A New Social Space

A NEW SOCIAL SPACE

A NEW SOCIAL SPACE Unit 3.0 - Major Project Report Tommaso Rota MA Graphic Branding and Identity London College of Communication University of the Arts London 2012

Introduction 5 Overview 7 Research question and objectives 8 Background 11 Research methodology

Context 12 Oral and written communication 13 Dynamic sound 14 The interiority of sound 17 Voice as a paralanguage 18 Voice and identity 19 Social communication over the internet 22 Social visualization

Project 26 Babble 27 Naming and big brand idea 28 Brand identity 32 Brand style 34 The live vocal chat

Conclusion 40 Clients, launching and testing 44 Future developments 46 Outro

Bibliography

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

OVERVIEW

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INTRODUCTION

This report covers the development of my Major Project. It is structured to illustrate the creative process from the early stages of research to the final resolution.

Sections follow one another in order to present as clearly as possible the research field and the brand vision as well as the concepts that define it and substantiate its visual manifestation. However, as thoroughly explained later on in this report, it is important to consider that my project deals much more with the sense of hearing rather than sight. Final stage of a process started with Unit 1.1 and carried out throughout the whole year, I ended up in shaping a brand that communicates the core of its identity exclusively through sound.

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RESEARCH QUESTION AND OBJECTIVES

Oral communication is, as a matter of fact, innate and spontaneous; the aim of my project is to re-evaluate its importance in social relationships over the internet, in order to make people interact in a more genuine and direct way.

Spoken language, as opposed to the written one, which is by far the most used on digital social platforms, covers more communicative functions because it also conveys information about the speaker. By the means of voice, powerful paralanguage and paramount part of our identity, communication is more straightforward and intimate.

My project intends to achieve a deeper and more intimate social interaction over the internet through a virtual transposition of the most common and natural medium of such interaction, the speech.

Opposite: Spectrogram of a human voice.

The unique sound of each voice is determined by a combination of our bone structure, organs and muscles.

Source: http://www.wikipedia.org

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INTRODUCTION

How can the power of speech make social communication over the internet more natural, sincere and personal?

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND

In Unit 1.1 I focused my attention on the mathematical calculations behind music. From the philosophy of the Pythagoreans to today’s 12-TET temperament, I studied the history of the various tuning systems and their theoretical bases. I then developed a mathematical transposition of the Nokia Tune, taking note after note from the staff and rewriting them as nth roots. On a mathematical basis, I created a music notation system that underlines the scientific aspect of music.

Since this project injected me into the fascinating world of music visualization, my first research question started to take shape: can music be effectively visualized? I therefore started looking at the relationship between sound and vision, gaining insight into this link from a perceptive point of view.

This led me to focus on synesthesia, intended in fact as a link between two senses, be it neurological or artistic. The subject area was interesting and full of potential, but way too broad.

I needed to concentrate on one aspect, narrowing down my research. As it was anyway my starting point, I focused my attention uniquely to sound.

Considering that this had to be a branding project, I started thinking of how sound is used for branding purposes and how it can create a unique point of difference. Exploring the correlation between sound and identity brought my attention to the sound of the human voice, a very personal and distinctive trait that “brands” us acoustically.

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INTRODUCTION

I subsequently looked at the Web 2.0 because it is the medium through which we are shaping for ourselves an identity to interact with each other in a new public sphere.

Therefore my research question turned to: how can the importance of voice be valorized and introduced in online social communication? I then integrated voice, very defining in terms of personal identity, in the more comprehensive concept of oral communication. Hence my focus on orality and the power of speech.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Above: Still from Milkdrop, music visualization software that aims to arouse synesthesia.

Source: http://www.imageshack.us

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RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Stage 2: Visual experiments Voice visualization User interface Stage 3: Project definition Brand conceptualization Visual development Stage 4: Final Platform development Writing Designing

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INTRODUCTION

Stage 1: Researching Oral and written communication Psychodynamics of sound Voice as a paralanguage Voice and identity Social communication over the internet Social visualization

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

CONTEXT

ORAL AND WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

Ferdinand de Saussure (1959 cited Ong 1982, p.5), the father of modern linguistics, had spotlighted the primacy of oral speech, which underpins all verbal communication. He thought of writing as a kind of complement to oral speech.

