Week 4: Step Out and Look Wider

Jellyfish Vancouver Aquarium, photo by April Tian

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

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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?

Thinking before doing

Continuing to think about the previous action, I extended from the studio space to the blue planet we live in and then to the entire galaxy. I tried to find some connections from the micro to the macro level. I have to say that I am a very self-directed person. I think all the actions or designs I have done are based on the fact that I am still live in the world. Therefore, I care about the works’ uniqueness, and I always hope to connect myself to these works because, in the world of art, the works we have done live longer than people.

Mindmap

Looking back to the stretch lexicon, I made this mindmap better to find the connection and continuity between these actions. Transcending human-centred design is a hot topic in recent years. I also believe that design should not be limited to the human category. The design itself is a concept created by humans, and all human activities can be defined as design. No matter who we are designing for, an environment designed for sustainable development, or artificial reproduction technology designed for endangered animals, the core purpose is to keep the human species exist longer in the world.

This video was taken in May 2020 when flowers are still blooming even under the stress of COVID-19. I want to get close to natural voices and sights to keep my connections with the earth. Burnaby central park is the place where I give me a mental treatment when I met problems. Starting with thinking about the environment, with the continuous development of human civilization, there is less green space that can remain as it is. In Vancouver, we may not have a particularly obvious feeling because the government has done extraordinary performance in this aspect. To the contradictory, Montreal does not have such a good green rate. Only when humans and nature live in harmony can they maintain symbiosis.

Throughout our human history, the disappearance of Atlantis and Mayan civilization can give us a bold guess. Human civilization has disappeared on the earth several times, and the era we are now in is developing rapidly; then, What role does design play here? Is it to make our lives more convenient or push us to the death of human civilization faster?
What does the world look like when all activities have not started, how does this space actually operate? I want to get out of our most commonly used observation methods. Apart from our own perspective, what other angles can we see on the other side of the design?

Making without thinking, think after making

Based on the black tape practice of action3, I want to visualize human society’s limitations on design. As designers, we have many factors that we have to refer to, such as the pressure by the government’s power and the economy on design. Designers are tied to their hands and feet, like tying themselves in gorgeous ballet shoes. Although they look elegant, there are so many helpless and restrained hidden behind it.

Limitation and restrictions

Inspirng with the ‘black tape’ exercise, I realized that my dog ​​is closer to the ground than I was, so from her perspective, how it feels about our community and nature? As a one-and-a-half year old puppy, I recorded a video of her actions close contact with nature outside since she was so small.

Since her legs are very short, and she likes to lie down while walking, I am curious about what kind of creatures her belly touches on the ground. So I wrapped the black tape around her waist in opposite from her coat, and walked in the small park we go to most often.

Stripe dog

As always, she lay on the ground and really helped me complete the task. Standing at my height, these withered plants hidden in the grass are hard to see. My dog ​​shows very well that the observed details are different due to different heights. This requires us as designers to understand more comprehensively on things we don’t usually notice.

I made the used tape into a sculpture, showing the complexity of the world in a circling form. We, human beings, have been wiped lightly like feathers in the long river of history. Some people have left a mark, and some people have disappeared in it.

I don’t expect my design to make a great contribution, I just hope that I can live according to my own wishes and understand the world from my perspective.

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