The Denmark Trip

During my Denmark Trip I took during march of 2024, I visited a ton of different museums ranging from old ruins of castles from 1100 AD, all the way to highly modern art galleries showcasing artists creating unique work with topics on social commentary, politics, sustainable design, and more.

Apart from being a great break at the middle point of my semester, allowing me to take a mental reset which was talked about in the previous writing, I got to experience a lot about European and Danish culture that really wowed me as someone who’s never traveled internationally before now. The entire vibe of the city of Copenhagen felt so close to what I’ve been wanting out of lifestyles. The people were relaxed and seemingly not as stressed, the streets were cleaner than I’d expect of a capitol city, the city felt safe, and everyone of course was biking around, making cars much less common, something unthinkable in a metropolitan area of America.

Something we noticed right away was a sense or feeling that nobody was looking at us as outsiders, whether eating at restaurants or shopping at stores the people were friendly, often asking us if we lived nearby or in the country. The idea that we were seen as Expats who moved to Denmark seemed to be a common theme, but also probably due to our ancestry both myself and my girlfriend had a fair few people walk up to us speaking Danish assuming we were native. The food was amazing throughout the city, no matter what type of food you wanted you could find it, and there was never really a bad restaurant we could find.

Overall, our purpose in these trips is what we call “Window Shopping”, which to us essentially means looking for a new place to live and escape from the hellscape we know as the US. Denmark could easily be that place, a short trip there alone confirms that we know life is better in the Scandinavian area, where people are treated as people, nobody worried about going into debt permanently if they have a medical emergency, people could buy fresh produce brought in from farms every day, and the food was not filled with preservatives and dyes that slowly killed us. To us, it’s important to find a place we can live happily and eventually start a family, where our kids are also taken care of with rightfully free education, daycare, and great maternal and paternal leave. Where we don’t have to worry that sending our kids to school nearby means they could never come back, either from mass shootings, or from suicide rates due to the pressure of bullying.

Denmark is the first place we felt we could honestly live the happy and comfortable life we long for, it’s so frustrating to return here to America and realize even more so how fucked everything is. To know that on the other side of the world people have things pretty much figured out while we’re stuck here in capitalism n’ “freedom” land is a weight on us. One we want to lift as soon as we get the chance.

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Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about some of the museums and art we saw while there, mostly in the attempt to connect the work with my own and see how I can learn and grow. The only one that will be excluded from this specific writing is the Design Museum Denmark, as I have a lot to say about that in it’s own section. Also the camera quality is not great for a lot of photos because my professional camera wasn't allowed in most museums unfortunately.

Nikolaj Kunsthal

The Nikolaj is an old church in the center of Copenhagen that was renovated and turned into an art gallery. The current gallery exhibition at the time was called Super High End Underground, which focused on the merging of high end fashion with fine arts.

A link the to video in question

One of the most interesting pieces in the current gallery was this short film called The Circular Series Section 7, part of the artists ongoing usage of people in strange or unique clothing to create social commentary. This time, they dressed as almost mop-like creatures inside a laboratory. The mop-like creatures make movements and interact with each other in a uncanny or unsettling way, as the lights move to examine them. Sections of abstractified liquids are hyper-fixed within to create something that hints almost at body horror.

I think this gives a vibe that goes back to one of my first writings where I was talking about the uncanniness of the game Atomic Heart, with the usage of visceral imagery and music that created a creepy and unnerving atmosphere that something was very wrong. The artists here create a similar idea, with the laboratory looking at these creatures as they move uncomfortably in the space. It could be a commentary on how we are viewed through the lens of the digital age, or something entirely different, as the artists kept to a vague statement on the topic.

In the upstairs of the Nikolaj there were 2 very interesting pieces on social activism separate from the downstairs gallery. The first of which was the Mothernism interactive room.

In this room, you relax inside the tent and read about what it means to be a mother and a designer in the modern day, surrounded by interesting and vividly colored flags and mantras dedicated the MOTHERNISTS, which according to the artist, is an intersection of feminism, science fiction, disco, and modernism. It had a really great vibe that almost sucked you into it, the design and feeling of the exhibit itself was electric to me. The artist really spoke to her feelings and discourses of living in the modern day as a woman, a professional, and more.

Finally, the last of the notable exhibits here was this piece at the very top of the church. Rune Bering: Bycatch is am piece about humanity's connection to fishing and the environment. Statues of human bodies intertwined and caught within nets and technology are strewn throughout the gallery, handcrafted by the artist. The entire show comments on our relation with geology and nature intertwined with technology, as well as the damages to ourselves and the environment that come from that.

As Rune Bering says, ”In this exhibition, I work sculpturally with emotions which I believe are characteristic of our time. We know that we live in a way that can’t last, but at the same time the feeling is that we can’t change it. We live in structures that interfere with each other and that are too complex to really understand, change and get out of. It feels like we are caught in our own net”, to which I really resonate with, as it feels synonymous to many of the struggles our generation is going through as a whole. Where and how do we start to make change? That’s the big question on the minds of many who are frustrated with the state of the world.

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The Round Tower Copenhagen

Something completely unexpected within our trip was this small exhibition within a 17th century round tower observatory in Copenhagen. Generation Why is a show about the current generation Y’s thoughts and art related to how we feel about our bodies. We were not allowed photography here, so all I have is a video I found on youtube of it.

What’s so interesting about this completely unexpected gallery was the many different ways and varieties that the artists tackle a similar or often same subject. I think it speaks to my weakness that I get caught on why something relates to my topic, why make a room, or a can of soda, what does it have to do with the general thought I want to convey?

In this gallery space, many convey their thoughts through unconventional means and a high sense of humility, something I think I have yet to really be able to communicate or use in my own work. Some will create something as simple as a cracked piece of wood or a clay interlocked chain, and it speaks volumes to their cause. I’m not there yet, but I want to unlock myself in the same way and think about work in this sense, but I find it very difficult.

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BLOX - Urban life,
architecture and sustainability

BLOX is a complex building in the center of Copenhagen that acts in many ways as a collaborative space, architecture museum, kids park and playground, chill coffee shop, and more. The space is massive and very interestingly designed as a big modernist blocky glass structure.

Inside of the museum, there actually happened to be a exhibit on sustainable design, which connected very interestingly with what I was working on before my trip.

The exhibit talked about sustainable forms of building materials, some I was already familiar with due to my work on THE STUDIO, and some not so much. A lot of the buildings being shown off had a solarpunk’y-eco modern aesthetic that I really enjoyed, and being able to see this stuff in person and how it’s built was an interesting experience.

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SMK - Statens Museum for Kunst

Lastly on this end was the SMK or Statens Museum for Kunst, which is the largest national art gallery in Denmark. The actual gallery itself was really interestingly designed as for the modern exhibits they simply built onto the old gallery and expanded, creating an alley with a stark contrast between traditional brick and modern architecture.

The museum itself was mostly filled with traditional art from Danish artists and creators, with a large variety of sculpture and paintings. As you moved into the 1900s onward art, the museum itself becomes more modern, and you get a good mixture of mediums such as clay, digital, sculpture, painting, etc.

Some of the pieces here gave good influence for design, the short film of 2 people interlocked inside of a broken/disassembled screen directly above was one of my favorites. The intricate use of technology to create a sculpture-like diorama where everything was still connected created a blade runner-esque futuristic feel.

The clay sculptures pictured above gave me comfort in how I would approach clay myself, with seemingly small and fairly simple clay models being created without much relation to one another or a central theme.

I also loved the small glass display filled with tiny little mock brands and containers, it gave a micro design fiction sort of vibe and made me think about how I could do something like that. When I talk about the Design Museum I will share more thoughts on that.

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Overall, I think letting myself get out and be exposed to more forms and approaches to art and the topics around it has been overwhelmingly great for my growth and thought on how to approach my work myself. Often here in the US there are not many other designers or artists creating galleries or shows that I have access to or can go to frequently, so I don’t get as much exposure. It was great to not only see more galleries and museums in person, but also those museums being part of a culture and people that are on the near other side of the world from me. Witnessing the Danish art scenes progressive nature and willingness to challenge narratives and canons felt as if I was getting essentially getting more residency, or more VCFA. I don’t have many networks where I can channel or talk about these issues or styles of art.

In fact, the Danes seemed to be more in tune and accepting of artists in the first place. Where I live in the US, most people don’t seem to care for or understand modern art in the slightest, many walk in to a gallery or look at the current exhibitions and walk out scratching their head, or calling it dumb, or not art in the first place. There seemed to me that there was more respect for the Designer, Architect, Artist, and Maker within the city of Copenhagen, a sort of pride for Danish Design, and willingness to share new or sensitive experiences.

All in all I believe this trip has really helped me grow as an artist and as a person, and I can’t wait to travel again to the next place.

Mental (interlude)

August 2017,

I was attending a small trade school for computer sciences, specifically programming and networking. The school was in the downtown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My first time being on my own, the size and plethora of things to do in the city mesmerizing to my young self, having only ever lived in small towns in the countryside.

Things weren’t so great however, the trade school was not an exemplary form of education, and reflected more of American high school education than that of College level. The classes were short, there were many different classes per day, the homework was piled on. The school enforced a business dress code for “professionalism”, there was only one teacher for each subject. The classroom was small, dry, and always way too hot for the suits we were required to wear. There was no food or cafeteria at the school, so we had to figure out food ourselves somehow, and figure out how to get the money to eat in the first place.

The dorms were small, white rooms with no windows. The bathrooms were shared across the whole floor and rarely seemed to be cleaned well, and each room had a small kitchenette with a sink, fridge and stove. The winter months were harsh in the city, from the downtown dorms to the school the walk took roughly 20 minutes to and back. This included going over one of the rivers and walking over a bridge, where the cold winds traveled across the frozen river in negative degree windchill.

