A new Slop University advertising campaign features Doctoral Candidate Edda Nwafor and the Review Cadence Observatory's page-reading bookmark, which now decides how far into a book each member of one suburban club may speak.
A new portrait campaign follows Edda Nwafor into a suburban living room where each member's discussion stops at the page they last reported.
The School of Continuous Improvement has asked a question of the city’s bus stops and campus screens: which page are you on? The campaign, running in matched daylight and evening versions on the portrait signage panels, answers it with a bookmark.
The bookmark is the Review Cadence Observatory’s latest instrument. Built into the ribbon of each paperback in one suburban book club, it reports the member’s current page to the convenor. The club’s committee has since adopted a single rule to go with it: a member may speak in discussion only up to the page their bookmark last reported, and the circle proceeds at whatever pace that allows.
We started from the plain observation that a conversation goes better when everyone knows where everyone else has got to. The bookmark only writes that down.
— Edda Nwafor, Doctoral Candidate, School of Continuous Improvement
The campaign places Ms Nwafor at the centre of the club’s circle, paperback open, the bookmark’s sensor disc hanging from the spine. Its supporting line sets out the arrangement in a sentence, and its call to action invites passers-by to come and count with the University. The Observatory reads the arrangement as a compact demonstration of the cadence work it convenes across the School, in a room where the cadence was already, quietly, the point.
The full advertisement is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.9wss9d.