Design is conditional. Under different contexts (time, space, culture, religion, user, etc.) it shows different roles. It’s hard to say whether the design is good or bad, but being dialectical while looking at these topics would help construct our thinking before we start designing. Most human activities were made by hand, including design. Seeing from different points of view shows dramatic changes. Gillian said we are designing for situations, and having the blueprint of the whole picture and potential harms is important for designers. People ‘living’ on the back of the hand never see the palm bleeding.
There are so many sustainable projects happening nowadays, but only fewer people actually know the truth. For instance, there was a piece of news I saw 2 or 3 years ago, people living in a developed or some developing country normally donates their old clothes once in a while, but where do those clothes actually go? Some people are taking huge advantage of this, and reselling these ‘free’ clothes to Africa in order to get more profit. Cutting a hundred years old tree from South America and made that into a piece of furniture is not showing real sustainability, there is a lot more information hidden behind the scene.
A hand only has two side, the world is much complicated than two side. A cube has six sides, and human society works as clusters which I was trying to represents in this small project. The color red is very conspicuous, and it usually shows as a warning sign. I would like to use that as a set of study and see the ‘dangerous’ way of those daily products.
List of potential harms in daily ‘red’ products: domestic violence, cyber violence, physical violence, campus violence, cancer generator, cosmetic poision, food safety, financial pressure, moral kidnapping, fast fashion, social fear, etc.
Red hand practice
Life is like a mirror, we never know how the world in the mirror actually works.
I was helping my student finishing with his architecture design project at the same time this week, and the concept of his idea was to create this space for people to chill and have a calming meditation moment with the tea ceremony. It was quite satisfying in the dialogue while we were discussing the spiritual values of his design. He has merged many natural elements into his creation, for example, he has a cherry tree in the reading corner and having a waterfall system by collecting rains from the roof. Discussing with others always occurs with some interesting ideas rather than thinking by myself. This gives me an insight into using natural materials and try other ways to look at them.
I started to grab some fallen leaves home and dries them in books. I actually repeating the same procedure every year when autumn arrives, and those maple leaves are a gift from the earth, there are so many ways to explore with it. 5 years ago, I was painting the galaxy on it, but now, the way how I think has changed. In the past, I was trying to customize the leaves and get them ‘live’ as long as possible. Now, I shifted to the leaves itself rather than the extra values I added to it, so how I treat those leaves becomes different.
I was trying to reprint the patterns on the leaves, but the outcome doesn’t come so clear as I expected, so I moved on to the spatial communication light could transform.
At the time, I want to explore how other materials shows with the light. First, I dried the tree skin, and peeled it in slices. It was hard to peel dry tree skin because the skin gets curvy and fragile to touch.
By holding the new form of the skin, the shadow and the physical objects represent different ways of knowing. In the physical world, tree skin is a natural material, however, it’s shadow looks like the epitome of the city. Who knows how many human activities this tree has witnessed through time.
With the leaves I was creating this surrounding feel, not only observing how the ligh shows on the patterns of the leave, but also seeing the shape it projects.
The way how it shows doesn’t limit how we think beyond that.
through the action/s of transforming natual sense into design practice.
Photography collection – A TIAN
As an extension of action 6, I hope to turn my attention from the ocean to the land. Canada, as a country that attaches great importance to natural environmental protection, has narrowed the distance between us and the natural environment. Whenever my emotion fluctuates, I will hike in the woods until my mood stabilizes, and the feeling that nature brings to me is what I always wanted to reflect in my design.
Considering the principles and purpose of design, I am confused. When designing a product, user experience, egronomics, and product functionality are the priority aspects. Faced with these limitations, I hope that through this action, I can explore practices that are not designed by ordinary thinking
Inspiring by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, at the beginning of the 20th century, because the industrial revolution just ended in that era, people at that time only cared about mechanized production, ignoring the importance of handicraft and fine arts. Therefore, most of the products at that time were simple in appearance and lacked aesthetics. So artists initiated the Art and crafts movement, hoped to bring a new artistic style under the context. In this context, the 35-year-old Mackintosh designed the Hill House Chair, which perfectly interprets the Mackintosh’s design concept. While emphasizing the natural and simple craftsmanship, the chair shape is very simple, without extra decoration, neat and symmetrical, and expresses the rebellious spirit that the Art and crafts movement wants to express.
