies by Paul Jackson, author of ‘Folding techniques for designers’

So what interests me here is, again, organising space on paper, so that you can see only one fragment at a time, or everything at once, which could for example help to first work on zoomed in areas of life, and then step back to a larger picture.

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Looking through examples, I see that those could be not only reflection prompts, but also activities, that could make one first respond to small tasks, and later connect the dots seeing how certain things might be related.

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First trials