Besides that, it was a time filled with memories. I met some of my closest friends I still have today. Messing around as a bunch of college dorm boys made the whole experience more stomach-able, we played tons of games together, explored the city together, and even all got hired at the same small Noodle Restaurant and practically ran the place together.

The 20 minutes walks gave tons of time for music, which helped me gain my love for experimentation and new types of songs, genres, and artists. One of the major albums I listened to at that time was Chloe Burbank Vol. 1 (An album that doesn’t actually exist, as the songs have been buried by the artist as a scrapped debut album and only a few have surfaced since he became famous. In my opinion, it still remains his best work to today. The song above is related, as it’s one of the only songs to make it to official release)

When I listen to this album, I feel an overwhelming nostalgia hit me. I feel the bite of the cold, the sound of the streets of downtown Pittsburgh, I can remember the route I took everyday now, the faces I’d see, the album to me hits a perfect melancholy note of the mixture of the hard time I was going through and the memories I cherish from that time. A interesting mix and contrast of emotions.

After roughly a year of being at Bradford School, we were called into a general assembly and told that the school was shutting down due to enrollment. Essentially, it was an exit scam, the trade school was never really considered an accredited institution in the first place, it relied on stealing money from young people who were unaware while providing minimum education and amenities. They gave us the option to continue as the last class at the school, but the head teachers had already left to new opportunities and we were stuck with temporary faculty that didn’t even know our subject.

Considering where I was, I consider this one of the lowest points in my life. I was heavily depressed, hated programming and school, my attendance and grades dropped, and I felt trapped. My parents didn’t support me leaving, I had almost no support or people on my side, but I did it anyway. I went home, and worked at a gas station for a year. Life wasn’t getting any better, and I needed to make a change. I searched around for ideas, I played with ideas such as moving to Japan and teaching English, becoming a flight attendant, maybe YouTube? I was desperate for something, and then I landed on going back to school. I was very hesitant, of course, due to my previous experience. Then my life changed forever when I started at Edinboro in the Graphic Design Program.

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Throughout the last packet, I think I expressed a tone of doubt and feeling of unsatisfaction in what I was doing. Truth be told, I think that most of those factors came from outside influences that were personally affecting me. There's been a fair bit of struggle with my moms health, my own personal health, coming to terms with the worlds problems, and more to name just a few of the many stresses life puts us through. I think because of that I had a heightened sense of anxiety and stress last month, leading to a low self-esteem that what I was working on was worth it in the end.

I’m calling this packet Interlude, because for me it has been a sort of mental reset, and a moment of breath and calm post-vacation where I feel more stable and ready to take things on. Don’t get me wrong, everything is still on fire on the outside, but at least I feel like I’ve got a little bit more control. I guess I’m gonna dedicate this writing to small stories or details about my life recently or in the past, just to get it all out there and hopefully feel a little better.

Last year before I started here at VCFA I was actually in the hospital for a week due to my gallbladder developing stones which then blocked my liver and pancreas from being able to function. The major attack that almost killed me happened to come the day that I was moving into my new apartment, and I rushed to the hospital. I spent 5 days without being able to eat or even drink water, and it led to a quick surgery getting my gall bladder out.

Since then, it’s been hard to eat the food here. America has a very high affinity to dyes, oils, preservatives, and pesticides that pump out the most produce possible at the cheapest quota available. Unfortunately this sacrifices the quality and healthiness of the food, and most of these chemicals (which are illegal in almost any country with a decent food and drug administration), actively cause me to feel sick since having my surgery.

Because of this It’s been stressful to even eat here, I barely find myself having the time to cook every meal from scratch no matter how much I love to cook, but no matter where we can go to get food I can basically guarantee I’ll be paying for it later. When we went to Denmark, to my surprise, I didn’t have a single attack no matter what I ate. We went to many restaurants in our time there, ate greasy Italian food, steaks, ice cream, fried desserts, and yet I never found myself needing to take medicine once when there.

Is it really such a reality that what we put in the food in America is that bad? How can I even begin to escape that reality, besides moving away to a place like Denmark? The idea that things can get better for us is comforting, however it has both me and my significant other scrambling to figure out how exactly we can escape from here, and how long it will take. The yearn for a better life, where people are treated like fellow humans and taken care of, where the culture is connected and community centric, where we treat the environment with the respect it deserves, where our kids can be taken care of both educationally and physically, and where the food both tastes better and is better for you. From our perspective, America feels like a hell, a prison keeping us from living our best possible lives. Where stress is a constant, and every persons decline around you is the product of a failing system on the brink of collapsing entirely.

So needless to say, we absolutely loved our trip to Denmark, even if it did make us feel desperate for some positive change in our home lives.

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I think often about the song Mental by Denzel Curry. The entire album Melt My Eyez See Your Future acts often as a simple and quick mental reset for me, when I feel anxious about something, music can often help me calm and sort through it easier. The soft, instrumental Jazz and Soul of the tracks bring about calmness, and then the harsh hip-hop lyrics chime in with reality, illustrating the details and problems with the world while maintaining a understanding and composure towards those issues.

The album, for Denzel, was a way of processing traumas and facing inner demons through his work. The album was produced and written during the Covid-19 Pandemic, where many people lost their lives to sickness, as well as riots broke out across the country for the Black Lives Matter movement. I can really feel the connection to self reflection and the want to better yourself. When talking about his process of making the album, he talks about the constant comparing yourself to others and what others in the industry are doing, and how he tried to make the album disconnected from that and his own thing, a raw vulnerable piece of his self translated into music. I feel there’s a lot to take away from that, I’m just not quite there yet.

The idea of “imposter syndrome” is really no stranger to graphic designers, I don’t think I’ve ever met a student in undergrad who wasn’t in some way feeling that pressure. To top this off, we then compare ourselves to our peers around us, he’s better at logos, she’s really good at illustration, and it takes a mental tool on our self esteem and ability to create at our 100%. Mentality and Ego can be large factors in ability, if a person doesn’t believe that they are capable of something, they won’t be able to do it. You have to push past those mental roadblocks and challenge yourself to go beyond both your own expectations and others.

For me, my struggle has always been traditional art. I learn mediums such as drawing, painting, pottery, etc. at a much slower rate that digital forms of art, and because of that I always feel the pressure that what I’m doing is a waste and I’m never truly happy with what I’m making. I’ve built up strict walls and defenses as safeguards to protect myself from damaging my own ego, and because of that I am actively hindering and limiting my own artistic freedom. It’s so easy to stay within your “safe space” and not want to venture out. Nobody likes to be in pain, even if pain is a learning experience.

Because my ability in traditional art has always been lesser than others, I find myself comparing myself to those who make similar work very negatively. The lack of ability to do proper thumbnails or sketches, or to create detailed illustrative guides or concepts, makes me feel imposter syndrome the same way. The walls I build up made me attach myself only to digital means of making, where I was proficient and able to learn fast and make good work using type, shapes, motion, or anything outside of sketching. Molding a square into a chair in blender is much easier than sawing and nailing together some planks of wood. I think I need to address this problem and face this inner demon in my time at VCFA.

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Something that I’ve decided to pick up, both for my mental and physical health, is Climbing at our local bouldering gym.

Both my girlfriend and I have realized that due to our general lack of activeness and our sedentary lifestyles, that we’ve become pretty out of shape. As people who want to travel a lot, eventually hiking and walking all around the world, we know that we can’t really afford to let ourselves stay unhealthy.

I wanted something that could be a considerable full body workout while simultaneously being engaging and fun, for me, running on a treadmill or lifting weights is just too boring and feels more like a waste of time no matter how good it is for you.

On top of this, finding a physical activity to dedicate time to is great for my mental health, as it lets me go work things out and think for a little. The benefits of having a physical hobby or discipline is clear, but spending some more time together, getting out of the house and away from my office, and using our graphic designer style personalities to problem solve the boulders in the gym should prove to be great for both of us.

We have classes once a week now, and after the first one I have sore muscles that I didn’t even know existed, but I really enjoyed it a lot and actually found out a lot of fellow Alumnx climb there too. (Graphic Designers apparently like climbing a lot? I guess it makes sense due to the problem solving nature, but it still surprised me!)

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Considering I’ve been sharing a lot of songs from my past or that mean a lot to me, here’s a song that represents perfectly my days at my old trade school. “why we never host the pregame” has always been a representation of that feeling of nostalgic times with friends in the city, young teenagers being dumb and immature and living together in a small space. I’ve grown a lot since then, and I’ve changed completely from who I was. Back then we didn’t record or document much of our lives together though.

Overall, moving forward I feel a lot better about what I’m going into. I want to be more experimental, more weird, and more fun in what I’m doing. I want to enjoy my work but still find it meaningful and important, and most importantly I want clear the mental walls I’ve built up in my head.

Having a writing session to sit down and sort through all this in my head has helped out a lot, as sometimes it’s hard to collect my thoughts and ideas with my ADHD. I always have a hundred thoughts, ideas, notes, and etc. knocking around in my head at a time, so when I talk in meetings with others I can sometimes get sidetracked easily, or completely misrepresent what I’m thinking.

But you’re the only thing I wanna get better for for real

So I’ll read another book that tells me exactly how to feel

I’ll keep writing my goals down so I have something to read

This list of unchecked boxes is my work of fantasy

I’ll give myself a name unrecognizable on the shelf

So I can go and pass the blame to someone other than myself

And if you find it I hope that you read it through and through

And I hope that it’s as pretty as you

This was my kind of just my mental spew, maybe just a glimpse into who I am, and where I’m at. Hopefully this didn’t bore or feel like I was trying to give out an autobiography, or maybe it wasn’t even enough. I just am glad to sort it though, and now I’m ready to reset back and get back to work.

