The ideas expressed below are from the forthcoming book, Metalife: The Life We Live While We’re Busy Doing Something Else, by Barry K. Chudakov.

"The lens looking at the lens: doppelganger, multiplicity, mirrors.
This is the inescapable double
human life, our Metalife, where form swallows function."

"Our Metalife is a life lived in mirrors." "We live our lives and our forms live theirs. Now we can see how the two intersect. We can see this because the speeding up of everything reveals the patterns." "We are thinking (and living) differently because we are seeing differently. Curiously we live this other life in the dark, we are not aware that this seeing is changing us. Or we are only vaguely aware as we encounter a welter of effects seemingly disassociated from their real causes. This is our Metalife: going through the motions of a linear existence in the new non-linear world." "Identity theft is the headline to a much larger story. We are now witnessing the beginning of the commoditization of identity. You, your self, your unique characteristics are not only under surveillance; they are a commodity with new and emerging markets. You are for sale." "Visuals bombarding our environment are titillating our limbic system precisely because the two are tied together. Our visual centers are wired to our emotional centers. This fact of brain hardwiring is central to understanding our Metalife." "Surrounded by everywhere imagery, the brain is sometimes fooled into thinking these are self-images. The more images, the more the chance of fooling the brain. Especially because inherent in our image processing is the brain's tendency to include other as self. Or put simply, to copy, to mimic, to become like that image." "Our symbols are moving from having no limbic resonance to being alive with limbic resonance. This "livingness" of our imagery creates what some have called a Second Life or Digital Double. These are early evidences of a monumental shift described here as our Metalife."

What is the Metalife Consulting process?

In many organizations today, strategic thinking is remarkably similar to what was being thought, said and done 30 years ago. By contrast, as we all know, there have been exponential advances in the technology that enables us to communicate. Our advances in technology have outstripped our strategies and our thinking. They have produced radical changes in our social structures while those structures struggle to cope with and comprehend the changing world around them. We see this struggle daily in our schools, churches, companies and governments.

Metalife Consulting offers a new way to consider strategic communications planning and thinking. Our focus is is on how communication tools change an organization's behavior and that of it's customers. Our process considers and reveals an organization's "metalife", the subliminal, unseen or hidden facets of how we operate, to arrive at a more informed understanding of what's going on in an organization and in the world around it.

 

Where does the Metalife Consulting process begin?

We start by listening to the client’s establishing narrative. This is our first clue to the metalife of a company, brand, department, etc. Understanding corporate stories is fundamental to understanding a client’s metalife.

 

What’s an example of an establishing narrative?

A typical business establishing narrative might be:

• Physical layouts
• Access
• Office locations
• Transparency, etc.
• Customer perspectives
• Community perspectives
• Shareholder perspectives
• Employee perspectives

 

We especially look at the tools clients use (or don’t use) to communicate.

When we have collected both written and visual data from our investigation, we create a visual summation of our discovery. We do this by creating a "photo-synth" (photographic synthesis) of the organization, group, etc. The tools we use to map a metalife include: interviews, video, semiotics, and other analytical processes.

Once an initial Metalife process map is created, what do we do with it?
At this point our focus narrows to three imperatives: re-think, re-imagine, and re-form. Once we have a map of ‘what is’, together with our client we ask, "What do we want our metalife to be?" This is the re-think phase. We then create a new metalife for the client, the department, the brand. This is the re-imagine phase. Finally, we consider the structural implications of the new metalife. We work with our client to effect a restructuring of the organization to match the new metalife. The re-form phase.

 

 

What value Is the Metalife process?
The efficacy of visualization as an investigative and therapeutic process has been demonstrated in countless ways in many arenas. Metalife Consulting brings this process to the field of organizational strategic consulting. As organizations are able to see and visualize their strategic thinking they are better equipped to determine its path. Metalife Consulting offers a new way to make the unconscious, conscious; the hidden, revealed.