Language is an oral phenomenon. Words consist not of letters, but of functional sound units. Human beings communicate in several ways, using of all their senses, touch, taste, smell and especially sight, as well as hearing (Ong 1967, p.19). Yet language, articulated sound, is paramount. Wherever human beings exist, they have a language, and this always exists basically as spoken and heard, in the world of sound.

Language is so prominently oral that of all the many thousands of languages spoken in the course of human history only around 106 have ever been committed to writing to a degree sufficient to have produced literature, and most have never been written at all. (Edmonson 1971 cited Ong 1982, p.7). Oral expression can exist and mostly has existed without any writing at all, writing never without orality. By contrast with oral speech, writing is completely artificial. There is no way to write “naturally�. On the contrary, oral speech is fully natural to human beings in the sense that everyone in every culture who is not physiologically or psychologically impaired learns to talk (Ong 1982, p.81).

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DYNAMIC SOUND

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CONTEXT

Written texts all have to be related somehow, directly or indirectly, to the world of sound, the natural habitat of language. Reading a text means converting it to sound, aloud or in the imagination.

All sensation takes place in time, but sound has a special relationship to time. One paramount characteristic of sound is its evanescence. There is no way to stop sound and have sound. It is possible to stop a movie and hold one frame fixed on the screen.

Vision can register motion, but it can also register immobility. If the movement of sound gets stopped, nothing comes out, only silence. There is no equivalent of a still shot for sound. An oscillogram is silent.

In this sense, all sound, and especially oral expression, which comes from inside living organisms, is dynamic. (Ong 1982, p.32).

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CONTEXT

THE INTERIORITY OF SOUND

There is another characteristic of sound that reveals its importance for my project: the unique relationship of sound (and consequently oral speech) to interiority when compared to the rest of the senses (Ong 1982, p.70-1). This relationship is fundamental because of the interiority of human consciousness and of human communication itself. Sights isolates, sound incorporates. Sight situates the observer outside what he views, at a distance, while sound pours into the hearer.

Vision dissects, it comes to a human being from one direction at a time: to look at a room or a landscape, we must move our eyes from one part to another. On the contrary, when we hear we gather sound simultaneously from every direction at once: we are at the centre of our auditory world. We can immerse ourselves in hearing, in sound. There is no way to do the same in sight. In opposition to vision, the dissecting sense, sound is thus a unifying sense. A typical visual ideal is clarity and distinctness, a taking apart. The auditory ideal, by contrast, is harmony, a putting together. Interiority and harmony are characteristics of human consciousness and, above all, the human voice is the most interiorizing sound. As Ong claims, our voice, because of its physical constitution as sound, “manifests us to one another as conscious interiors, forming us into close-knit groups� (1982, p.73).

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Walter J. Ong

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CONTEXT

SPEECH IS INSEPARABLE FROM OUR CONSCIOUSNESS.

CONTEXT

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THE HUMAN VOICE IS THE PERSONAL AND SOCIAL GLUE THAT BINDS US, AND THE MOST IMPORTANT SOUND IN OUR LIVES. Anne Karpf

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VOICE AS A PARALANGUAGE

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CONTEXT

The moment we open our mouth we leak information about our biological, psychological and social status. The use we make of our voice makes us belong to a certain group, but at the same time it defines us as unique beings, as individuals.

With a finite combination of vocal features such as pitch, rhythm, intensity, pitch range or speech rate we are able to encode an infinite number of relevant pieces of information.

Our voice serves both as a visiting card to the others and as a fingerprint of who we are, expressing in a unique way both stable and temporary features like genre, age, origin, personality, level of education on hand but also intentions, emotion and interpersonal attitudes on the other. Spoken language contains two types of communication: text, the words themselves, and vocal paralanguage, the thousands of ways in which any given words can be said. Text is whatever can be typed on a page. Vocal paralanguage is everything else, like intonation, regional accent, sarcasm, hesitations, truthfulness, emotion and so on; it is a powerful, subtle, and vital part of human communication. The way we see others and the way we are seen by them depends in large part on what is heard in the human voice. Our voice is the channel on which our ability to communicate so crucially depends (Karpf 2006, p.9-20).

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CONTEXT

VOICE AND IDENTITY

Allport and Cantril (1934 cited Herrero 2009, p. 41), the first two experts in the field of empirical research on voice and identity came to the conclusion that on the one hand many features of personality can be determined from voice and, on the other hand, that stereotypes play an important role in making judgements about the personality of the speaker.

