Summer Salt

A Personal Preservation Project
We are constantly evolving, every second, minute, hour, day, week, and month of every year. Observing, consuming, working, doing, wanting, waiting, interacting, desiring, developing and changing – and all of these complex interrelationships and many more affect our views, habits and behaviour, every decision that we make influences what happens next in our lives and has impact on others and the wider world around us.
As societies have evolved they have always made attempts to preserve and store their daily experiences by using various visual languages, methods and techniques, from chalk on walls, paint on canvas, words in books, musical scores, recording static and moving images.
How can we classify, quantify and measure the changes of these complex evolutions?
This is going to be a personal investigation in which you will be observing yourself in macro detail over the next few months and then making sense of the information by visualising the data collected.
Part 1 OUTLINE CRITERIA 
What are you going to collect and how are you going to do it?
Design a way to record your daily activities over the summer months; this could be in the form of a questionnaire, visual dashboard, diary, visual journal, series of charts, apps etc.
How can you reduce your daily activities into quantifiable information?
Is it through a series of tick boxes, segments, shorthand, scientific models, tallies, graphs, pictograms, charts, tables, a series of photographs, film or some other method?
What criteria should you include?
The information gathered could be physical, mental, emotional, subconscious activity, economic, relationship interactions, changes in geography, environment, the weather, what you consume, distance travelled, time elapsed, sensory factors, multitasking, sleep patterns, brands which you come into contact with, websites visited, tweets made, the music you listen to, even concurrent activities happening outside of your immediate environment which have impact on your day.
Part 2 OBSERVE / COLLECT 
Go about your daily business, work, eat, sleep, go on holiday, let your hair down and have a well-deserved rest. But at the end of every day record your daily activities onto your beautifully designed measuring apparatus.
Part 3 ANALYSE / ORGANISE / EVALUATE
Now you have to do something with all of this information which you have gathered about yourself and analyse, arrange, order and visualize it all into some kind of holistic narrative, find patterns, make sense of yourself and the activities you have encountered. What insights have you discovered? Create graphs and charts, map your movements, and design pictograms/icons that can represent you and your experiences. Think metaphorically; even relate what you have done to a wider cultural context. Based on these findings try to predict what will happen next. Its what you do with the data at this point, which will be the really interesting part of this project and will show how ambitious you really are.
Part 4 INTERPRET / PRESENT / PUBLISH 
What would be the best way to present this information? The format is up to you, it could be in the form of a wall chart, an annual report, fold out map, info graphic poster, newspaper, editorial, documentary, interactive media etc. Whatever way you decide to interpret this data, we would like you also to produce an A3 poster, which will present your findings as a signpost/teaser campaign to your body of output.




Time to get recording...