Metamodernity

Next to Hudson Yards, it's crowded on the weekdays
From April to May
Parse apart a troubled heart from an e-train
And sing about it in LA

With clouds in the rearview
You start humming along to the first verse
Of your favorite song that you quote each day
With the words all wrong

So call me when the world looks bleak
I love you, but it’s hard to believe
With every day, we'll start to see
The rest is metamodernity

With agrestic charm, it's humid in the Midwest
From June to July
All beneath a pinkish sky from the wildfires
Which mantle the horizon line

From the outset
It’s been hard to tell why we feel this down
When it all bodes well

So call me when the world looks bleak
I love you, but it's hard to believe
With every day, we'll start to see
The rest is metamodernity

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Metamodernism is what lies after Post-Modernism.

Although, that’s weird to hear, and also weird to write. It’s hard to think about Post Modernism being over, especially considering it’s taught as the canon of current design.

Isn’t that exactly the problem though? Post-Modernism was an answer to Modernism, ironic, satirical, cynical, and real. We saw the rise of modernity get picked apart, we challenged white narratives and canons established by centuries of colonization, we saw styles such as abstraction and grunge take complete hold over an entire generation of artists and designers. People were no longer conforming to the little white checkboxes society had placed them within.

“
Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead…
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— Joyce Messier, Disco Elysium(2019)

Post-Modernism has essentially become just as subservient to the majority narrative that any previous narrative before it has. The style is no longer breakout, the ideas no longer resistance by nature. Abstraction and deconstruction are taught in the classroom just as minimalism and grid-systems are. Major companies like Nike appropriate the postmodern style, consumer television shows such as The Simpsons and South Park in America for example use postmodern humour. The music of many modern artists in the 90s by example critiqued our way of living with various messages and phrases. Basically, the ideas and concepts of postmodern thought are ingrained in everyday life whether we acknowledge them or not.

The shift to Metamodernism happened when we moved from the ironic and cynical, to still acknowledging those ironies while simultaneously looking for a moment of genuineness or honesty. All movements be it Postmodernism or Metamodernism, it is a structure of feeling. Both tie into a general cultural relationship with all things in society, and they could even be considered their own philosophies.

Postmodern, defined by Frederik Jameson in “POSTMODERNISM: The Cultural Logic of Late Stage Capitalism” is the sensibility of the end times, the end of history, the end of ideology, the end of society, the end of everything. On the contrary, Metamodernism is the sensibility of post-irony, new forms of sincerity, and informed Naiveté.

“
To give an analogy, if modernism was the absolute belief in the building of Babel, and postmodernism was the realisation that it cannot be built, metamodernism can be thought of as the engagement in building it with the knowledge that it is a flawed or unachievable task.
”

— The Role of the (Graphic) Designer, Metamodernism.com

Metamodernist realize the futility of a battle against a metaphorical god, the Sisyphusian task of attempting to fight against a system so powerful and large (which also ties into the Metamodernists direct relation to leftist thought and theory), and still chooses the attempt to create a better solution knowing that there may never be a fruit that bears out of the labor done.

The term “Meta” coincides the it’s Greek origin, meaning “Between”, “After”, or “Beyond.” Thus, Metamodernism oscillates between between modernist and postmodernist, and beyond to something entirely different. It doesn’t take allegiance with either side, and properly points out the pros in each as well as the cons. It is a return to the elegant big narratives established by modernism, but with the added irony and sentiment of the postmodern. Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker stated in their 2010 article:

“
Ontologically, metamodernism oscillates between the modern and postmodern. It oscillates between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between the hope and melancholy, between naivete and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity.

Each time the metamodern enthusiasm swings towards fanaticism, gravity pulls it back towards irony; the moment its iron sways towards apathy, gravity pulls it back to enthusiasm.
”

— Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, 2010

But why is Postmodernism over? Well it’s simple, can we describe the rising and bubbling over of internet culture, memes, Tik-Tok, and many more examples as postmodernist? If the answer to that is no, then what can we describe them as?

The application of metamodern thought does not only apply to internet culture, however, as we see a shift in work that exists in culture yet struggles to identify with a single movement. Notable examples could include Wes Andersons and Spike Lees films, Bo Burnhams music and documentary “Inside”, and music such as my often linked band Vansire. I would strongly argue that our Alumnx Heather Snyder Quinn applies heavily towards this as well. These artists were using postmodern mediums and means, but not exactly reaching postmodern ends. Not everything was a cynical effort to expose and disillude, but often aimed towards creating a sincerity or connection with the topic.

We define this in layers, starting at layer 1 and moving through layers as we continue to get closer to the self. If Layer 1 is a published piece of art, then Layer 2 reflects that, looking upon it in a modernist framework of surface level meanings and intention. Layer 3 then confronts the other Layers with cynicism and nihilistically attacks the reason or existence of the art, such as how postmoderism would approach it. When we arrive at Layer 4, we deconstruct the postmodern thought, where we become more vulnerable and earnest about the work and why we attacked it. Layer 4 and beyond would become the Metamodern, what we see as deconstruction of deconstruction as a means to a reconstructive end.

I think it’s important to note that the point in the modern age we live in is unpredictable and always changing. To that point maybe metamodernity is about the adaptation and working around the new challenges brought on upon by post-capitalist society. The metamodern framework is simply a way of interpreting this new sensibility we see in art and design, and is not considered a movement in the sense of what we would call postmodernism. As the modern age continues, we will keep trying to interpret and understand it and find value in our new discoveries.

Notes on Utopia

What is Utopia?

Is it a pleasant feeling of a perfect social lounge such as depicted in Utopia by Jaeden Camstra feat. Candid, a pleasant swelling and almost nostalgic feeling?

A world with no problems?

A world where society has figured it out, that nobody is sad, angry, or guilty?

Would that world be possible?

What would it look like?

The following writings are not a cohesive point, or even a solution to a problem. It is a collection of various thoughts and notes on the broader topic of utopia, political alignment, empathy, and humanity as a whole. Some my leeway into the next, some may build upon a previous, and some my take a completely different position than the previous. In my mind, I have gone through a lot of change over the years I have started academia that has lead to both personal and social growth, especially since starting my MFA. I have ideas and contradictions swirling within that feel daunting to address, as this fundamental shift in myself is something I do not take lightly. Through this, you might feel as if you(the reader) have a chance to step into my head, and you might wholeheartedly disagree with my thoughts, or maybe even find new things to consider for your self.

What is wrong with Utopia?

Utopia can not really exist, as to pursue a utopia would be similar to pursuing perfection, perfection which is also unattainable as it exists only as a construct and not as something tangible that can be attained. We live in a time when our planet is dying, the after-effects of industrialization and modernity have created societies and functions that harm us, harm our families, harm our already short lifespan, harm our environment, harm our ecosystems.

Society through the lens of fiction and reality alike have viewed utopianism as a dark horse, something that only is pursued by the naïve and short-sighted. Society now is so avid on defending systems of belief we exist under currently that they often do not take the time to consider healthier alternatives, or motions of change. This can often be out of a lack of education, or, in the case of America for example, a sense of blissful ignorance and complacency.

“Good Enough” is not good enough. When did we choose to forget as a society about the history of our own people? When did we become complacent in viewing the current system as the only tangible form of society when this system itself is only roughly 200 years old?

Utopia can be strived for.

To strive for utopia is human nature, the bettering of ourselves, our planet, our community, our lives. Our species is not special, we are animals, we are part of the ecosystem. We have garnished this toxic ideation that we have been chosen by evolution to be the masters of the planet through our gift of consciousness, intelligence, and opposable thumbs. We are not masters, we were not born to rule, we were born to co-exist with the planet and it’s diverse creatures.

Utopia will not be a perfect society. There is no perfect society. Utopia will not happen tomorrow if we take action today. There will be struggle, there will be issue, people will disagree on the many topics and ways of handling any given situation.

Human beings are not a parasite.

Humans, contrary to the legalist point of view, are not born evil. The idea of human nature being intrinsically related to violence, war, and aggression has been suggested by many philosophers Western and Non-Western alike, with a focus on an individualist point of view that humans are always centered at the idea of self-service and gain. I believe this is not true, humans are social based animals made to survive and nurture their selves within community.

It is human nature to want to help and care for those who are not capable of self care, dating back to hunter-gatherers acting upon this rational form of compassion. It is because of hierarchical and social systems imprinting on us that we believe that we are selfish, or that an ungoverned populous would cause infighting and no regards for others.

The system, such as Americas for example, creates social reasons for rules in the society such as owning and purchasing money, food, housing, or any other basic necessity. Thus, the act of stealing is also created by society, most commonly as a condition of the system itself. Those who do not have money, and thus do not have food, must take what is necessary for them to survive.

It is true that fear and desperation are mechanics within our nature for survival, yet every person experiences this fear differently. One might be afraid of heights while the other afraid of water, typically connected to a lived or learned experience that causes them to be wary or scared. The government grapples onto and effectively manipulates the fear and contrasting comfort of safety to create an environment of control, to which questioning their policy causes a “necessary reaction” from appropriate government forces.

And still the most fear is felt within the government itself, fear of losing control, fear of an educated populous, and fear of losing the power they grasp onto so desperately. Power universally and wholly corrupts, that is of no question. Therefore, it is much easier to convince a population that dependency is a must, to reinforce a narrative that without the state, society would fall to death, ruin, theft, and poverty.

There is no future under capitalism.

Capitalism is unsustainable. It it a system defined by self-service, individualism, and crippling meritocracy. The very definition of a free market capitalist economy is greed and profit, there can be no ecologically sustainable world and biodiverse community as long as we operate a system in which a select few remain in power.

Although many believe that capitalism has put in motion modernity and improved the entirety of our everyday lives, it has brought about a ruin so severe on a social and ecological basis that we have done more damage to the planet in 300 years than in the entire time humans have roamed the Earth. Globalization, Free Market Enterprise, Land Ownership, Colonialism, the need for energy, and many more systems have caused the earth to slowly rot from it’s core, all for the sake of individual liberties.