The idea of voice stereotypes was later retaken by Aronovitch (1976 cited Herrero 2009 p.42), who came to the conclusion that “voice stereotypes are based, at least in part, on distinctive, measurable properties of the human voice”.

Eckert and Laver also carried out research about voice stereotypy and claimed (1994 cited Herrero 2009 p.42): “Somebody whose voice is perceived as being weak and monotone won’t have an extroverted personality”. They also mention the relevance of the etymology of the word “personality” itself, from Latin “per” meaning “by means of” and “sonare” meaning “to sound”. It referred to the mouth opening found in the masks worn by actors in ancient Greece and later on in Rome. If we consider this etymology, then it is not surprising that voice is viewed as a powerful transmitter of our personal identity.

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SOCIAL COMMUNICATION OVER THE INTERNET

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CONTEXT

Since the birth of the Web 2.0, the user has started to be an active part of the Internet, becoming the creator of the contents. The ways we interact with each other have been revolutionized. We are now facing a disintegration of the traditional community (Holmes 2005, p.40-8) and becoming part of online communities and social networks that allow us, as active users, to share any sort of content. A new virtual world has been created, a place where, no matter where we physically are, we can gather together and communicate in a new public sphere (Holmes 2005, p.40-8).

Social networking sites share a variety of technical features that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile and to articulate list of other users that they share a connection with. Some sites allow users to upload pictures, add multimedia content or modify the look and feel of the profile. Many sites allow users to post blog entries, search for others with similar interests and compile and share lists of contacts. User profiles often have a section dedicated to comments from friends and other people. Some social networks have additional features, such as the ability to create groups that share common interests or affiliations, upload or stream live videos, and hold discussions in forums. Sundén (2003 cited Boyd and Ellison 2007) describe profiles as unique pages where one can “type oneself into being”, definition that clearly indicates the written nature of social interactions over these communities.

CONTEXT

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

NETWORKED, WE ARE TOGETHER, BUT SO LESSENED ARE OUR EXPECTATIONS OF EACH OTHER THAT WE FEEL UTTERLY ALONE. Sherry Turkle

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CONTEXT

Interpersonal communication has been a growing issue as more and more people have turned to social networking as a means of communication. Mass media have gradually replaced interpersonal communication as a socializing force.

Furthermore, social networking sites have become popular sites for youth culture to explore themselves and their relationships, and to share cultural artefacts (Barnes 2006).

Sherry Turkle, founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, states that the ubiquity and ease in using text messaging and IM (instant messaging) have relegated more emotionally demanding, real-time phone conversations to occasions when there is no other alternative (2011, passim). In her provocative analysis of social media, Turkle shows how the practice of “friending” has become a unnatural way of making friends. We create a composite friend, taking bits and pieces from many. The convenience that social network sites give users to communicate with one another can damage their interpersonal communication.

“There is the risk” she says, “that we come to see others as objects to be accessed, and only for the parts we find useful, comforting, or amusing” (2011, passim).

A move towards more transparent social relationships is needed. Bearing in mind what I have previously presented, I identified this move with the introduction of oral communication over internet social media.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

CONTEXT

SOCIAL VISUALIZATION

A social catalyst is something that brings people together.

The term is derived by the concept of triangulation (Whyte 1980, passim), the process by which some external stimulus provides a linkage between people and prompts strangers to talk to each other as if they were not. Something happening through the space makes people come together.

With the intent to create more opportunities of social interaction for their researchers located across multiple buildings and floors in their quarters at Cedar Court, Microsoft came out with Virtual Kitchen (Ross 2000). As they thought of the kitchen as the most sociable space, they joined together through a constant audio and video connection three separate kitchens. The interface provided, apart from three screens showing live footage from the kitchens, a fourth screen with a stream of media. The first thing the users did was to complain about the lack of a button to stop the connection and then they started to close the video link by putting napkins over the cameras. By introducing a constant video connection, way too intrusive, Microsoft did not take into account the privacy of the users and managed to make anti-social a space that was supposed to be social.

