In this case study we have concentrated our efforts into observing how communication in a public space would be expanded by giving conversation pieces. Prior to this we discussed two aspects of this assignment.
One was the way people search contact with each other: In a public space, only few people tend to look each other in the eyes for a short time. Would there be a difference in this if person took contact with someone with a clear facial painting that could function as a conversation piece?
The second as the fact that the public space is so commercialized and that people have such a small chance in finding scenes and reasons to communicate with each other. We thought of the act of giving away something for free in the public space would maybe trigger some people to start communicating with us and maybe have something to discuss later on that day. We choose to give away plants as gifts. This is because we thought the plant being a strong symbol of what many people fight for to be free and in abundance. It functions as well as a time based experience in the way that it grows and becomes old and can in many years to come create the foundation for conversations. Maybe the given plant is kept alive and saved for generations. Maybe someone’s grandchild will take shoots from it and hand out somewhere as a school project. ”I remember the time when I got this plant on T centralen? It was the same day I met your grand father…” This we can not verify, but we can hope it will help trigger positive vibrations in the perceptions of the commercial space.
This practice based research resulted in an awareness of how people perceive gifts from stranger and how they react to being confronted in a polite way by a stranger in the public space. We had a lot of assumptions on how this would be perceived, but as always the result was not that of what we had “planned”. Giving is not always something good. It can bring with it a feeling of ”owing” something to the giver. Swedish people are rather reserved when it comes to “out of the ordinary” contact with their fellow citizens. Although what we observed was that everybody reacted very differently. Some was very skeptical to receiving something free and others were very curious and hungry for social interaction.