The word “growth” is commonly associated with nothing but positives. It is considered often counter-intuitive to be against the concept of growth. Yet, the practice of “Degrowth” provides grounds for a much better world. The average human simply uses too much. Too much meat. Too much power. Too much fuel. Too much.

Sacrifice and The Individual.

When speaking on the idea of Degrowth, the initial response is typically associated with “but your typing this on a computer right now, yet you don’t believe in computers?” in a snarky, condescending tone as if they’ve figured everything out and pointed out my hypocritical thought process and ways. That is true, I am using power right now, I take longer showers than I really need to (hot ones, too), and I am going to most likely have some form of meat for dinner tonight like most nights. I’m not, in any way, proposing that these luxuries in life should be phased out and we should go back to living in caves, bathing in rivers, and hunting for our own sustenance.

Degrowth is not cutting off cold turkey. It is a reduction of privilege's and a focus on necessities, for society now relies entirely on a cycle of viscous consumerism backed by advertisement of the unnecessary and over-reliance on mass production. The individual, especially in western society, lacks the understanding of how much selfishness we display in these actions.

Our world can get better.

It is not too late. We can repair, mend, or reverse the affects of what we’ve done. It may take more than a lifetime to do so, but action now could significantly improve our species and the planets future. What we need is to understand that we must cut, as soon as feasible, carbon and oil based productions. We need to lean in on carbon neutral means, even if they are not perfect. The understanding that they will produce less overall power comes with the acknowledgments of the cutbacks in our personal energy use, may it be possible to see quotas on power usage in the future, while still allowing leisure and play, could we reduce the worlds unsatiable need for energy?

We need the library.

Why must I own everything?

Why should I spend hundreds or thousands to personally own a tool or tools, for example, that I may only use on occasion, perhaps even every few years if they are only for a specific need?

Why must I own a truck to transport furniture, when I might only need it to pick up that piece from a depot?

Why should I have to buy a crib for my newborn, only to (more than likely) throw that crib out and get a bed once my child becomes a toddler?

The system of libraries are as genius as they are historically timeless. We have created communal spaces of knowledge that allows those without ability to collect a large number of books a space to borrow, learn, read, and return thousands of different pieces of literature. The ability this grants to educate someone who is less privileged than another does not even need be mentioned. To add to this, the library encourages positive treatment of our possessions, collectively as a people, we take care to not damage or hurt the books, so that the next person may enjoy it just as much.

Why not create more common areas like this for the items in life that are not needed permanently? We have seen rise to community workshops, group clay fires, and sometimes toolshares within a library, but why not take this to another higher level? Who says that one cannot just go get a garden trowel when we need it, and return it when we’re done. Maybe even having the trowel for a longer period of time with no penalty or fault given?

What would be a possible conflict with this line of thinking? Do we worry that people will damage or steal? Do we get attached a trowel, if so, should we entertain that attachment?

We need speculative fiction.

I think, to this end, speculative fictions such as literature, design fictions, or more are fantastic tools to educate a user on the potentiality of the future. Having a multitude of options is great for the enrichment and enlightenment of our development. Whether they be utopian or dystopian in nature, we can agree that each form of fiction shows the reader/viewer of a new world that can be explored or found within an idea.

It acts as a medium, both for warning signs and for optimism. Through this, we are also capable of making engagement with these difficult topics fun and enjoyable. We can be silly, overly sarcastic, extremely grim, or even rigid and authoritative to demonstrate a point. We can express our thoughts and convince someone to view the world from our side with visuals and worlds that seem so unreal and dreamlike yet like they could happen at any point in the future.

Wrapping things up.

I think with these thoughts all around I can say that I choose to believe in the concept of Utopia. Why not? It’s better than sitting around hopeless and sad watching the world crumble. As I said in my very first note, I don’t believe a full utopia is possible. Alternatively, I do believe that it is admirable and perfectly fine to pursue an idea of utopia. I also think that researching and creating dystopian views is just as valid, as those messages often carry with then a weight or responsibility of informing the reader/viewer that there is something innately wrong.

Why not try to make something better with what we have?

The Checkpoint at the End of the Internet

In the greater void, an expansive layer of content veiled invisibly over our heads known as “The Internet”, one might in their travels stumble across The Checkpoint.

The internet is so massive, it would be fundamentally impossible to explore the entirety of it within the short span of our own human lives. One can easily assume then, that there is troves upon troves of lost media, dusty and untouched, layers of sediment atop content not seen since the early 2000s or maybe even before.

In the modern age, we tend to attempt to archive everything that is tangibly possible to archive. However, it is nearly impossible to imagine that we have truly grabbed every single thing. For example a video could have been uploaded by a creator who met an untimely end, only for the video to be deleted years later due to inactivity or changes in rules. Even with 200,000 views or many more, what guarantees that somebody pressed the download button before it was gone?

Many have taken up the mantle of “internet Archaeologists” and “Internet Historians”, committing serious amount of time exploring the vast open spaces of old MMOs such as Second Life (year), scouring for lost media of television era shows and movies, or digging through old forums, now tombs of old conversations held of people who have passed or moved on from that stage in their life.

Another day with some extra free time, you decided to open YouTube and browse what's on offer, letting the attention economy guide you. Many videos suggested are boring, many you've seen before, some new and from smaller channels, some educational. One, however, stands out. A black sheep, something is odd about it existing here, the title reads as follows:

とげとげクタルめいろすスーパードンケーキング2”

An odd insert of Japanese hiragana and katakana in your otherwise totally English speaking, non-Japanese YouTube pierces the video array like a dead pixel on a screen. The thumbnail a low-quality image of a pattern of vines over a blue and white sky. Something about this video evokes an almost ephemeral and dreamlike vibe, before even clicking in. Of course, now that you are so intrigued, you do decide to pursue further. What about this video is so attractive to you, apart from the fact that it clearly stands out.

As a small flash within the circuit board of the computer you’re on, data transferred from server to machine, and you are there. The video plays a soothing, harmonizing melody, composed of old 90s 8-bit sounds from the era of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The song is, in fact, Bramble Blast from Donkey Kong Country 2 played on repeat for 14 minutes and 52 seconds. Something way more interesting catches your eye, the description says to you:

“
Welcome traveller. You have reached the checkpoint of the internet.

This is an age-old story beginning with taia777 in 2012, where people from all walks of life would comment about how their life is going. In 2020 that original video was removed. In that video’s honour, I have kept both the original title and video, as we have all found the video recommended to us seemingly from nowhere, with a Japanese title and low-graphics thumbnail. Yet, out of curiosity, we elect to watch it and find a beautiful community of commenters.
”

— Oxijinn, とげとげクタルめいろすスーパードンケーキング2”

The comments on the video are fragments of a strangers life. Memories and personal moments flow into a timeline from anonymous commenters revealing how their life is going, what’s happened to them lately, and where they are at. All who came to the video out of seemingly random chance and vague curiosity, leaving behind a fragment of time, shouting into the greater void of the internet.

The Internet can typically be a cold and brutal place for the inhabitants within it. It's quite normal for a person to have a separately existing online identity that differs often greatly from their real world self. This causes those within the space to often hide the traits that they dislike about themselves, or to never appear vulnerable to others. This can often be paralleled to the idea of social masking, where societal pressures cause a person to internalize their feelings rather than speaking their mind.

However on the internet, we can often see rise to a level of anonymity that lacks a tangible form of accountability for ones actions. Commenters on videos can viciously attack a creator for any mean they see as reasonable. Those famous who share personal information about themselves or their location can lead to real world safety issues, they can receive death threats, or be stalked by overly para social fans and groups.

Because of these and many other factors, it can be rare to see a genuine moment of vulnerability from a user of Twitter for example, or a commenter on a video, or even the content creator who made it. The Checkpoint cracks this open, commenters share intimate details of their personal life, the struggle they are going through laid out while others come to aid them and reinforce them, if only for a small moment. There’s something surreal and fascinating about the feeling this evokes, the amalgamation of internet culture and human empathy, a crossroads we often find lacking in modern media.

Across the entire idea, there is a light within these comments. Although many share thoughts of sadness, stress, and anxiety at the future, the people respond warmly and tenderly, showing a moment of care for complete strangers. In this light exists this strange community of travelers, waiting for the next time this video floats its way back to them in the sea of millions of videos. An unspoken set of rules exists here, ones that in a way, I am breaking by writing this;

1 - You are a main character here.

2 - You do not find this video, it finds it’s way to you.

3 - You must not share this video with anyone, it must find them.

4 - You are here to make a checkpoint, saving your progress in this moment in your life.

5 - After your checkpoint, you are here to support other main characters on their own journeys.

This is why, although I am sharing this information with you, I will not link this video to you, dear reader. Nor will I encourage you to try to find it for yourself. Be patient, and hopefully one day, it will come to you. When that time comes, I hope leave your own checkpoint.

The Modern Western World

From turnpikes to highways
And gravel into dust
From soybeans to silhouettes advancing in the dusk
Sky above I fell in love while I was sitting still
The rate at which the Rust Belt fades to Appalachian hills, oh

Drive south as history unfolds
The awe-inspiring, death-defying, meta-modern world
Take my word, I think we'll be alright
Lost myself along the way, but had the greatest time
I'll pass you somewhere in the night*

A stranger out in Utah gestures towards the muddy car
He said, "Hey are you nomads?"
"Did you come from somewhere far?"
I said, "I don't know man, but it feels that way today"
This highway is the last breath of an empire in decay

Drive south as history unfolds
The all-providing, soon expiring, modern western world
Take my word, I think we'll be alright
Lost myself along the way, but had the greatest time
I'll pass you somewhere in the night

In their 2022 album “The Modern Western World” by Vansire, as well as it’s title song by the same name, Vansire sings fondly of travelling through the Rust Belt (A region in mid-northwestern America known for it’s industrial collapse and old industrial buildings, now decaying and rusted.) Throughout the video, they use the imagery of places they’ve been like such as the Skyline of Minneapolis and the Highways of Pittsburgh in a “Found Footage” aesthetic that matches the folky and melancholic style of the song.