Judith Donath et al (1999, p.4) coined the term “social visualization” for their attempt to visualize conversations, as so to “highlight social information and help people make sense of the virtual social world.” The Visiphone (Donath et al 2000), appears as “a communication object that opens a graphical as well as an audio portal” between two people in different places. Each user is assigned a distinct colour. When

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fig.1

fig.2

fig.3

fig.1 Microsoft Virtual Kitchen.

Source: http://www.research. microsoft.com

fig.2 Visiphone

Source: http://www.web.media. mit.edu

fig.3 Conversation Clock.

Source: http://www.social.cs.uiuc. edu

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CONTEXT

a user speaks, a circle of that colour is projected onto the centre of a dome fixed upon a pedestal. The size of a circle is determined by the volume of the user’s voice. If both users speak at the same time, the smaller circle will appear on top.

The Conversation Clock (Bergstrom and Karahalios 2007) visualizes a conversation in a shared display for a group of people in the same location. Each speaker is visualized by tick marks of different colours along a ring. The tick mark’s location along the ring represents the number of seconds into the current minute. The tick mark’s height represents the volume of the incoming sound signal. If more than one person speaks at the same time, tick marks will be placed above one another with the smallest on top. As time passes, the tick marks shrink and move onto a smaller concentric ring.

CONTEXT

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

The projects cited above all share the same lack. They present themselves as social catalysts but, even though their social visualization might create interest in the users at first, after a while the usage experience is reduced to the visual aspect of the interface itself. The aim of a social catalyst is not that of drawing attention on itself, but that of providing people with social cues. The vital core of social interaction is people and their personal identity.

In approaching a project about the power of speech over social platforms, it was paramount for me to consider all the previously presented research.

Resuming, these are the key factors to be taken into account: - the naturality of oral communication - the dynamicity and the interiority of sound and therefore of speech - the identifying power of the human voice and its promise, as paralanguage, of making communication more personal and sincere - the impersonality of present social internet communication

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William H. Whyte

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CONTEXT

WHAT ATTRACTS PEOPLE MOST IS OTHER PEOPLE.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

PROJECT - DEFINITION

BABBLE

Babble is a social platform expressed in the form of a live vocal chat. The brand configures itself as a social catalyst, an interactive ground on which people from all around the world gather together for a many-to-many communication over the internet. Despite being based on recreating social dynamics and human interaction through the use of computer technology, Babble exceeds social computing, as it does not present the mediation of communication as prominently as other social media do. Indeed, on Babble the users enter a proper social space beyond the screen of their personal computers, accessing a true interpersonal communication in a new public sphere. This effect is achieved through the power of speech. By focusing completely on oral communication, the Babble experience is, apart from the presence of a mere social visualization, purely auditory. Starting from the assumptions about the interiority of sound previously stated in my research context, I shaped my brand with particular regard towards the sense of hearing rather than sight.

Exclusively talking to them, Babble pours into its users just like sound does into the hearer. Totally discarding written communication, the brand incorporates its users, immersing them into the sound of their own voices. Through speech, and thus the identificational paralanguage of voice, Babble intends to provide its users with a deeper and more personal social interaction, moving towards a natural, transparent and sincere communication.

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NAMING AND BIG BRAND IDEA

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PROJECT - DEFINITION

The name of the brand reveals its very nature, inherent to the auditory world and more precisely to speech. In fact, babble means “the sound of a group of people talking simultaneously”. It is also “the continuous murmuring sound of water flowing over stones in a stream”. Babbling is a stage in child development and a state in language acquisition during which an infant starts experimenting with sounds of language.

The sound of the word recalls the Tower of Babel, a story told in the Book of Genesis, thus referring to all the languages in the world. Still from an auditory perspective, babble also recalls bubble, indicating here the psychological bubble, the interpersonal space that exists between persons. Through its name, the brand becomes self-explanatory and allows its audience to instantly get a grasp of what the brand itself is.

The big brand idea is encapsulated in the catchphrase “HAVE YOUR SAY”. Within the meaning of this expression lies the core of the brand experience. Referring to the interpersonal contact and the exchange of information on the social space that Babble is, “to have a say” means to give an opinion about something, opinion which in this case can be about whatever the user decides. The possessive determiner “your” underlines the identificational power of speech: on Babble the identity of the user is determined by what the user says and how the user says it.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

PROJECT - DEFINITION

BRAND IDENTITY

Vision The aim of Babble is to address the issue of the impersonality of interpersonal relationships throughout social media.

