A new Slop University advertising campaign puts the institution's own Indicator Commons ranking on public display, crediting itself first for catching a quiet cap before a queue does.
A new bus-stop and campus-screen campaign for the School of Continuous Improvement puts the University's Indicator Commons ranking on public display, first place included
A ranking an institution gives itself is not normally something to put on a bus shelter. Slop University is putting it on several hundred of them.
The artwork, unveiled today across the University’s bus-stop panels and campus digital screens, sets an ordinary hazard of the shared coffee counter — the urn running dry mid-queue — against a countdown gauge and a wall of numbered refill mugs, under the line “First To Name The Limit.” The tall portrait format is built for the University’s signage network, with a matching evening rendering for panels running after dark.
A cap nobody announced is still a cap. Ours are dated the moment they’re set, which is the only difference between a limit and a surprise.
— Dr Renke Sabel, Senior Lecturer and Convenor, Indicator Commons
The claim behind the campaign is real in the narrow sense that the University controls both ends of it: the Indicator Commons composite that produced the ranking is the University’s own instrument, assembled and kept inside the School of Continuous Improvement, and the University is the only body it has ever scored. Four quarters running, the composite has placed the institution first for the interval between a resource quietly narrowing and someone noticing. The University regards the result less as an accolade than as routine confirmation of a habit it already keeps.
The full advertisement is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.i5vw20.