The album itself is experimental in the sense of it’s progression in it’s own sound. From the beginning, the album presents a folk-like indie sound that progressively adapts and changes as the album goes on into a more modern listening experience. Eventually, the album becomes filled with rappers, electronic music, and more to sell the idea of moving more towards Metamodernity.

---

But what is Metamodernity?

In it’s roots, Metamodernity is that of the new contemporary feeling. It’s our position in a new era of design now that we have seen post-modernism take it’s course. Metamodernity applies to more ways of thinking than design. It can be about society, or the greater category of “art” as a whole. Rather than approach the concept of design from the idea of working solely for clients and commission based work, designers are finding themselves working more in their own interests and towards goals or personal issues they want to challenge. In Jack Clarkes article “The Role of the (Graphic) Designer…”, he says:

“
This new venture has materialized, at least in part, through an increased movement towards de-specialization and authorship (i.e. non-commissioned work) within the field, a development that has ultimately lead to an extension and acceptance of the idea of the ‘professional amateur’ as a legitimate occupation.
”

— Jack Clarke, “The Role of the (Graphic) Designer…”, 2015

And how does that apply to Design Fiction and myself?

Essentially, we’re seeing modern design take the deconstruction of post-modernist design, and then reconstruct it in metamodernism from a new lens to convey a new message or to provide a warning or insight on a cultural issue. In many ways, this could be considered antithetical to the post-modern doctrine, because metamodernism is actively adding narrative and constructing a worldview on a topic or idea, rather than attempting to deconstruct the idea of design.

Design Fiction, in that sense, feels intrinsically related to Metamodernity in my mind. But what separates a critical perspective of design fiction from a classic dystopian game, or book, or any sort of world created from an artistic medium? If we break down the idea of design fiction into it’s definition, Design fiction is ”a design practice aiming at exploring and criticizing possible futures by creating speculative, and often provocative, scenarios narrated through designed artifacts.”

Is the writing I did in my previous writing “Virtual Insanity” design fiction? Are the brands, technologies, and worlds that I imagined for this idea something that should be pursued as tangible products realized through a digital lens like blender?

What are the limits of Design Fiction?

Can Music be design fiction?

Can Archeology be design fiction?

Can a Video Game be design fiction?

So let’s think about some of the content I interact with often, from the lens of games and music. I think it’s quite easy to find design fiction in a game due to the nature of the props and objects within the game.

We’ve talked about the post-apocalyptic world of fallout before, but I find that the props inside of the game are fascinating due to their branding and concepts being entirely based around nuclear power and radiation, this is of course due to the pre-war reliance of society on nuclear power that sustains everything around them.

In this concept for a post-nuclear power America, the designers view the people within the world as so reliant on “the gift of the nukes” that we design our food, cars, robots, and brands around them. The same can be said for this chilling “Desiccated Sustenance Bar” from Half-Life: Alyx, a VR game from 2020.

Real life prop version of the in game “Desiccated Sustenance Bar”

The bar reads “Desiccated Sustenance Bar - Water Flavor”, the “brand” of the bar is a abstract CMB, a shorthand for Combine, which is the alien race that invaded earth in the Half-Life series and enslaved humans. The alt-text reads “100g - Once seal is broken, consume within 9000 days”

But beyond this, beyond logos and packages with futuristic dystopian ideas on them, can the game itself they came from be design fiction? Can the world of the video game Disco Elysium itself be a form of design fiction? A game is created by a designer, a concept by a designer, the sound of the world by a designer, are they excluded from what we know as design fiction?

How about a song?

Let’s think of the song “Jet Set Classic”, by artist 2 Mello. The song is part of the album “Memories of Tokyo-To” (2018) and distinctly identifies itself as connected with the world of “Jet Set Radio” (2000), in this conceptual album for the game, it expands on the world-building and relationships in the game while sounding stylistically similar to the games original soundtrack created by Japanese producer Hideki Naganuma.

Jet Set Radio, 2000

The world of Jet Set Radio revolves around the gangs and street culture of a futuristic Tokyo called Tokyo-To. The characters fight the authoritarian systems of power, skate around on inline skates, and tag graffiti over the walls of the city. The distinct art style (the first cel-shaded game ever made, in fact) as well as the iconic music with a unique and not seen before style led to a cult following behind the game itself and Hideki Naganuma’s music. The most interesting thing, however, is that the artist 2 Mello and the album itself has absolutely no connection to Jet Set Radio or the music producers of the game.

I argue that 2 Mello, in a sense, has created a “design fiction” where he has lovingly designed more world-building and story around the game within a completely authentic and accurate soundscape that could fit directly in with the original, and at the same time distinctly sounds like his work. He weaves stories and ideas into concepts explored in the game, such as gentrification, running from police, the culture behind the street gangs, and even using the iconic DJ figure “Professor K” from the game to deliver the lines in Jet Set Classic, feeding into the idea that everything the player and listeners hear is being broadcast right from the studio in Tokyo-To, Jet Set Radio.

Connecting all of this in, I think I want to set out on a idea of creating a “world” of which I can operate and create my own design fictions in through the various mediums of writing, graphic design, time-based media and more to attempt to create an authentic, dystopian, warning to people of the dangers of continuing along the path we tread.

An awe-inspiring, death-defying, meta-modern world where the people and places within it reflect the current worlds problems and troubles. Something about all of this design fiction stuff just tickles my brain in a way I seem to really enjoy, the contemplative and questioning nature of it fun to explore and dive into.

Virtual Insanity

A though experiment written by myself, exploring a concept piece that delves into design fiction and technology in an alternate timeline of late-stage-capitalist collapse.

---

March 11th, 2064

Weather Morrigan sits at the old desk in the musky room and admires the rust and age of a forgotten relic. He pulls out his small electronic tablet, aged and fading, with a distinct small crack across the left of the screen. Although now considered old technology at the end of its life, he finds himself unable to part with the old thing.

Opening his mail app, he notices a new message with the subject line “WANT TO ESCAPE REALITY?” from the sender “vrxxxperiences.”

“World's nearly collapsed and yet the spam still comes” Weather whispers to himself with a snarky undertone.

Frustrated, he sets the tablet down and pulls out some food he bought at FreshWay, the major corporate grocery chain operating in this area. He moves the can of “Tuna Macaroni Salad; BioOrganically Balanced protein supplement” around in his hand. He's not looking forward to eating it.

Since things went downhill, most of the food you can access in America is canned or preserved. FreshWay, which ran a monopoly on most rural and regional areas in the country, saw a shift in major offerings around 2052 where we saw the removal of the fresh produce sections in their stores. There wasn't really enough people willingly working in the agricultural industry to support national fresh produce for a population of around 580 million, so society shifted to bio-produced lab grown foods that were both cheaper for corporations to manufacture as well as easier to keep stocked and sell.

The problem with this, as Weather continues to think, is that this “Biometrically Balanced” (A new term thought up by the corpo big-wigs to make this preservative filled faux food sound healthy and normal) is that it just doesn't taste good, or nearly anything like the original. Even only being 22, Weather still remembers what it was like to have home cooked meals using real meats and fresh produce.

He thinks about how his generation was referred to as Generation Beta with the archaic/now defunct naming systems his parents used. “Yeah, never gonna be a generation alpha while being fed this slop” he remarks to himself while pressing open the rapid-open tab on the can.

While eating, a window pops up, hovering inside 3d space about a meter away from Weathers face. ‘CALL FROM ARIA” it reads on the first line, and then “ANSWER” and “DECLINE” directly under it. Weather does not reach out to press or interact with any buttons, instead, after a short pause, a BMI (brain-machine interface) attached to a neurological sensor reading his thoughts scans for his desire to answer and talk with her, and from there chooses to answer the call.

“Hey” Weather says curiously.

“Hey, got a second? This is really big, I might have discovered a lead on the…

---

Design Fiction

TBD Catalog, an example of Design Fiction in the form of a product catalog from the future, available as an actual tangible product catalog at shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com. (Julian Bleecker, 2012)

This topic has been in my head a lot since Heathers talk at the recent residency. I find the topic super interesting because I find myself also within this “futurist” tech driven space of people who love to look to the future. My only problem, however, is that I can be more of a realist sometimes and I struggle to fit in with a lot of the “futurist” tech bros who see nothing but utopia and positives in incoming technology.

I don't think of myself as overly pessimistic, or overly optimistic. I want the world to become a better place and to thrive, I want new technology to come out and drive us forward with innovation and prosperity. Unfortunately though, the reality of those technologies is that they exist to create the user into a monster. The monster is the consumer, and the consumer continues to over indulge themselves while the corporations line their pockets.

Under capitalism, this is the driving force behind technological advancement. There is not one corporation that doesn't exist in the end to make a profit, and so I always side with the air of caution and wonder why the product is coming to market. Virtual reality and the metaverse, for example, were originally topics that we as futurists loved to discuss. We talked about tons of topics like full dive and immersion tech, haptics and wireless tracking, online Metaverse communities and even cities, and much more.

And then, Facebook purchased Oculus, Oculus became Meta, and Meta tried to steal and coin the term Metaverse for themselves and their products as if we would just accept that and be happy? Fuck that, man. This is because, of course, the Metaverse was not ever intended to be ran by a corporation with the intention of using it as a money making tool, or a way to advertise. It was supposed to be a user driven experience of creating and making and doing our own damn thing away from the capitalist systems held in real life. This isn't to say that a Metaverse wouldn't be allowed to make money, everyone needs to eat, however to hyper consumerize the metaverse is antithetical to it's very existence.

