Final projects from the 16_17 cohort on MA Interaction Design Communication, London College of Communication.
Hit Song Playbook builds a semi-fictional system exploring the possible future of digital creativity. With the acceleration of technology, machines are getting better at producing creative works marking an increasing threat to previously 'safe' jobs in creative industries. In the current English-speaking pop music industry, artificial intelligence is used to make the creative process more efficient, and to respond to predictive models of what will be popular.
While humans attempt to evaluate every poetic piece of music into measurable features, the distinction between artwork that is made by a human and that made by a computer are becoming even more blurred. Where does authorship lie in the creative process when we are so augmented by intelligent machines?
Tingles down your spine, heart pounding, hands fidgeting, your breathing gets faster, as you walk closer and brush by. Your body and your mind respond on the same nervous rhythm and you both surmount a mutual barrier.
“We respond to gestures in accordance with an elaborate and secret code that is written nowhere, known by none, and understood by all.” — Mark Knapp.
The Extimacy Dress senses the wearer's level of arousal through micro-gestures and affective states. The project is presented in two parts. First, a live performance where the dress is worn by the dancer during which the dancer responds in a gestural dialogue. The second part is a video installation capturing flirtation in non-verbal, intentional traces based on externalised intimate emotions. This project was made in collaboration with costume designer, Hana Zeqa and performer Amy Cartwright.
This installation is a reflection on the words of Kevin Kelly in his book The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 technological forces that will shape our future.
Prophecies of Becoming questions the certainty of printed text by scattering the predictions of the inevitable futures across the sky. The fragmented sentences form ever-changing poems, offering a moment of respite from the incessant onslaught of fact and opinion.
Prophecies mirror the aesthetic sense and aspirations of those who write them. But could our reliance on technology to formulate them have obscured our ability to determine what we really want?
By inviting us to lose ourselves in the clouds, Prophecies of Becoming seeks to balance our anxieties about the unknown with the joy and comfort of allowing our minds to wander.
Inspired by the peripatetic lifestyle of global nomads who are making home out of stays between cultures, Dancing Silhouette is concerned with movement and perception as transient ideas and explores how the generated impression and perspectives define the individual identity and belonging.
Dancing Silhouette invites you to interact with your own silhouette and experiment with the narrative potentials of a transient space through movements.
“Addictive tech is part of the mainstream in a way that addictive substances never will be.” — Adam Alter
Autonomy Reminder provides you only 100000 clicks and 100000 cm to use your mouse and keyboard everyday. The project invited you to question your body as a tool of immersion and addiction to the flow of digital information. By fore-fronting the physical interactions you have with a computer, it invites you to consider the role of the body and human energy in the flow of information provided on the screen and to have a sublime interaction with digital technology.
“A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.” – Orwell, 1984
Through manufactured outrage and appeals to a misplaced sense of identity, the ‘alt-right’ convinces with fear and indignation while turning critics away through confusion and
an overwhelming sense of discomfort. ‘A Two Minutes Hate’ is a critique of these manipulative tactics and a reflection on the powerful emotional responses they aim to provoke. By peeling away at the public-facing mask of modern fascism, one can get closer to exposing what really lies at the core of extreme right ideologies.
Technology reshapes cultures in its encouragement of new interactions and behaviors. When we are adapting to new behavioral habits, we risk losing our cultural context. Interfaces facilitate the blind piling-up of resources. The information gluttony encouraged by new interfaces lacks subtlety and impedes culture inheritance. I selected the technological transition of Chinese writing modes as an entry point to study the effect of technological localization on our behavior and written language. Based on the question, ‘What would keyboards be like if they were invented in China?’, Stroke Board is a speculative re-design of historical techno-literature. The interaction is developed based on ancient Chinese literature, using ink stones to produce ink. Different from contemporary keyboards, Stroke Board uses traditional stroke drawing rather than typing as the way to input characters.
"Plants have feelings, organs and psychic abilities much more advanced than ours. "— 《The secret life of plants》 by Peter Tompkins.
Plants Talk's starting point is a re-examination of anthropocentrism. Under the global context of climate change, the project explores the possibities of communication with nature. If design can bring a new way of life, human beings can participate in plants' communication. Through communicating with plants we can find a way to be more aware of how human activities threaten biodiversity and lead to climate change through the feedback from plant. Through this project, I want to encourage people to be more positive about the future of relationship between human and technology as an interface to the natural world.
