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Grad Design Studio 1

Action 6: Colors of “Sustainability”

Before I had any solid ideas, I made a goal for this action:
“Investigate product sustainability through actions of research and data visualization“. In Action 5, a great discussion came up when presenting my second video sketch: How do we know for sure that one product is sustainable, that is from its source to the market? It would be generalizing if we just make difference between one type of product like a plastic bottled water to another, such as seasonal produces. There has to be more intensive searches into that product on its own, presenting specific information exclusive to that particular type of apple, grown in that particular piece of land. This realization is made me choose such topic because I want to explore ways to monitor product sustainability that are democratic instead centralized.

One method that came across my mind was data visualization. Since data can be gathered from a crowd-based manner, it might opens door to an ideal situation where everyone voluntarily contributes their data to monitoring the sustainability of a product. However, I did not have any prior experience in working with data, collecting or presenting. To not make this action just about learning skills, besides starting to learn the programming language Python and read books about data visualization, I started my action by drawing out clues and parts that I can work on, since the topic is very broad.

I decided that the subsequent actions in this term will be mostly focused on this topic, so I took it apart to multiple directions in the pictures below. There are several criteria to consider when evaluating the sustainability of a product, and for this action, I chose to examine the skin of products – the colors in packaging.

A question was in my mind for a long time: Does Sustainability often presented with certain aesthetics? The choice of color seems to be a prominent consideration when designing packages for a product. To explore more, I also downloaded many annual business reports from big companies like Coca-Cola, and also from the companies that claim to make eco-friendly products, like Ecoproduct. I went to evaluate the percentage of “sustainability” played in those reports, manually logging the colors that are used in the in the sections related sustainability, as well as the page number data (how many pages in a report were about sustainability).

During this part of annually logging, I found 3 things very difficult:

  1. Efficient collection of data
  2. Summarize and present color
  3. Doing all the above objectively

Moreover, the data gathered can be really confined due to the corporate presentation manner.

I then expanded the color research into a more broad scope of products. I searched for images of sustainable product packagings, and collected their color individually. From all the results I put together a color palette of 9. These colors were taken into a reverse search because I wanted to see what those color stand for in the real life. Turns out its mostly desert, sky, water body, skin, food, and pants. How are the packaging and these subjects are related?

Overall, I was surprised by the amount of data that I had to collect. I was puzzled by the extraction of data from these reports. It was really tricky. How should I do it? Next step I am going to learn to use Python to solve this puzzle.

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Grad Design Studio 1

Action 5: Transcending the Limits of the Real – Video Sketch

1. Compost Battery

2. Eco-Shopping Assist

This action has been a great exercise in exploring possibilities related to my thesis. After discussion with peers and professors there are several problems within the work. 1. The eco-shopping guide, as of right now, is too generalizing. For instance, not all apples are “ethical” during the process of cultivation, transportation and distribution. This notion influenced me to expand and deepen my view into examine the sustainability of products through research, and find ways to present the findings.

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Grad Design Studio 1

Action 4: Step Out and Look Wider – Generation

Consider your Action 3: when working with your chosen lexicon phrase what peripheral ideas/spaces did you touch on or think about. What is the broader field around your initial intervention? How is this important to you? How is it important to someone else? How is this important to a community? What’s the relationship between this and global-scale concerns?

Take these thoughts (or writing) with you and…
– Leave your home. (if you’re not in quarantine)
– Prioritize seeking things of nature. Seek out beings, found materials and phenomenon.
– Develop many-things inspired by the peripheral space / the field / the broader context.
Allow yourself to re-define the problem through new acts of making

β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”
Prompting questions: (You are not obligated to answer these)
Consider how your neighbourhood contributes to your feelings/sense of home?
What does a change in context do to your thinking?
How does/can nature play a role in your designs?
Hint:
We don’t expect “solutions”. We would really like to have some provocations for interesting and engaging conversations about context; how does moving from the specific and local context in Action #3, to the broad and wide in Action #4, impact our making?

Brief

This action has been a challenge for me. Living in urban environment for too long made me forget to sense nature in my surroundings, and I felt the difficulty in connecting with nature, let along developing ideas and creating. I remember Louise’s words in class that nature does not have to be something in the wilderness but can be the wind blowing in the face and I think that is a great way to think of the nature. I made several attempts without a finite result in the end. However I was able to reflect on my attempts and generate new thoughts and ideas.