A picture taken inside the “Virtual Market 3 (2019)” world inside of VRChat. Players can join the world and actively shop around for models, avatars, effects, props and more created by artists inside the VRChat community.

The closest we've ever got to a Metaverse in virtual reality was not some corporate attempt at it, but was actually in the form of the game VRChat (2017), where users could be any avatar they wanted, upload any world they wanted, and generally just do whatever they wanted except a small blanket of rules that protected people from serious problems such as racism or discrimination.

Connecting this back into design futures and the story I wrote thinking about it, I think this topic connects a lot in with what I've talked about previously. We've talked about industrial collapse and the affect on people, and we've talked about the futurist content of disrupt and it's unique content creation style. How does it all tie in with my thoughts on where my work is going?

The act of creating design futures is, to steal it directly our own Tim Murray:

“
Designers are professional imaginers (because “imaginary professionals” sounds less credible). Or vocational future-casters, if you prefer. We look at the current reality, and squinting through it, we imagine possible futures that might be coaxed out of the soil of the present situation.
”

— Tim Murray, Incredible Tales Volume 1, 2023

In on my previous writings I talked about various medias that covered a wide range of topics from dystopia, to apocalypse, to alternate futures. I mentioned how they are all warning signs, telling civilization about the damages of treading too close to the sun, and how those who have done so have not come back from it since.

Today, it clicked, design fiction is that medium for us, as designers, to express the warning signs of the path civilization is on. I never knew what the word was or how to express this idea within the creative space and confines of our field, and now I feel I have clarity on it. I feel a very strong pull in this direction telling me to focus on this, to read the signs, to make the signs.

Rather than seeing myself working in the interest of capital and creating assets, branding, or work for investor happiness, I see myself more enjoying my own space in design creating these design future landscapes and making the signs. Through this I could make my money as a professor and keep my design pure, and untainted by the claws of capital.

Below, another thought experiment of a conversation between the characters of this fictional story.

---

…“Is this it?” Aria asks. “Yeah, I had to drive an hour to the big inner city FreshWay to get it” Weather answers, “it was expensive too, came to $5.78 for this alone.”

“Jesus, I can't believe how much even a yogurt costs nowadays” JT exclaims in a sad, melancholic way.

“So what's the deal with it?” Grant says, seemingly not as interested in a stupid new yogurt brand.

“read the label, what does it say?” says Weather, Grant looks down at the label and starts reading aloud:

“YoVegan: Non-Fat Probiotic Vanilla Greek Yogurt” Grant then turns the label around, “Vegan Safe, no authentic cow product included. Also there's a sticker, **it reads Made BioOrganically Balanced for you!”

Aria grabs the container out if Grant's hand and exclaims “That's not what I read! Let me see it.” She then starts reading her version of the label aloud.

“YoFit: Non-Fat 0 Calorie Vanilla Greek Yogurt, the other side reads 0 Cal, 0 Carbs, all flavor. Now you can have your cake, and eat it too.”

“That doesn't make sense, I literally just read it” Grant replies, confused.

“Can I see?” JT asks calmly.

“Here, check it out” Aria says, then hands them the container.

“huh, it says YoFresh: Non-Fat Supplemental Vanilla Greek Yogurt” they say, *“*mine says Filled with supplements guaranteed to boost testosterone and increase fibers”

“Now turn off your ARVisions. it's crazy.”

The group simultaneously turns off their embedded augmented reality lens, then study the container again.

“Wha- There's nothing here, it's just barcodes!” Grant exclaims shocked.

The yogurt sits on the counter beside them, a white container with a white label. The only information on the label are a series of barcodes that relays information to the ARVs image relays and projects the design onto the label in real life.

“This is what I was talking about, these labels are using our ARVs to do personal targeted marketing at us, the label is different for everyone.”

“So it's marketing labels based on our advertising information it collects from our online data?” Aria asks, clearly not too happy about the thought.

“No, that couldn't make sense, I still don't openly identify as trans to anyone other than you guys, I still mark myself as a girl online” They pauses, “but it was advertising testosterone to me…”

“That's the problem,” Weather replies “I think that they’re using the NeuraV system to market to us based on our thoughts.”

“What? No way. That would be an extreme breach of privacy, even for a corporation. How could they even do that legally?” Grant quickly says, lost in his own thought.

“I think they are, and honestly, I don't think they care about whether it's legal or not.”

The room sits silent, everyone clearly uncomfortable with the new information. After a long pause, Weather…

---

As I mentioned, I find myself not feeling quite safe in these futures thought up by the futurists. A great example is the Vancouver Airports YVR 2037 initiative. The project lays out a detailed plan associated with creating a future for the Vancouver Airport involving Augmented Reality, robots, AI companions and more.

A Link to the article in question.

The following is the video played at the end of the article, but to me, I easily can see that this idealist structure is riddled with holes and questions on where this all could go wrong. It reads more to me as corporate propaganda than it does an exciting look into the future.

YVR 2037 Future Concept Design Fiction, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUjzjHRMVQ0&ab_channel=VancouverAirport, 2017

The general lack of awareness in an average consumer of technology and modern amenities causes this entire thing to look fantastical and magical. However, what interests me is how it works under the surface.

What are the implications of these technologies existing?

Does the AR interface show you advertisements and POP-UPS similar to the HYPER-REALITY videos from previous writings?

Is the coffee and snack being advertised to you based on personal data collection, if so, how much do companies know about your life?

How secure is the technology, what if the young boys AI companion is hijacked and leads him towards the wrong person?

Many questions can be asked in line with this, and it could generally be seen as a very closed-off pessimistic view of this concept. I feel it’s important to question the nature of these advertisements and run thought experiments on them. Although these ideas are not from a for-profit institution, they still seek your money and investment, their innovation is driven not by improving human experience, but by gaining and increasing their own capital. Improving human experience is often just a means to gain that investment, and can easily be thrown away or placed on the sidelines when a organization decides they already have what they need.

Something they say themselves they “Wear proudly on their sleeves.” This line of thinking doesn’t just extend to the for-profit private airports, but also to both the government owned public spaces. The main problem comes with what you let leak into the environment of the airport, hostile and invasive advertising becomes an issue at the systemic level.

James Smart remarks in his article on Dystopian Design:

“
Up until a few years ago, a world in which everyone carries a device that tracks them everywhere and sends the results to be pored over by intelligent machines would have seemed like a classic dystopia. Today, it’s just life. Is it any surprise that pessimistic visions in which we are all just cogs in a machine are increasingly common?
”

— James Smart, Dystopian design: how brutalism, cyborgs and the metaverse are shaping todays’ designs, 2022

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To end off with, I think it’s said really well in Jamiroquai’s 1996 song “Virtual Insanity” from the album “. In the unique and well crafted music video that was revolutionary for it’s time, singer Jay Kay dances and moves around inside a rotating room that slides him and the furniture around him together in sync.

Jamiroquai - Virtual Insanity (1996)

Virtual Insanity is, to me, a piece of design fiction in the sense that Jamiroquai singing to us the warning signs of what the world will look like as we move closer to modernity. He use jarring Visual Effects like cockroaches, crows, and blood that starkly contrast against the clean, perfectly organized white rooms he’s dancing in. In the song, he sings:

And it's a wonder men can eat at all
When things are big that should be small
Who can tell what magic spells we'll be doin' for us?
And I'm givin' all my love to this world
Only to be told
I can't see, I can't breathe
No more will we be

And nothin's gonna change the way we live'
Cause we can always take, but never give
And now that things are changing for the worse, see
Whoa, it's a crazy world we're livin' in
And I just can't see that half of us immersed in sin
Is all we have to give these

Futures made of virtual insanity, now
Always seem to be governed by this love we have
For useless twisting of our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound
For we all live underground

And I'm thinkin' what a mess we're in
Hard to know where to begin
If I could slip the sickly ties of earth that man has made
And now every mother can choose the colour
Of her child, that's not nature's way

Well, that's what they said yesterday
There's nothin' left to do but pray
I think it's time I found a new religion
Whoa, it's so insane to synthesize another strain
There's something in these futures that we have to be told

Jamiroquai is crafting a dystopian world in which technology continues to advance further into a technological age, and we become more and more dependent on it, treading into realms we don’t belong. He comments on gene modification, the over-consumption of food, and how we’ve dived so far in that it’s hard to even know where to begin to fix the problems. He warns that as we become more immersed in these worlds, we lose touch with our own realities and life itself becomes “Virtual.” What is real and what is not?

What steps do I take to craft my form of a future that shows warning signs, while simultaneously engaging that concept with design fiction and incorporating it in with my work? That’s what I’ll think about more moving into my next writing.

The Signs

Today I was thinking a lot about a game I’ve slowly been playing over time called Disco Elysium. It’s a Story-based RPG set in a failed capitalist society that is facing abject poverty and crime rates at an all time high. You take the place of a detective who is at a low point in his own life, drinking himself into oblivion and losing his memory the morning you wake up in his shoes.

The game doesn’t shy away from political messaging, the main story of the game is focused on a murder that takes place the night before behind the hotel you’re staying at. The person who was murdered in question was lynched by a group of Dockworkers who were part of the local dockworker union, which was in ongoing strike against it’s corporate ownership Wild Pines Group. Throughout the game, you’re presented with dialogue and choices in a unique system that allows you to be empathetical or nasty, moral-bound or corrupt, and more in engaging and groundbreaking ways.

It’s really interesting watching and interacting with these conceptual ideas of where the “Metaverse” is going and how technology will further implement with our species. It makes me think a lot about Heather Snyder Quinn’s idea if “Design Futures”, the speculative idea of creating artificial futures using design as a medium and storyteller. When I looked back at these videos with the lens of art rather than just experiencing them as content, I gained a new insight into a possible path of something I could enjoy or explore myself. Could this mixture of design futures with a spice of content creation in a multi-media format be the language I could use to express my own interests?

