While visiting a museum in Singapore I discovered the Life Stripe project which turns daily activities into a series of colorful stripes.
“A Life Stripe Work is a ‘pattern of life’ made by replacing one’s actions such as sleeping, dining, relaxing, and working with 21 colours selected based on research and recording them along a 24 hour axis,” say creators Hirokazu Kobayashi & Haruna Yamada.
I caught the Life Stripe exhibit at the Red Dot Design Museum.
The Life Stripe exhibit contains a large collection of Life Stripe Works. Each one has the person’s or animal’s background such as housewife, tree house creator, creative director, therapist, restaurant cashier, mom, web designer, graphic designer, IT manager, mayor, baseball player, baby, dog, and ice cream man. They also include the date of the activities along with the name, age, and sex of the individual.
The first one that caught my eye was one of a cat. Alternating stripes of sleep and hang out time.
Probably because I work a lot with dancers, the next one I noticed was a dancer’s stripe.
“Our pursuit of ‘proof of living’ was inspired by a friend’s withdrawal from society,” explain Kobayashi & Yamada. “We began with various careers, circumstances, genders, age as well as animals, and have collected about 150,000 days worth of records.”
I found this a very interesting way to see how we use our time. Perhaps I’ll create a few Life Stripes of my days and use them for a bit of self-reflection on how I prioritize the activities in my life.
If you would like to see what one of your days looks like, I created an interactive webpage below where you can make your own Life Stripe. After you create a Life Stripe, you can download an image of it. Hope you enjoy seeing what your day looks like.
