Accumulating: Abstracted Human Richness
Mengyao Zhang
The complexity of us as humans creates an inevitable “uniqueness barrier” among each individual. This barrier is constantly being highlighted and penetrated through human interactions. How does design intervene in the construction of human richness by initiating, accelerating, and manifesting the accumulation process of human presence via the approach of abstraction? By investigating the tension between universality and individuality, reduction and richness, mechanical and organic, form and content, standard and randomness, research and design explorations are conducted to discuss how traces accumulate, purify, and abstract on both a personal level and the collective human level.
The “Line/Voice/Clap” Book
These flipbooks present a one-month self-documentation of standardized hand-drawn lines, voice recordings saying “my voice today”, and the movement of my hands clapping in one identical motion, exploring two elements lining up on the opposite sides of the spectrum: The human factor was uneven, organic, random, fluid, subjective, and personal, while the time factor was standard, repetitive, mechanical, intermittent, objective, and universal.Thick Portrait
Besides a momentary representation, what else can still photos bring us? Long exposure portraits might be used as a way to thicken the imagery of self-representation. The function of this type of photography is not to capture all the details of our appearances, but to preserve and present the thickness of life in a reductive form of a flat still image.
Clean
A cultural probe is designed to explore the thickening process of the specific term “clean” and discusses the possibility of cleaning/removal as an incremental process.Imaginary Wash
An “imaginary wash” is conducted as an ultimate thickening and incremental process by layering up “clean” onto “dirty”. It’s an endless process as we continuously add layers of dirty, clean, and dirty again.
Dismantle
(1) use twelve given materials to create a piece of mess; (2) invite one participant to dismantle the piece and recreate a new one using the exact same materials that were used in the first piece; (3) invite another participant and repeat the 2nd step. It’s an endless dismantling and recreating process by continuously repeating the 2nd step.
Dismantle
Similar to how we clean clothes, dismantling is also an action of resetting, but traces are inerasable and will be left permanently on the object. Materials being used to assemble and dismantle become a hard record of the participants’ individual presence. Human richness is created with ever-growing collective traces.Endowing
We give additional meanings to non-humans by applying and “endowing” via channels related to human languages. Under this circumstance, languages become transferable energy that passes the existence of human beings to everything else. In the end, the world is not what it is but what we perceive it to be.
Capstone - “Accumulating”
“Accumulating” is a collection of three books that centralize “visual input via eyes”, “audio input via ears” and “conceptual input via the mind” into physical actions of “smudging”, ”rubbing”, and “imprinting”, suggesting that all sensual inputs are highly subjective among each individual.Capstone - “Accumulating”
In this synesthesia experience, the movement of hands and fingers acts as not only a single-dimensional reinforcer but a multi-facet disruptor, exploring new possibilities of intensifying human richness by synthesizing visible and invisible traces, deconstructing the boundary in between, and messing up all substances across boundaries.