Disco Elysium, Revachol; Martinaise District Town Square

The interesting part of this and why I think it ties in to my writings here is the world-building and lore set in and around this world, thousands of years of history built up all for just this fantastic game. One I haven’t even been able to finish yet even with 30 hours invested over the last year or so. The ability that the developers showed in crafting meaningful and realistic conversations, people, and locations sticks with me to this day. I find myself just thinking about it now and then.

Disco Elysium OST - Instrument of Surrender

Why do we find post-industrial collapse, or just any collapse for that matter, beautiful? The games uniquely painter-like world and characters of course are fantastically done, but something of the collapse of it, the ruin of old structures that stood a thousand years before, the rotting of a factory site abandoned just 20 years ago, humans (especially me) seem to have an innate fascination with the post-apocalyptic and destroyed. The sound of Revachol, the horns that play a sad, distant melody of a town long past it’s prime, embellished trumpets of a once thought utopia. An almost nostalgic listening experience even on your first listen, a fading memory of a location in your head you’ve never even been to.

In my mind, I think of the places I’ve been. My hometown, which of course is not as bad as these fictional places. I can hear the sad melody of the town lying at the end of it’s time, The people there marching through the rhythm of life, trapped in a vicious cycle of a system that never allowed them an opportunity to escape like I could. The factories shut down, the money left with them, but the people remained. “Grind culture” tells them to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, that being in this impoverished conditions is their fault as long as they keep buying their Starbucks coffee and eating McDonald’s. Just save your money!

Nobody wants to speak about the reasons behind these conditions, nobody wants to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, the fault lies instead with the system in which they live, not the lives they lead trying to survive in that system.

Throughout my time playing games, these stories always stood out to me with visual imagery I found captivating, and concepts I fell in love with. The Fallout series, for example, is a alternate timeline from ours where a nuclear crisis was realized, and the world fell into apocalypse from the mass atomic bombing of WW3. A world stuck in it’s time of the 1940s-1950s, where people are barely getting by in the wastelands of post-nuclear America. The look of the 1950s era vehicles and buildings, the “futuristic” technology that looks like a amalgamation of the Jetsons tech and old science fiction, and the popular music of that era really immerses you in this idea a living, breathing, and dangerous world.

Fallout 4, Massachusetts, River Bridge

Fallout 76, West Virginia, Fairground Area

The people in these places are working hard trying to live in a world that literally blew itself up around them, is it their fault that happened?

Although I would never want to live within these worlds myself, I’m very happy just enjoying my time within them digitally, I find it interesting how interconnected we are with this idea of “Reclamation.” In time, the world will take back all that we build and our footprints will fade. Steel turns to rust, rust turns to dust. “Overgrowth” and the cycle of regrowth in that sense becomes something that is an inevitability for us as humans, as civilizations, and even as a species.

“Wild Mammals Roamed When Covid Kept Humans Home” By Emily Anthes, 2023

During COVID-19, humanity had a new obsession with animals reclaiming the spaces we typically used for the hustle and bustle of daily human life. It got a lot of people thinking about how the rivers became clearer, the stars more visible, and the air cleaner. It painted very vividly a picture of the beauty in the midst of a global crisis.

The Last Of Us, Part 1 - Giraffe Scene

During this time the catchphrase of the year was “Nature is healing,” but whether it was meant sarcastically or not, it was clear that nature was healing because we weren’t there.

Nier: Replicant BG Concept Art

In the series Nier, director Yoko Taro explores this concept by showing the cycle of humanity very clearly. It would be easy to believe that these pictures are backwards, that the right art is actually taken at the same time or before the left. However, in Nier, humanity (or well, the concept of “humanity” as humans are at this point far extinct) has been going through the cycle of technological growth for nearly 20,000 years. The concept of “ancient ruins” is flipped on it’s head, as the people in the game are unable to understand and interpret “modern” technology and thus consider it undecipherable. The ruins in this case are not stone temples or tombs, but instead old factories made of steel and other materials that could possibly take thousands of years to fully decompose. It brings about this interesting contrast of a medieval style society exploring the ruins of a forgotten factory, a concept typically thought of the other way around.

Nier: Automata BG Concept Art

The late Japanese artist “Nujabes”, who is often credited as one of the inventors of lo-fi hip-hop as we know it today, had a song from the 2005 album “Modal Soul” Called “The Sign (feat. Pase Rock)”. It speaks about the state of the world and the warnings that we have failed to read as we move further towards our own dystopia.

The song itself is a hip-hop spoken poetry style piece with a distinct Foley sound which, to me, sounds like ice sloshing around in a drink. In my interpretation, I view the scene as a jazz band playing at a club trying to give a warning to the audience, but the audience just sips their drinks and watches on, not truly listening. The opening lyrics say:

“You wanna watch it all fall apart?
Every time I walk I watch
I look, I notice, I observe
I read the signs
And the signs are pointing in the wrong direction
The signs are not naming the streets
Or leading you to the highways
The signs are naming names
Tombstones to mark the death of children not even born
And I don’t mean abortion I mean what is to come

The signs are telling me to turn back around
The signs are telling me to research my past
The signs are telling me to learn from my mistakes
The signs are asking me questions
Do you wanna watch it all fall apart?
Do you have any control?
Is there anything that you can do?”

— The Sign (feat Pase Rock), Nujabes, 2005

What will society look like 10, 200, 3000 years from now? Will humanity heed “The Signs” and move to the correct path, or will we end up like the town Revachol in Disco Elysium, will we end up like the wastelands of Fallout, or the forgotten empires of Nier? I think it’s important to view these pieces of media as warnings. Sign of what happens when we as humans lose control and continue down the paths we lead without second thought. Capitalism, Nationalism, Racism, and more issues just like those have led to a boiling point that feels like it could tip over at any point in our lifetime. I don’t have the answers or solutions to this either, I am just one person who sees the signs, and fears for our future.

Viewing humans as a main problem centered around these issues isn’t exactly groundbreaking, and the argument won’t really get you anywhere except for being called a “Doomer” who just sees our world as a lost cause, so let’s be clear here:

It’s not that we should see the world as a lost cause, but instead we should learn from these fictional worlds and media as “the signs” for our own problems. They serve as a warning that if we do not act upon these issues, our worlds could very much turn out that way too.

Reignited Interests

After taking a day to really absorb the Metahaven content, I feel a reignited fire underneath towards an old love of mine, Dystopian, Tech-Based, and Reality bending futures and those who still make content for it, as well as those who gave it up and moved on.

In the past, before life got busy and I was swept up into my career and being an adult, I used to heavily ingest content related to ideas like futurism, existentialism, and our place on earth under a machine for content. I think that over time, my interests towards these topics slowly started to fade as I shifted more towards worrying about reality and the now. I think that the rising tensions and conflict in the world caused my perspective to shift as I radicalized in one direction, and I left these interesting commentaries on the future and our current state as humanity behind.

Both those topics and my recent history with reading books and watching content on socialism, Marxism, politics, etc. mixed with the happenings of the world. A lot of that content for example is a commentary on modernism and our place as beings in a post-industrialist late-stage capitalist society. I remember when watching videos on simulation theory, reading about virtual reality, thinking about philosophy, and learning about the world was fascinating to me.

At some point along the track when my perspectives shifted, it wasn’t as if I didn't enjoy those topics anymore, but I had so much going on that coming home I would turn my brain off and fall into the doom-scrolling/gaming rabbit hole.

In this moment I sit and wonder…

Where has all of my creativity went?

When was the last time I felt interested in a project I’ve done?

Did I start making design work simply for sake of career and capital?

What can I do to reclaim my self interests and personality in my work?

How can I still work for myself, but within a society that demands your labor to survive?

To pursue these thoughts, I went back in time and rewatched the video essays that I loved around the time I started really getting into it; DisruptReality, which I thought about because of the somewhat similar aesthetic they had to the Metahaven project. What was interesting about diving into this rabbit hole is the sensation of “Wow, he’s talking about technology that I’m using now, and that was only 5 years ago!”, which was an experience I haven’t had since first reading author Philip Zhai’s “Get Real: A Philosophical Adventure in Virtual Reality.” The video speaks of haptic suits, treadmills, wireless VR, etc. that people can now go out and purchase and actually tangibly use! (although for a rather large price)

HYPER=REALITY, 2017 by Keiichi Matsuda

It’s really interesting watching and interacting with these conceptual ideas of where the “Metaverse” is going and how technology will further implement with our species. It makes me think a lot about Heather Snyder Quinn’s idea if “Design Futures”, the speculative idea of creating artificial futures using design as a medium and storyteller. When I looked back at these videos with the lens of art rather than just experiencing them as content, I gained a new insight into a possible path of something I could enjoy or explore myself. Could this mixture of design futures with a spice of content creation in a multi-media format be the language I could use to express my own interests?

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On another note, the Disrupt channels content had a lot of interesting aesthetics and type from a design and art perspective. I collected a few snippets of the interesting look they created for their videos.

First Day Back

Now that I’m back home and well rested, I started my work by tackling my list of suggestions and resources recommended to me over the residency, I sorted them all out and listed them by priority. After that, I started watching/viewing the high priority items and making notes on my thoughts/key points on them.

First on my list I watched the following:

• Metahaven. Propaganda. 2016 Youtube Video Lecture

• Metahaven “The Sprawl” Short Videos

• An Interview with Metahaven (2013)

Unfortunately the movie itself has vanished from the internet and remains inaccessible.

I also watched some old lectures from VCFA out of curiosity:

• David and Sereinas Lecture from 2016 on Studio HAMMERS work

• Graphic Authorship by Ian Lynam (2021)

• Teaching in a Time of Crisis by Natalia (2021)

As I turned in for the day, I watched and episode of Chef’s Table with my girlfriend. The episode was on the Argentinian chef Francis Mallmann.

