At some point this week, look around you and produce a drawing (or take a picture) of a space that you feel is rich in arrangements. In a style similar to the diagram on page 33, annotate your picture or drawing with the “hard” and “soft” arrangements you can identify.

Map an aspect of your topic to the Ideas/Arrangements/Effects framework. For instance, if you were working with zoos: an idea is that animals should be able to be observed at will by humans; an arrangement is a cage at the zoo; an effect is that animals often become distressed. Since arrangements are “a rich and frequently overlooked terrain for creating change” (32): can you identify a way you could change your identified arrangement, and how that might reflect a different idea, or have a different effect?

Idea:

Art is put on social media for others to consume and be entertained by.

Arrangement:

Social media rewards engagement with more engagement and virtual points to quantify interest in your work. Likes, reshares, etc.

Effects:

Value and worth of the work that we put on social media becomes determined by the virtual points accrued or not accrued, the way we design the work becomes beholden to the design of the platform algorithm.

How can we change the arrangement?

We can turn off notifications for social media engagement, turn off like counters and view counters. Without being exposed to the quantification of our success on the apps we will feel less pressured to do well on them/spend less time crafting our work around doing well on the apps.