Burnaby Regional Park walk
In order to get some inspiration, I took a walk at Burnaby Regional Park. It is already late autumn, the feeling of the whole journey was bitingly cold. But the numerous ducks, birds, and the golden natural environment made me have to divert my attention from the coldness to this beautiful scene. As it was just in time for the sunset, the entire waterside was covered with a layer of gold by the sun. How do I transfer this experience in my design practice? I asked myself. Based on what I saw during sunset, I would like to investigate light on this action and capture this sense of fairy of nature.
First, I started grab something home and try to get some inspirations from it.
What is the purpose of designing and why am I designing. Is there a right or wrong way of design. Try to be critical with design purpose.
I was struggling in this circle of spiritual and physical world, and entangled with how to get people in a low desire environment/situation. However, always trying to find a way to solve the problem may be the problem. At this moment, stop thinking and start making.
I started use symbols to record the beings I saw and get the experience down to the paper. The visualization process can easier show the experience of the trip.
Start with one of the small element I took home, I started my iterations by simply repeating the shape, I found the experience of continuous repeating provides a space to concentrate and expanding ideas. The eventual reslt is to create a light transforming natural fairy sense to a design.
Inspired by the color of sunset, I found the color of LED light can mimic that color, then I asked my boyfriend to get me a branch and cut it into smaller operatable pieces.
The term Zen is derived from the Japanese pronunciation of the Middle Chinese word which traces its roots to the Indian practice of Zen emphasis rigorous self-control meditation practice, insight into Buddha-nature, and the personal expression of this insight in daily life, especially for the benefit of others. As such, it de-emphasizes mere knowledge.
I was trying to make the second one, but there’s some gravity issues has failed the secon version. The process of making actually satisfied me within this action.
This book is divided into two parts. The first part reveals the new discoveries of our origin. The second part shows how to embed these discoveries into our lives. This book is based on Darwin’s theory of evolution and tries to use scientific discoveries to guide everyone to rethink our relationship with the world. This book shows what we can accomplish when we cross the traditional borders of science and spirituality and combine our ancestors’ wisdom with biology, genetics, and world science to show us more possibilities in life. Very interesting to read.
BBC seven worlds one planet
About 200 million years ago, Pangea split up. When Pangea was still one piece, the evolution of the earth’s organisms was almost static, because there was no pressure brought by environmental changes to force organisms to evolve. Because the continents split to adapt to a different environment, biological evolution began to accelerate, and each continent evolved its own unique species. We are experiencing a non-major extinction, the worst since the extinction of the dinosaurs, and all this is caused by human activities. In fact, the Pangu continent is not the only one complete continent. Every three to five hundred million years, there will be a supercontinent. Now the continents are already approaching each other: Oceania approaches Southeast Asia at a speed of 7 cm every year.
The extinction of species is nothing to the earth. Only human beings really care about this. There is absolutely no recurrence in the matter of extinction. Human beings are naturally arrogant, and they shout every day the slogan of saving the earth and saving nature when doing things that destroy the earth, and the earth, which has existed for 4.6 billion years, does not need to be saved by humans.
The asteroid 65 million years ago extinct the dinosaurs. The earth is fine and it gave birth to human civilization. The destruction of the ecosystem is a disaster for all living things, including humans, but it can be restored to the earth in a flash. There is a saying that mankind is the cancer of the earth, but it is not, human beings are the cancer of mankind. The one who should really say sorry should be to other creatures that were bred by the earth with us. Humans grabbed more than needed, plundered far more than we gave, we destroyed far more than we can repair, the earth does not need our salvation, we need to save ourselves.
This piece was made later than the one above, during the creation of action 9, the process while working with this theme is very satisfying. I am so pleased to create these works, they will be sent out to my friends after this semester ends, and the user experience will be sent to me in return for my future research studies.