Step Out

Observation

While continue reflecting on my Action 3, in which I wanted to relate to and create around phrases “Evolving Permanence”, “Ecologically Literate”, and “Relational Design, I stepped out of my home and got into the nature close by, which is essentially a piece of state-owned, untended land besides a major road.

Going into an area like this gave me this weird feeling of trespassing. Because it is located besides this busy road without sidewalk for pedestrians, and close to the backyard of those houses, the access to it was almost blocked. There are many dry and spiky plants grown in this area. Their attributes made them abundant because any creatures passing by would help spreading seeds.

Encountering

On the way to grocery store, I was lucky enough to witness a mole digging into the ground and making a mole hill, and half of it was on the concrete sidewalk. This was actually the first time ever I saw a mole hill, on the top of the fact that the mole was working underneath!

Next day, I went to the park near the molehill sighting and found more than a dozen of molehills. Creatures living underground are often invisible in urban spaces. I tend to think that only when a piece of land was left undisturbed for a while can the wildlife finally inhabit and have fun. However, these molehills often appears extremely close to a walkway next to a busy road, and yet they display an abundance of activities. It made me realize my lack of knowledge on these beings, I wanted to know more about their habits.

Study

By doing some research on the species of mole, their life and habitat became less mysterious to me. Molehills are usually formed when a mole is digging the hole from surface to underground, where it would work through a series of tunnels that leads to different directions. But the most basic structure can be illustrated by the image below.

Garry Struyk (@GarrysMole) | Twitter
https://wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/living/species-facts/moles#

A mole’s territory is a maze-like system of connecting, intertwining underground tunnels located at various depths (Fig. 3). It’s a perfect fortress in which to survive threats, either natural or manmadeβ€”drought, freezes, predators, toxic gases, and other poisons. They routinely scent-mark their tunnels while patrolling for insects and other invertebrates that travel or fall into their tunnel systems.

Moles construct two kinds of tunnels: surface tunnels and deep tunnels, or runways. Surface tunnels are located 1 to 4 inches below the surface. These appear as 3-inch wide ridges or rips in the lawn or in soil, or as puffed-up areas in mulch. In lawns, surface tunnels are often held together only by the surrounding grass roots, and you may see the ridgesβ€”or feel them as you step on them. Surface tunnels wind around with no apparent direction or plan; they are used once or revisited several times for feeding purposes, and possibly for locating mates in the breeding season.

Surface tunnels connect with deeper runways that are located 3 to 12 inches below the surface, but may be as deep as 40 inches. Deep runways are main passageways that are used daily as the mole travels to and from surface tunnels and its nest.

β€œLiving with Wildlife: Moles.” Living with Wildlife: Moles | Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/living/species-facts/moles.

I also learned that mole’s activity helps keep soil healthy and enrich the nutrients. This let me relate to the human interventions used in agriculture to fertilize the soil and maximize crop production. Modern farmers use a series of tools and vehicles to spread fertilizer and sometimes transform the condition of lands greatly. Ironically, moles are usually treated as unwelcome visitors – sometimes pests even – that are often kept from yards of suburban houses. There are even professional mole catcher companies specifically responding to this need.

Action

I wanted to examine the soil more closely. Through research I confirmed that since the molehills are usually the byproduct of moles’ tunnel-building, they are not needed anymore once a mole is underground. Thus I decided to take some samples of molehill soil back. Before that, I prepared some soaked and shredded cardboards for mixing up with the soil.

Taking this much soil resulted from a mole’s labor is a weird thing to do. The documentation footage of me taking soil directly from the land strangely reminds me of a quintessential modern industrial scene: large excavators working at construction sites. A traditional way of thinking around taking from natural resources, especially from the ground, is to say things like “gifts from nature” or “nature is human’s friend”. This human-centred view is an excuse for the possessive demand and consumption we have been engaging. When I think what I should do to give back to nature, I actually came to realize that the best I could do is to put the soil back to its original place.

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Grad Design Studio 1

Action 3 : Extending and Seeking

Extend your studio space beyond the screen/the desk/the room.
You MUST:
– Start at the screen, and make into new spaces!
– Your making should be an attempt to understand and explain a theoretical construct on the stretch lexicon. Consider making, to understand which phrase your working on…research through design.
– Use the list of making terms found on the moodle for guidance and think of yourself as exploring, not necessarily answering.β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”
Prompting questions: (You are not obligated to answer these)
How do different forms of making change or inform your understanding?
How does your movement and shifting context impact your action?
Hints:
List of Making Terms, Stretch lexicon found on the moodle.
Keep a pen handy, as ideas, thoughts, keywords during this action will extend into action 4.

