Biographies: Charles Manson

I have never heard of this man before the "Biographies" brief, and it was therefore fascinating (and a little frightening) to discover that Charles Manson (born 12.11.1934) is an American criminal, convicted of conspiracy to commit numerous murders. He has formed a group, known as "The Family", which had numerous members (mostly women) prepared to carry out any of Manson's instructions.

Some of the Family members (top, left to right):

Charlie Manson, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten,

(bottom, left to right): Charles "Tex" Watson, Bruce Davies, Pat Krenwinkle

MOTIVE: Manson is associated with "Helter Skelter", a term he borrowed from a Beetle's song title. He used this term to describe an apocalyptic race war that he believed would happen. After this war, he said, the black people would take over the world, but being unable to take leadership, they would turn to Manson and his family for guidance. The murders he instructed were supposed to precipitate this war. He believed that war should be started by killing wealthy white people.

MURDERS: The most famous (and horrifying) case is the Tate murder (August 8, 1969), which was carried out by Tex Watson, Pat Krenwinkle, Susan Atkins and Linda Kasabian under Manson's instructions. The victims were Steve Parent, who got in their way, Sharon Tate (who was 8 months pregnant), Jay Sebring (her friend and former lover), Wojciech Frykowski (a friend of Sharon Tate's husband) and Abigail Folger (Frykowski's lover). Tate was stabbed 16 times and Frikowski was stabbed a total of 51 times during the assault, shot twice, and hit over the head with a gun handle. Manson has instructed the girls to leave a sign, "something witchy", and Atkins wrote the word "Pig" in Tate's blood on the front door.

Another well-known murder by the Family was the LaBianca case (August 9, 1969). Mr and Mrs LaBianca were brutally murdered the next night by the four members of the group mentioned above, plus Leslie Van Houten and Steve Grogan. Leno LaBianca was stabbed 12 times with a bayonet, and Watson has carved the word "war" on the man's exposed abdomen. Rosemary LaBianca was stabbed 41 times.

Other known victims include Gary Hinman, Bernard Crowe, James and Lauren Willett.

I have found a lot of information about Charles Manson and the Family, and watched many interviews with him. I am not sure where I could go with this right now, but what struck me most was that so many people followed Manson and carried out his most brutal instructions without any apparent reason! He didn't even have to commit any of the murders himself. When asked if he felt guilty after all this time in prison, he said:

"Guilty, hmm... I wouldn't do anything that I felt guilty about. There is no need to feel guilty, I haven't done anything I'm ashamed of. May be I haven't done enough. May be I should have killed four, five hundred people, then I would have felt better. Then I would have felt like I really offered society something."

Done. Well, almost done. (The MAP)

Here it is. My final little black book. I've made it from scratch all by myself, I'm very proud! I used a bookmaking technique that I've never used before called "Coptic stitch bookbinding" (to be fair I have only made one book before, so any technique is pretty much new to me..) So anyways, it's almost done, I just need to write down all the stuff that goes inside. I wish the pages were lined up a little straighter, but overall, I feel quite pleased with the outcome, I think it's come far from the spider diagram, and it is so much more appropriate for displaying the information I want to share. I'm still thinking whether I should use letraset for the names of the people, or if it would be better to write everything by hand (more personal/gossipy)?

The Little Black Book (map project)

Following today's research crit, I have thought more and more about my idea, and I've started asking myself what am I trying to achieve with my map? I really like the fact that I have unexpectedly managed to connect myself to so many powerful, important and famous people, so I thought I should carry on in that direction. After all, there is nothing interesting in connecting myself to thousands of students in England through my other student friends. It's much more fascinating to see how many other influential people from all over the world are in my network.

I have also discussed my problem with presenting this information as a diagram with the class, and people have picked up on the fact that there is something very personal and almost gossipy about this project. So that lead to the idea of creating a Little Black Book of Connections. I have created a prototype, and right now it's a little book with an alphabet on the side, which enables me to look up a particular person by their name and then trace their connection to me step by step.

For instance: I want to look up how I'm connected to Roman Abramovich (a Russian billionaire and the owner of the Chelsea football team). In my book, under his name, it says that he is the fiance of Daria Zhukova, a Russian fashion designer. I look her up next, and she turns out to be a friend of a famous Russian producer - Maxim Fadeev. So I turn to letter "F" and I see that Fadeev once sold a song to Sergei Maksimau, a Belorussian singer. So then I look up "Maksimau" and it says that he is a friend of Denis Ivanenko, who is one of MY very close friends. And that's it - MY connection to Abramovich! (see photoes)

Losing myself in my map...