 

 

Utilizing the Metalife process as a business tool:
Companies, ad agencies, PR firms, and the professionals that employ them can exploit the principles of the Metalife process for a better picture of market dynamics. Metalife trends will give them a better sense of communications directions. Metalife Consulting gives marketers an entree into an ongoing conversation to which they can contribute. This includes re-visioning their communications by seeing the metalife of their brand. Trend watchers analyzing politics, marketing, consumer behavior, and polling who are driven by understanding the mind set of the consumer will quickly realize they can use the Metalife process to assess the environment in which their businesses, consumers, or constituents are operating.

What are the benefits of this process?
Metalife Consulting offers its clients a new way to look at their operations that often reveals hidden or misunderstood perceptions which can have an adverse effect on productivity and organizational performance. The benefits of this process include an increased awareness of how an organization works, where it's strengths lie, how it can improve its position in the marketplace, how it can enhance its employee experience and how it can better address the challenges of today's rapidly changing social, cultural and business environment.

For someone unfamiliar with the Metalife process, how would you describe it in a few words?
The Metalife process can be seen as a Corporate MRI. It’s a tool to look into you, your company, your department, etc., and reveal what's really there.

What’s the WIFM? (What’s in it for me?)
The Metalife process helps you see your organization in a way you’ve never seen it before. We look at your organization from the tool-level, and from the semiotics (signs and signals) level. Seeing a thing differently often changes what we understand and do.

The Visualization Gallery

As described above, we conduct a Metalife MRI (metalife real and imagined). Once we have collected both the written and visual data from our interviews and environmental investigations, we create a visual summation of what we have found. The Metalife Visualization Gallery is a collection of those visual summations done for a variety of clients.

 

 

 

Metalife Maps

Understanding a metalife entails understanding a process—what your metalife is, how it is created, how it can be changed or enhanced. As necessary, we map this process to make it clearer to clients and their stakeholders. These maps are touchstones, then, for lively, expansive discussions and frequently become the catalysts for change and improvement. We use these maps as the basis for creating the Cultural Holograms and Photosynths described below.

 

 

 

Cultural Hologram

The annotated cultural hologram is a visual summary of the organization that has written call-outs that create a running commentary, analysis, description and ‘living documentation’ of the group. This annotated image will describe in detail the current metalife of the group.

 

Photosynths

From all the information described above we create a composite image, or ‘synth.’ This photosynth is a complete visual summation—essentially a succinct encapsulation—of the metalife we have discovered and explored.

 

Metalife Infographics

In the course of mapping a metalife, we may uncover unexpected insights, realizations, or areas for further exploration. When we do, we frequently create an infographic to explain this as either a background to, or enhancement of, the Metalife process.

 

 

 

 

"We look to so-called ‘reality’ to find meaning in the patterns of existence; but, in fact, we must look closer at the patterns or forms that interpret our existence to truly understand what we’re calling reality."

Photo Credits and Links:

1. WARP — Concept and execution by Alyssa Good.

2. Woman in Mirror Girl Before A Mirror, Pablo Picasso, 1932 — Museum of Modern Art, New York 

3. Crowd Blur — Unknown

4. Texting while driving — Concept and execution by Alyssa Good.

5. Morphed image of Angelina Jolie and Cameron Diaz by MorphThing.com. 

6. Mother I — From the collection of David Hockney, Yorkshire Moors, August 1985

7. Moda Cove — Concept and execution by Alyssa Good.

8. "Jenny" — created by Richard Wright using Lightwave 3D software, modeled and rendered with Lightwave 8.

9. Images in globes — CityWall is a large multi-touch display installed in a central location in Helsinki which acts as a collaborative and playful interface for the everchanging media landscape of the city. The new interface launched in October 2008 also allows working with 3D objects, which enables multiple content and multiple timelines.

10. Woman with Ones and Zeros — Concept and execution by Alyssa Good.