But what is the kitchen anyway? explores how design can visualise the long-term domestic and industrial effects of a seemingly inevitable technology like lab-grown meet on the lived experience of consumers. It uses speculative and critical design methods to broaden the possibility space of the future and engage scientists, policy makers and the public in how we begin to prepare for a lab-grown meat future by examining alternative forms of domestic space.
A communication system that encourages absence and distance rather than constant connection by physicalising communication in sand, giving it a material value that can be exchanged and reflected on. It aims to encourage wholesomeness in social relationships by re-affirming the importance of absence and disconnection in communication.
A complex project involving many different platforms, uses sentiment analysis APIs to direct and control physical components of a machine that siphon sand.
Pocket Museum is a new form of museum that applies the physital technique to create the exhibition. It is a new way that people can visit the exhibition without the limitation of the physical exhibition in terms of place, space and time. Many useful exhibitions (special or temporary exhibitions) will be deconstructed in a short time after they have be displayed, so people cannot benefit from the experience of that exhibition anymore. The Pocket museum is an alternative way people can share in the experience from that exhibition. The pocket museum will take advantage of the good things of the physical museum and combine with the good aspects from digital technology; physital pocket museum. The design based on informal learning with playful learning.
physital=physical + digital
On the way of spiritual emancipation, everyone has the right and the opportunity to go faster than others. On this road, there are no such obstacles as exist in the material world where there is dependence on each other.
At the same time, many forward-looking people are displeased. They do not understand that the fear of being late and the fear that someone is better than them makes them hurry. Whoever in a hurry, he becomes superficial and begins to make mistakes. Fear obscures the mind.
Free your haste and thirst for profit, greed, envy, dissatisfaction, inability to feel the joy of obstacles and fear that you are incapable of doing something.
This work demands perseverance and dedication. Do it slowly.
HOW TO – SURF WITH A MOUSE reveals the uncertainty behind (web-)surfing by materialising the mechanical mouse's actions into tangible objects. These exaggerated objects covered in black symbolize the desire we seek in the glossy screen, while drawing the ambiguity between their anti-affordance and the context they are being re-used for. The physicality they add contrasts with the flatness of the screen and its gestural limitations. Let's scroll, click, and move around, then. But, the question is – do we still actually (web-)surf? The genuine exploratory use of the Internet has been overshadowed by the never-ending feed and its algorithmic takeover. That's why HOW TO – SURF WITH A MOUSE aims to layout the absurdity yet still exploratory aspect of digital culture, and its relationship with the addictiveness yet physicality of the gestures used.
To explore more, please visit virginietan.com/showerthoughts
It is widely recognised that data is valuable, but this value is often oblique or hard to read. What if we could understand our direct monetary value?
The cost of browsing is an experimentation into how much value you are producing unconsciously while surfing on the Internet in this data-driven society. By creating a ‘InternetNet’ system, people can easily see the costs as well as profits from browsing the Internet.
After a quick investigation into your online activities, you will receive a bill of how much you profit and cost you've produced on just one day of internet usage. It aims to raise awareness of privacy and give a new understanding of data in daily life.
Introverts often present shyness and lack of confidence in communication in real-life, even social anxiety. But research shows that introverts are more willing to communicate with people through social media. For most introverts, the Internet simply means the extension of capabilities, and the evasion of problems in the real world. This project aims to encourage introverts to communicate with people or their surroundings in real-life by non-verbal communication. Non-Verbal Communication takes advantage of The Well Gallery's staircase and participation from the audience to change the emotional atmosphere. The project aims to encourage introverts to communicate in real-life and to make people re-recognize the relationship between introverts and extroverts, between human and space and thus support the introverted personality.
A short film, an imaginary future and speculative project which presents the idea of what a full-body immersive Interaction is like in the future digital world.
The story takes place in 2046 and presents one person, one day life in his flat. It spans different time from the old age to youth, and different space from inside to outside which attempt to create an ambiguous cognition of the perception of the reality. It suggests some sort of life style in the future and intend to trigger your engagement and discussion with this story about VR interaction and human life.
It is not only the discovery of full-body immersive Interaction life but also involves much deeper explorations on the influence of the virtual reality of the future, including sports, sociality,amusements etc.