The brand stands for a natural, sincere and personal social communication over the internet.

Mission Through the intimate sound of the human voice, Babble goes beyond social computing and creates a proper social space in which communication exclusively occurs by word of mouth.

Values The belief on which the brand is based it that of the empathic power of speech. Freedom of expression is also paramount.

On Babble, everyone has the right to have their say and share their thoughts.

Audience The brand is directed to anyone who can get access to a computer with a microphone and a set of speakers. So, assuming that nowadays personal computers are almost everywhere and considering that every unit is provided with such technology, Babble is technically addressed to everyone. The N-users of my brand are the people of the Web. People who are willing to communicate and spread their voice. In general, chatty and open people who are not afraid of having their say.

Essence After the contact with Babble, I want the users to feel the social potential and the novelty of the brand which, by contrast with other chats, provides an exclusively oral communication, thus creating a completely new experience for social media.

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SOCIAL IMMEDIATE ESSENTIAL CLEAR ENGAGING UNIQUE

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PROJECT - DEFINITION

Positioning: The graph shows the positioning of the Babble brand compared to other social media over the internet.

The vertical axis refers to the structure of the interface, while the horizontal axis refers to the content.

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PROJECT - DEFINITION

BRAND STYLE

To prevent the social visualization from drawing the attention on itself, the graphic elements are as minimal and discreet as possible. Soon, the visualization itself vanishes, in order to immerse the user into an exclusively auditory landscape.

Considering that the corporate name recalls the word, the brand makes use of bubbles to express its visual identity.

As mentioned before, the term bubble can refer to the concept of the interpersonal bubble, strictly linked to social communication. On the platform, the bubbles float around the virtual space as they would do in the air. Moreover, since the word babble also denotes the murmuring of water, the choice of blue (PANTONE 314C) as the corporate colour was natural. All these references create into the mind of the user mental associations that succeed in making the visual experience coherent with itself and complete.

As I previously stated, Babble is an experience markedly auditory. In addition to the graphic elements, it is therefore of utmost importance to consider the sound code. Despite being bound to the sense of sight by the interface, throughout my social platform the sense of hearing is highly predominant. It is by its babble, the flowing of communication in a stream of speech, that my brand transmits its essence.

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PROJECT - DEFINITION

The lettering of the logo is originated directly from the graphic element of the bubble and makes the brand highly recognizable by the strict correlation with the interface of the platform. For all other written manifestations of the brand, which are actually only in the pay-off and in the help menu of the chat, the font used is Helvetica Rounded Bold, chosen for its accordance with the visual style of the lettering of the logo and especially for its universally understood transparency, meaning here that, just like the interface does, the font family effaces itself.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

PROJECT - PLATFORM

THE LIVE VOCAL CHAT

Babble is an online real-time chat room that provides the users with vocal group conversations. The use of word by mouth restores the proper meaning of the term chat, intended in fact as an “informal exchange of ideas by spoken words”.

The URL of the website is www.babble.talk. Highly memorable, it instantly allows the users to understand what the website itself deals with through the use of the domain .talk.

The access to Babble is obviously free of charge. In order to make it more direct, a log-in is not required. With no registration, there are no names, no profiles, no avatars. Every user is visually represented in the same way, as their identity is expressed by their own voice. The interface of Babble presents a menu bar, which contains simply the controls, and only two layers, the main view and the conversation view.

The main view visualizes the group conversations with bubbles that, depending on the number of users involved, vary in size. The auditory effect that the Babble experience provides in that of entering a proper chat room, a social space in which every conversation is happening at the same time and therefore heard at the same time. As every conversation is very dynamic and, as said before, the movement of sound itself cannot be stopped, the bubbles endlessly float around the space. Considering that the topic of a chat is very changeable, on Babble there are no categories. By moving the mouse over one bubble, the conversation gets louder. It is this “overhearing” that gives the user the freedom to chose whether to join it or not.

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In the conversation view, the bubbles display the presence and the activity of the users. Synchronized to the participants’ speech, they flash to aid in speech-source identification.