Seek divergent productivity rather than ‘one solution’Make without thinking, make rapidly

Conventional Action Research Cycle: Plan > Act > Observe > Reflect

Revisable Action Cycle: Propose > Make > Discuss > Reflect > Make > Discuss > Reflect > Make > Reflect

β€œIt may be counter-productive for the designer-researcher to interpret methodical as adhering to a pre-conceived sequence of steps.”  

– Grocott

Duration: 1 week

Process

Start at Screen

Knowing about that I need to create something completely off screen gave me difficulty to start at screen and do anything creative, mean while I started to prepare myself to not rely on screens. So instead of creating something, I went back to watch an episode of cartoon that I used to watch when I was very little.

This cartoon was named Krtek, which means “Mole”, was created by Czech animator ZdenΔ›k Miler from 1957 to 2002. In fact, Mole might be the first cartoon I had ever watched in my life, but its influence had followed me until today. The particular episode that I watched depicts a near-future apocalypse, in a man’s dream. It is an apocalypse not because of catastrophes but the drainage of resources, followed by this man’s life came back to a pre-historic state in which he runs around naked and dances with animals around a bonfire. The video below is a clip from the beginning of the episode that shows a sharp contrast against the life condition after the great downturn.

Krtek ve snu (Mole in a Dream), 1984

Please don’t get it wrong – this idealistic modern life where human can just relaxed and get served by robots was actually the subject of critique in this cartoon, along with other aspects of modern society depicted by other episodes. The main character Mole’s encounters, discomfort, and even interventions (through causing trouble) in the bourgeoning urban environment and social life expressed something deeper than just a comedy made for children. That is the reason this cartoon stuck in my mind for so long and often gives me inspirations. Linking it with the subjects I have been reading in Contemporary Design Dialogue, it seems that a direction is forming. I picked these keywords from the STRETCH Lexicon that Louise and Zach provided to us:

Evolving Permanence, Ecologically Literate, and Relational Design.

Courtesy of Louise St Pierre and Zach Camozzi

On to the Making

1

I started by making a photocopy of a mask, a generic symbol of the pandemic. It is impossible to think anything without getting reminded of the cause to where we are at right now. There is a logo in the upper left corner of the mask that is actually belongs to a Chinese automobile manufacturer, and yet the mask is worn by me in the United States right now. This led me to think about the relationship between these two nations. The talk with Zach made me realize that making without thinking and then reflect can be very helpful by deconstruct the subjects and materials involved.

2

Then I drew a quick sketch showing an idea that recycled and up-cycled products being exhibited in a space that looks like a showroom. I left many spaces of potential to be filled up. I was thinking about the term “Evolving Permanence”. When I was younger I could see people repairing things a lot, from clothing to furniture, but now these practices had vanished. The means of repairs were very creative and carried a particular kind of aesthetic.

Reflection: Showrooms are a ubiquitous product of consumer culture, and what are the implications when they are used as an exhibition space for something created to counter its creator? Zach commented that the sketch resembles a catalog and suggested me to think beyond the boundary of a room to embrace other possibilities that these products can be presented.

3

Based on the sketch I had above, I looked for materials from objects around me and made two coasters from earplugs. These are to propose if used earplugs hasn’t got too gross after short use, we can clean them and sew them together. The keyword for this action was “Evolving Permanence” and “Relational Design”

Reflection: coasters are often used as a product for display and they are a popular product seen at gift shops, which again fall into the realm of consumerism. From Zach: Can I go beyond the materiality part of evolving permanence? He mentioned an example of evolving permanence that is about upward trajectory. What methods can I use to turn something disappearing into a positive state so that it can be recognized again? This direction worths more exploration and application in the upcoming Actions.

4

I let a piece of supermarket ice melt outside at around 21 celsius and documented the whole duration with time lapse videos. This act itself is obviously speaking to the issue of global warming and the word “Ecologically Literate”, but I inevitably felt it as a cliche. To be honest, what I felt in this melting act was confusion. Zach said this process could be an opportunity to generate questions, and introduced the concept of “ad hoc” to me.

I have not yet come up with a reflection that can further inform me what action to do after this.

Thank you for reading.