There is a problem. Creating this map as a spider diagram starting from the middle is not the best solution at all... It's getting very crowded! Keeping in mind that I'm only trying to record connections to interesting people I never realized were in my network (different countries, interesting jobs)! If I tried to record ALL of the people I am connected to, I would be faced with an impossible mission of noting that down on a piece of paper without running out of space! Right now I am really trying to think of a good way of presenting this information and nothing comes to mind. This is what the map looked like at the start:

AND THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE NOW! And I haven't even recorded half the information I have gained! I have involved so many friends into this - English, Russian, Belorussian, Spanish, American, Jewish... I have already got people from 15 countries on my map, 4 acting presidents, 3 famous actors, 2 amazing fashion designers and 3 fortune tellers... Oh, and i found another connection to the Queen. Through 3 people this time! I'm getting closer to her!

DEGREES OF SEPARATION - the map project

When we were asked to bring in a map, I brought a treasure map that I drew as a child. I was going to work in that direction, but I just kept loosing interest in the whole concept, so I decided to explore another idea I had.

Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone

on the planet can be connected to any other person

on the planet through a chain of acquaintances

that has no more than five intermediaries. The

theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian

writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains."

Whatis.com

The "six degrees of separation" theory always fascinated me. I always thought that it is amazing (because I'm sure that it's quite possible) to know the whole world through only 6 people! So therefore, I kept thinking that it would be very interesting to try and actually record how many people I am connected to.

However, I'm not interested in trying to prove whether the six degrees theory is right. What I would like to explore is how many different people am I connected to through the people I know? How many people from different countries are in my network, how many famous people are just an acquaintance away? How many different professions can I find?

This is my starting point. Right now, I am trying to map down the people I know through the people I know through the people I know, if that makes sense. So far I have found out that I know the Queen through only 4 people, one of whom is Prince Charles!

I'm not at all sure about the outcome of this yet, but I'm having a lot of fun connecting myself to people in different countries, finding links to politicians, musicians, artists and royal family. I am realizing that this system could be used to find a connection to someone in a critical situation, when you desperately need to meet someone who speaks a certain language, or works in a specific field. Right now, I just want to find MORE.

MPI solves mysteries in Peckham

Peckham... The first thing we noticed about Peckham was that it was full of stuff - vegetables, meat, different shops, people, signs, loud sounds, dirt - it was all there, and in large quantities. We started to walk around, and we came across a CD shop, well, not so much a shop as a woman sitting outside with a lot of old-school cheesy looking CDs. So, naturally, we got one. We couldn't wait to get home and listen to it, but the music on the CD turned out to be completely different from what was promised, and that is how we ended up with two half-an-hour long songs called "Meditations for Personal Healing".

We saw a lot of things, took a lot of pictures, and finally decided to talk to some people, and ask them if they know anything interesting/unusual about Peckham. We didn't get any particularly interesting information, but the things people said to us, helped us understand this strange city a little better.

There are definitely a million weird things that you can find in Peckham. However, what shocked us the most was that meat shops would have a phone-repair shop inside 90% of the time! The meat in Peckham was inseparable with the phones, and that is a fact. And it wouldn't even be that weird, if there were only one or two meat shops like that... but there were 21! And just on Rye Lane!!! Soooo, this unexplainable situation is what our group decided to focus on, and that's how the MPI got created.

We tried to gather any information we could to solve the mystery of the Meat&Phones union. We spoke to butchers and phone sales people, and found out some interesting stuff.

However, the most important question still remains unanswered - WHY PHONES? Therefore, our next objectives are:

1. Answer the main question - Why is it specifically PHONES and meat?

2. Speak to people on the street, tell them about MPI and ask them why on earth do they find it so normal to fix their phone in a place that smells of meat and has dead chickens with heads hanging everywhere?

3. Get some more statistics. For example, what is the percentage of the meat+phone shops comparing to the rest of the shops on Rye Lane?

Also... we haven't really thought about the actual movie yet... but may be that's a good thing, and we'll just see where this project will take us...

We are here

I have found that the biggest problem with my presentation was that I didn't present anything particularly interesting. The presentation was well planned (the text, the visual content), but the stuff in it was just too generalized. I think I could have improved this presentation by going out and asking a lot of people what they feel shaped their identity, those moments in life when you realize that you have changed.

I learnt a lot from this project, as I have never drawn an animation before, so I tried to do something different and I think in that sense I was successful. However, now I realize that doing something different in the technical sense is not enough. I feel like I really should have gone out and got myself involved.