Mundane Marvels: Embracing Chance in the Digital Age
Wenling Jiang
My thesis explores the role of chance in everyday life, focusing on the “mundane marvels”— the unforeseen joys discovered in the fabric of daily experiences, like a forgotten treasure in a coat pocket. Inspired by artists like John Cage, my thesis investigates how the infusion of chance into decision-making, displaying, and recording information can transform ordinary experiences into surprises. By examining the contrast between rigid, mundane routines and the dynamic unpredictability brought about by incorporating elements of chance, my projects reveal the potential for design practices to enrich everyday life with spontaneous joy.
Chance Thesis Book Cover
The typefaces for the title and the illustrations on my thesis book cover are all my creations, carefully selected and displayed in a random arrangement for an eclectic and unique visual experience.
Chance Thesis Book Flip Through
Paper sizes shift, text orientations rotate, and image widths vary, all at the whim of chance. Even title sizes defy convention with randomly chosen letters. Embedded within the body text are paragraphs that tilt at random angles. Scans of random objects, like a Jellycat tag or a MoMA ticket, are scattered throughout the book serendipitously.
123 Freeze Posters
Inspired by the childhood game where movements are frozen on cue, “123 Freeze,” captures the serendipity of my spontaneous poses through random alarms. These captured moments are then transformed into accentuated illustrations of me and collaged with items that are scattered around me.
100 Decisions by Chance Posters
In a world governed by algorithms and seemingly rational choices, “100 Decisions by Chance” presents a radical departure by documenting the outcomes of decisions made purely by chance.
100 Decisions by Chance Webpage
Each decision, along with its number of parameters, satisfaction score, and risk level, is cataloged, offering insights into my interactions with the unpredictable nature of life.
100 Decisions by Chance Webpage
For 30 days, I committed to making daily decisions by the roll of a die, coin flip, or other randomizing technique. Each selection - from what to eat for lunch to what activity to pursue that evening - emerged strictly from the territory of happenstance.
Thesis Fortune Sticks Poster
The Thesis Fortune Sticks project taps directly into this vein of mundane marvel by reimagining chance-based divination practices for the digital age. It marries ancient symbolic frameworks like the classic fortune-telling props with AI language models.
Thesis Fortune Sticks Webpage
The end products include a website producing randomized readings from a simulated bundle of fortune sticks and other fortunes customized to guide everything from romantic relationships to one’s daily meals.
The Anti-Textbook Experiments Posters
The Anti-Textbook Experiments project uses posters to address the role of chance in education, illustrating how AI tools like ChatGPT introduce a layer of unpredictability into learning, urging students to engage critically with the content they encounter. This shift in educational paradigms, from discovering theories to taking in information by chance, reflects a broader movement towards embracing the uncertainty and fluidity of knowledge in the digital age.