Revisit Projects From Last Term

Let's go through a simple review of my projects from last term. Here it is not about introduce the projects again, which you can find in the portfolio site, but focus on what happened and how one project relate to the others. The starting point is a one week project - mini Crisis, where I manipulate the physical experience while surfing the internet by adding small blocks to the keyboard. The manifesto behind this small project is about how human mind adapts to the new virtual environment in 21th century.

Yet later on each projects seems to go parallel rather than further developed from previous projects. I think a quick a review should help what happened.










mini Crisis

As mentioned above, this project concentrates on you position yourself in the physical world while your mind is surfing in the virtual world. The approach is creating a different surface between physical and virtual world. I have to admit this issue contains much more influential elements and manipulate the "surface" only touches the tip of the iceberg. Yet it's a good start for a large scale project.

One thing to notice is my INTENSION in this project. I tend to pull back the mind from virtual world. Maybe it's because I always get lost in that world...







Connection ( Mail System )

Here I try to identify the similarity and difference between mail and e-mail system. The discussion point is about the MEDIA - how media effects the message ? And then I raise a question - "what if mail can and e-mail can speak to each other ?" - and try to find a poetic solution. The "get lost in the virtual world" issue vanishes here but the way we interpret "surface" still hold a relationship to previous project.





Crisis Film

This short film visualize our "new" behaviors in the virtual world and somehow connects to the "get lost" issue. Similar to the mini Crisis, in this film I unintentionally critique the way information become fragmentary.







Breathing Lamp

The initial intention of this lamp is to create a new form of communication - passive communication. Yet in the end the organic behavior of an objects draws more attention. In this point of view the result connects to neither the "surface" nor the "get lost" issue. We may regards it's more about the relationship between human and object (digital objects maybe.) And the way technology hidden within the more "human" surface is also my interests - I call it poetic technology, and this may further develop into the brief of this term.







In Between the Books

This projects explores the possibility of book as a media or an objects and I creates different versions of book with holes within each pages. I quite like these books at the level of objects, yet it goes a little bit far away from all the possible themes I'm doing.

A quick conclusion for this short review, I set myself a very large scale issue : "how human mind adapts to the new virtual environment in 21th century ?" Maybe the scale exceed the scope design could handle, it could be in the territory of sociology or psychology. Since my goal is more design-oriented rather than research-oriented, I should re-organize my brief and position myself in a more specific place to cut in this big issue.