Hope Myers – Page 3 – IMA Documentation

February 25, 2019

CPD Data Visualization – Hope Myers

For my week of data project I decided to map out everywhere I went by mode of transportation. I color coded the lines based on the color of the subway lines and used black and grey for bus and walking repectively. The full week is compiled above and below are individual days. The number of lines represents how many times I followed the same path, for example throughout the week I took the NYU bus to school six times and took it home from school four times. On the individual day maps I used arrows to show which direction I was going and included icons to represent what I was doing at each place, but I thought including these on the week map would make it too crowded. I also included a count of footsteps, which often correlate with where I went, for example monday, wednesday, and thursday I only went to and from the AB and my footstep count was much less than other days.

February 24, 2019

Response to Alice Payne: Hope Myers

I thought this article was very readable and did a good job summarizing all the different points in the cycle and the steps that can be taken for sustainability at each. I’ve hear about mass brands knocking off high fashion designers but one point that I never thought about before was how Australia is a season behind so it can just take the patterns. It also makes me wonder whether there is less of an issue with excessive seasonal consumption in places where the climate is more stable year round. I feel like for me somehow I misplace clothes between seasons or see new trends that I want to try but I feel like if the weather didn’t change that much I wouldn’t buy as many new clothes each season and would wear the ones I have for longer.

For the retail/use side of things one thing I think could help is teaching basic sewing skills or having people in stores to do really basic things. Some fancier places offer tailoring or alterations but I’ve also heard of people saying that they threw away a perfectly useable garment just because they didn’t know how or couldn’t be bothered to sew a button back on. Things like this could reduce a lot of waste and are so easy to teach. One more issue is with the growing digital market people buy a lot of clothes on impulse. I know I’ve bought some things on Taobao that I don’t even end up liking but they’re so cheap that it’s easier to just keep them instead of returning them. Rather than buying cheap clothes they won’t wear people should spend that money buying better quality sustainable clothes.

February 19, 2019

Week 2: Response to Pink and Morgan – Hope Myers

I found this article a little bit hard to concentrate reading although they still had some interesting points. I wish they would have included some more in depth examples but obviously that would require a much longer passage and is not really what they’re talking about. I had not heard much about ethnography before but after these readings I have noticed how much it plays into even everyday life. One of the points I found most interesting and relatable was how a lot of things are not verbalized even when asked about but can be found out through observation.

I agree with Pink and Morgan that you don’t actually always need long term ethnographic studies and you can still get a lot of information and useful data from short studies. I also thought their point about photos and videos was important because that’s what they are observing and so to do analysis and share results with other people it’s good for them to be able to see the same things and makes it easier to understand what you’re talking about. For me it also feels similar to when I do photography. I especially like taking pictures of people as a way of observing, especially in new cultures, and getting insight into their lives.

February 18, 2019

CPD Week 1 Readings – Hope Myers

WCS information sheet –

Before reading the WCS information sheet and looking at the MARCOS data I didn’t really know just how much wildlife lived in the New York Bight. Everything I ever heard about was always how polluted and gross it was which made me think that nothing could really live there. The WCS lists a bunch of things they are working on to improve conservation of the area, but the basic fact they don’t really start with is that there are actually a lot of animals there and people need to encourage conservation to save them. From the reading is seems like the WCS is also really dedicated to working with kids, so to combine this with the MARCOS data I think it might be fun to create an interactive map aimed at kids, with graphics more accessible to them, to display all the different types of wildlife in the New York bight.

WCS Tegner Report –

It’s amazing to me how seafood used to be so abundant that things like lobsters and oysters were considered poor people food, that would be unthinkable now. One of their conclusions that surprises me the most is that species composition has remained mostly constant over the past 4 centuries. Even if the population sizes have decreased, this means there is still an opportunity for us to restore the populations rather than some species being extinct or driven out of the area. It’s also important for more people to know about the 380 species, I never would have guessed there would be that many.

The Ainu: Beyond The Politics of Cultural Coexistence –

The Ainu have a similar colonization story to many other indigenous groups and yet compared to Native Americans or Aboriginal Australians, their story seems far less publicized. One part of this article that really stuck with me was looking at the phrasing of the “former aborigines protection law”. Former aborigines singled out the Ainu instead of integrating them and rather than protecting them and their culture the law just tried to assimilate them. The words we use really make a difference and the Japanese government needs to work with the Ainu to use words that represent them in a way they want to be represented. I’m really excited to see the Ainu perform if they’re able to come to NYU Shanghai and actually get to hear from and discuss with them.

February 17, 2019

Response to Sophie Woodward: Accidentally Sustainable – Hope Myers

I wouldn’t identify myself as the most fashionable person, especially when I was younger, but still when I was choosing between a few new schools for middle school I specifically didn’t want to go to the one with uniforms. Even though I basically gave myself a uniform every day of jeans and a t-shirt it was still extremely important to me that I had a choice. Yes people could probably get by wearing the same clothes most of the time and rarely buying new ones, but it’s become such an ingrained part of our society and an important part of a lot of people’s lives. Like tech it seems like fashion has fallen into the trap of planned obsolescence, and Woodward’s chapter made me think about the question relating to the chicken or the egg. Did brands first start pushing fast fashion or were they compelled by the consumer market? I think the answer lies somewhere in-between with both propelling the idea, it’s not a one-sided thing. The same is true for making fashion more sustainable, it can’t just be on the individual consumers or the brands to change everything, we have to work together. Shopping is rarely an individual thing, we rely on our family, friends, the company, and societal trends to help us pick and choose what we buy. Woodward said that “people’s participation in clothing and fashion practices is always embedded in specific personal, relational, and social contexts” and I think this quote is a good summary for her chapter. Despite her title of accidentally sustainable, it’s not actually an accident, we will have to work very hard from every level to begin tackling the issue.