On Babble there is no “chatiquette”, and the only rules of behaviour are people’s good manners. However, not everybody behaves. Therefore, by clicking on someone’s bubble, it is possible to mute them. When someone gets muted, a number appears on their conversation tab, showing how many people have muted them. It is understood that the muted user results annoying to every other participant, and gets therefore muted by everyone. This feature will cause the social space to self-regulate. Once they realize that no one is listening to them, annoying people are likely to leave. This way, the users themselves become the moderators. However, it is important to state the core function of the muting system: it does not stand as a way to chose whom to talk to, it is just a tool to prevent the conversation from becoming confused.

PROJECT - PLATFORM

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CONCLUSION

CLIENTS, LAUNCHING AND TESTING

Although I have already pre-registered it, the domain .talk is yet to be introduced on the Web. The use of this domain instantly configures the platform for what it is and gives it the novelty factor indispensable for every website. As announced

by ICANN on June 13 2012, the domain .talk will go live by March 2013. Meanwhile, I will be undertaking the search for a client that will form a team of developers and fund the website and its launching campaign. Possible candidates are internet providers, such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing, that might be interested in investing their money on a revolutionary social media that could potentially give them even more visibility.

I have thought of an hypothetical date for Babble to start its service over the internet, the 11th of November 2013. In my opinion, this date reflects a realistic projection of the time that the development of the website could take, including the launching stage of the brand. Marketing plays a vital role for Babble. In fact, the social platform needs a minimum amount of users for it to express its full potential. Hence the use of a defined launching date for the promotion of the website.

As an example for the promotional campaign, I propose a short advert in which the floating bubbles with the sound of the relative conversations gradually appear in a blank space and create the babble sound effect. To create hype around the brand, this video could be shown on social media like Youtube, a website that, by broadcasting the advert on its homepage for 24 full hours, could allow Babble to reach 23 million viewers.

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CONCLUSION

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CONCLUSION

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The other example of strategy for the launching I present is a guerrilla marketing campaign. By throwing cardboard discs that recall the visual language of the brand in public spaces, this engaging and thought-provoking promotion can generate buzz around Babble and increase the brand awareness.

To avoid the first users to be “alone�, the date the website will go live a team of volunteers previously recruited will be holding already ongoing conversations that will give the first users a wider range of choice.

An issue regarding the social dynamics on Babble is that of sub-conversations, meaning here the presence of multiple conversations within the same bubble. This can happen if all the participants mute more than one speaker and these muted users start talking to each other. From the point of view of the overhearing user outside the babble, these sub-conversations will overlap, resulting only in a disturbing and pointless chatter. However, this dynamic is not very likely to happen, as those who get muted are likely to leave the conversation soon. A service like the one that Babble provides needs anyway some testing before it gets launched. Thus, the chat will be first presented to a small community, like a university campus. This will allow the users themselves to test the social dynamics and give constructive feedback that will help the upgrade of the system and create a better experience.

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CONCLUSION

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

Babble will be first introduced among English-speaking countries, as English itself is an international language. However, considering that the website will be accessible from all around the world, a language selection tool will be introduced later on. The users will have the possibility to filter the main view in order to see only the conversations originated from an initial message recorded in their chosen language.

Another future development will be the mobile version of the chat. The app for smartphones will feature a touch screen interface, but it will present the same characteristics as the full website. Making Babble accessible from mobile phones will provide the users with an even more complete entertainment experience, as people could choose to listen to other people talking instead of their own music, wherever they are. Moreover, because of the transparency of the interface, the users will not even need to look at it while chatting. This will allow them to become part of a sort of “interactive radio� that will immerse them into a completely unique social space.

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CONCLUSION

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CONCLUSION

OUTRO

Undertaking this project confronted me with an extremely hard task, as it required a considerable amount of self-discipline. However, it helped me in understanding how to face a self-initiated brief and it challenged me under many aspects.

I learned how to research and gain insight into the context in order to produce a substantiated resolution. The most important lesson this project has taught me is how to work out of my comfort zone as, for the development of the platform, I had to learn how to use a variety of softwares that required all my effort to get to the result presented. Throughout this year, there have inevitably been moments of uncertainty, of confusion, of emptiness, or even moments where I lost track of where I was going. But what seemed like a mountain too high to climb at the beginning became a task that I succeeded in managing step by step thanks to the support of my friends.

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Tommaso Rota tommaso_rota@hotmail.com Finished printing on the 5th of November 2012 London College of Communication Univeristy of the Arts London