The Product Design and Glass collaborative exhibition had a successful opening night with plenty of visitors from all around ECA and outside the college – here are some photographs from the opening night!
Month: December 2017
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Paper Planes
Alexandra Ross and Guillaume Gauvrit
The creation of a tool kit aiming to encourage users to act deviantly; challenging this self-centred notion of constantly being watched.
Instagram: plane_deviants
Transient in nature, and purpose-driven, airports can feel like socially empty spaces. Spaces where people get from A to B, all the while adhering to a set behavioural code. They stand out amongst other communal environments, with governments, businesses, and passengers occupying this space; together dictating and enforcing what is deemed socially acceptable.
Paper planes provides the tools to challenge pre-conceived notions of acceptable behaviour, doing so through a series of playful challenges and activities. Through these tasks, users are encouraged to discover the airport, its social norms, and all those who actively shape it.
The set of products gives way to a community of users, using social media platforms as a common ground for experiencing and sharing deviant acts, together unveiling the true nature of the space. Influenced by our own observations and interventions, Paper Planes focuses on our relationship with spaces, our personal biases and fears, and questions purpose.
Having carried out the interventions ourselves, the predominantly observed feeling was of anticipation, hesitation and fear. Wanting others to question and explore similar intra-personal experiences, Paper Planes was designed to create opportunities for otherwise abnormal activities.
Initially just the one product, the design from its inception was aiming for a bare aesthetic; wanting to maintain some sense of mystery and discovery, whilst being minimalist in nature. It was decided that the product would be part of the packaging itself, allowing for it to be a very temporary thing or kept, as it is sturdy enough. Having tested various packaging shapes and nets, we settled on the box. The tube and smaller flip box followed. The in-laid content was screen-printed to allow the use of white paint. This made the pictograms stand out from the parcel paper, while providing a splash of colour complimenting our bare aesthetic.
All products were marked using a branding iron. A permanent means of branding, it effectively conveyed an authoritative quality. Stickers were made, to both be used for tasks, and for promotional purposes.
The course, Transaction, is aiming to explore the role of artefacts within social settings, focusing on borders and examples of deviant behaviours. The context of this project is based on the Scottish National Gallery.
“We all have an ideal model in our heads of how to perform in public, what if the outline of this model is blurred, will people look at the world differently? And how will people criticise this boundaryless world?” – Yifu Liu
At the beginning, the design was focusing on revealing unseen deviant behaviours. By creating an umbrella-shaped space, people could comfortably speak about the deviant behaviours that they saw and all the sentences that they said would go on a similarly shaped screen in the same public space.
After testing it, we found that the first design was not inviting people to talk. The idea of observing spaces through a hole then came into our minds, this would allow people to focus on what they otherwise ignore. Based on the functions of observing and speaking, we created a cone-shaped object with a hole in the end, through which people could look and speak about the deviant behaviours they saw. Around the hole inside the cone the sentence says “ anything questionable that you can see from here?”, which instructs people to understand the function of the object.
The final design consists of the cone shape product and the separate screen. The cone stands on a post and to use it the user has to go into Fokus and look through the hole on the opposite end.
After researching different materials, such as a wood, cardboard, metal and plastic, we talked to technicians and chose plastic for a cover and wood as support.
The final design’s purpose is to be minimalistic, but on the other hand a little bit luxurious, keeping in mind the atmosphere of the National Gallery of Art. White colour was chosen because it is inviting and neutral.
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Infringe
Matt Copeland & Julia Jones Hellstrom.
‘Infringe’ challenges the boundary between public and private spaces.
As society relies more on technology and digital surveillance creates more transparency, we are left questioning the need for defined physical boundaries and fences. Boundaries and their restrictiveness are instinctive to humans, holding great historical and symbolic value. We are led in specific directions and halted at certain points. We obey rules and alter our behaviour based on these confines, conforming to an ideal we have always understood.
‘Infringe’ challenges this notion. The range allows an unconventional means of marking a division between spaces by redefining the form of a conventional fence. Climbing a fence has always been recognised as an act of defiance. ‘Infringe’ supports and builds on this idea by allowing users to pass through and question the meaning of the boundary, realising their own level of deviance, based on the route they choose to pursue.
Initially the project involved research into existing fences and their connotations. Notable features were the vertical bars and speared railheads, implying an aggressiveness and a means of intimidation.
Early iterations explored ways of breaching existing fences in the form of an accessory. Questioning where the responsibility lies in breaching a fence, latter designs focused on a more permanent and anonymous breach that maintained the fences appearance and symbolic value. Different designs models, made first in illustrator then laser cut, responded on different levels to the theme of deviance. Ultimately, they were narrowed down to five designs of varying difficulties to breach, creating a range of visually pleasing but conversational sections that in full scale can be connected in any order and maintain the underlying elements associated with a fence.
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Trebus**t
I made a dog poo catapult as a way to fertilize the Meadows. The object reflects the amalgamtion of ideas, interviews and my social probe, and represents the narritive that people are willing to accept and even support deviant acts if it ultimately benifits the natural enviroenment. The catapult allows people to get out of their comfot zone to be activley involved in the ecological and social growth of the Meadows which is so deeply cherished.