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A lot of the Metahaven Sprawl Project struck me with an uncanny, eerie sense of location, where the glitching and found footage aesthetic felt anxiety inducing. It reminded me due to the Russian voice over and found footage style of the game Atomic Heart (2023), a game about a Soviet Union era nation that was incorporating AI and robotics into its countries lifestyle, but things go horribly wrong and you explore old soviet bunkers where human testing and horrors were created. The found footage aesthetic, old soviet era music, and mixture of horror and the unknown was used as a marketing campaign where a YouTube channel pretended to be “leaking” the videos of the game in development out with no context. It made for a appeal that captivated those interested into wanting to search and find more, as well as theorize what was happening in the short and often blurry clips.

• Atomic Heart Vertoukhov's dream (2013)

• Atomic Heart "Pushitov" (2012)

• Atomic Heart “Snakes” (2010)

Aside from that immediate thought, I was really interested in the last few parts where they talked about the incorporation of augmented reality and the IPU (Internet Party of Ukraine), it made me think a lot about how a political party can use distraction as a form of deception to keep the public eye off of something they are doing. Similar to the news in America like CNN and FOX, the medias attention span for an issue is only a week long and then they move on to the next “scoop”, they rarely tell things with the full truth, instead employing “half-truths” to keep the people watching aligning with their own personal biases, often with a scent of malicious intent.

The art of The Sprawl, from what I saw, used a lot of filters and glitching effects which in my immediate thought looked similar to ad-popups or overlays over the video, which I interpreted as a commentary on how attention-deficit the population has grown (Think kids watching subway surfer or dopamine videos side by side with stories or explanations on Tik-Tok because if people do not incorporate that, people will often switch off the video immediately.) as well as how intrusive corporations have gotten to try to use every metric inch of space as an advertisement.

On Twitter today I saw that Youtube is actively attempting to throttle a persons performance on their computer if they have an Adblocker installed, by sending packets filled with data to the router to overload the network and cause Youtube as well as chrome to slow down and use more resources to run on your pc. This is a huge breach of privacy and law (think of the ethical case towards how they even “Know” we have an Adblocker installed in the first), but also impossible to counter, because although it is illegal, we have no power to stop it, and the vast majority people are not just going to “give up” Youtube.

Another example I was thinking of relating to this was the ethics and idea of advertisements within virtual reality. In a system that is capable of tracking you eyes, learning your speech, and scanning your face, corporations gain more information on exactly what, how, and when you are looking at an object, person, anything. The app “Moviepass” used this feature to enable it so that if you looked away from an advertisement on your phone, the ad would pause, forcing you to look and drive your attention towards that ad until it was gone. This can grow even more scary in the lens of a virtual reality headset, due to it having full control of everything you see.

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For the lectures, I mostly watched the David and Sereina lecture to get more of an idea of what they do, however I did have some nice takeaways from it that I thought were useful. Within David and Sereinas lecture, something that resonated a lot with me is the idea of we, as those with privilege, are often told we cannot work in styles and modes of design that are not related to our culture and that we can not speak for the occupied, oppressed, or marginalized communities and cultures we ourselves are not part of.

They also mention that people with privilege's making choices for others can times air in the direction of patronizing When asked why the magazine was printed in Europe rather than supporting local printers, the artists themselves who were presented asked whether it would they themselves or the people who view the magazine would want it to be printed cheaply.

The moral here is that sometimes we try to speak for those in underprivileged positions as if we know better for them, which is the wrong direction to go when approaching each other as designers. We must treat each other as equals to make progress.

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My girlfriend and I started watching Chef’s table before residency, and we occasionally sit down to watch an episode or two. I always find the show so relatable to my position in life. This episode centered on a Argentinian born man who mastered and loved French cuisine, only to give it up and go back to what he truly loved to do. He talked about how he’s had to make many tough choices in his life, as well as losing friends over the years due to growing apart and moving away.

I feel that will happen to us eventually, as we plan to move to another country and leave America, but how will I take it and where will I be? The future is always so uncertain, so I can only guess.

At my current position, I feel that I want to get my bearings and gather more content and read a little more before diving into the design side of things.

Reflecting On Residency

Last Train Home - The Pat Metheny Group

♪

Last Train Home - The Pat Metheny Group ♪

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It’s 8am, the morning winter air is sharp. A traveler departs from home to explore a new avenue in his life, the whistle of the train coming in marks a beginning of a new journey.

It’s been a while since I’ve been on a train, he thinks to himself. Reminiscent of his time living in Pittsburgh when we would take the last (and really, only) train home. The Appalachian Pennsylvania countryside, the stories and individuals living their lives along the way, a glimpse into the heart of post-industrial America. On the way to Susquehanna, he sees his hometown from a new perspective for the first time, that of the onlooker, the town lying peaceful and calm upon the old coal mine hills he grew up playing on.

Arriving at Harrisburg station, there’s a 3 hour layover wait time for the bus that will take him to the college. It’s been a while since he’s travelled on his own, especially through a downtown city, but either way he decides to take a chance and find a local restaurant to grab lunch. He finds a small bistro claiming Italian and French roots specialized in serving crepes, the owner, a Muslim man with a warm smile greets him. They share a conversation about travel and life, while he enjoys both a savory turkey and spinach crepe and a sweet strawberry and Nutella one. The food is great, and he walks away feeling happy in his little adventure.

Although he knows it already, he cannot even begin to understand the adventure that is to come.

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When I think about my experience at Residency, It’s hard to believe how dramatically my viewpoints on our field and our relationship with design changed within the short span of 10 days. I came out of residency saying to my loved one “My mind is a blender, primordial soup,” it took be a bit to really process and get through everything and get some good rest.

Faux Kucha Vol.1

Travelling into residency, I was somewhat prepared for all this, a shift in perspective, but for things to be so different; To walk into a room where every person in front of you understands and pursues design as more than a career, to hear the words “Decolonization” and “Design Canons” in common cafeteria conversation, it was mind blowing. I felt “Where were these people my whole life?”

I had no competent idea coming in of a sense of self in design, I worked for freelance clients, and created many projects in undergrad on topics I appreciated, but my design was hollow. I felt no attachment to the vast majority of it, it was a delivery agent to show off my competency and improve my hire-ability. I’ve always felt this odd contested relationship with design that set me apart from my usual undergrad peers, ones who saw design as simply a career path.

The VCFA community has been warm, welcoming, and just what I needed in a time when I was feeling derelict and down about this career path. I simply don’t want to work for a company making empty brands that perpetuate a status quo and culture of silence. VCFA showed me that there was in fact, options, for me outside of that.

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The Bauhaus was indeed thrown under the bus.

All of my short explorations.

Turning the 2d into the 3d.

Turning the 3d into the 4D.

I have a complicated relationship with making. It’s not that I dislike making, but it’s more the feeling that talking and discussing the theory, ideas, or history of design makes me much more excited. I get caught up in wanting to make my work become this grandiose big project with every tiny detail accounted for, which causes me to have choice paralysis on what I truly want to do. In the end, I sit thinking about a million projects and ideas, conceptualizing how they would look and how I could accomplish them, and in turn the artboard remains empty.

The Bauhaus workshop showed me that we can take making a little less seriously, I remember commenting to my peers beside me that if my mom saw what I was doing at a masters level school, she would probably want me to quit. I managed to weave together the 2d to the 3d, and then create a 4d work out of it using model scanning. I really enjoyed the process of creating the 3d model and capturing the moment in real time.

That being said however, I still feel chained to undergraduate project based workflow. Even something as simple as working on small experimentations feels as if it needs to be or contribute to some large defining project or over-arching narrative. I know this thinking isn’t exactly right, but I can’t seem to help myself, so I still get stun-locked.

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This connection to 4d spaces and moments made me rethink my entire documentation workshop, and I created the presentation we saw at residency with 3D scans. I think this turned out way better than my original idea, which was sound based. Sound and music making remains the hardest hurdle in my knowledge-set, I guess one person can’t be good at everything, but I still try to push it.

Documentation Workshop Winter 2024

Moments: throughout our time here, we've gathered in Susquehanna as a cohort of designers from many different places. We shared our time in this physical space. We conversed, created, collaborated, and made memories together.

These spaces we inhabited will not be home to us for another year now, but until then they will live on in our memories as we look back on our short time together.

My original plan for this project was far from how it turned out, but I found that exploring something odd and unique like 3D scanning was actually really enjoyable.

I learned to let go of making things perfect, giving me a new lens on making and design as a whole. The app I used was far from perfect, the scans would be bumpy, odd, off textured, but I felt they still captured the moment we lived in as our memories centered around these objects.

After the Bauhaus workshop, I went back and documented the places in which some of my best memories lived in within 3d space. "Newey" lounge introduced me to the culture and fun of the welcoming people here, as well as let me get to know the graduating thesis students better.

Ice cream represents to me our meals together, the many conversations we've had in this time. Collectively we've all suffered a little from the food here, but in the end the soft serve would always come in to save the day.

The water fountain represents to me my conversations with those in my dorm hall, Hassinger. Sharing collective excitement and conversation about our days, and our exhaustion washing over as we turn in for much needed rest.

The pool table was all about the late night social gatherings, David and I played together as a team before I knew he would be my advisor (However, he already knew). We lost fabulously, but enjoyed it nonetheless.

The celebration of the thesis students last night was the cementing of my feeling of belonging here, Feeling as if I'm starting to fit in with this community. We shared drinks and had meaningful conversations as the grads prepared to say goodbye.

Finally, I scanned my desk here at the residency, because in this moment I sit and really contemplate all the memories and ideas we've shared; I feel an exciting future ahead of me moving into my first semester with you all.

This presentation might have ended up rather corny, but I think that's fine. Sometimes we need to be a little corny, and hopefully we'll share more happy memories together in the coming years. The scans didn't end up looking amazing either, but that doesn't matter, I had fun with it. Thank you.

Tying the documentation workshop into an emotionally charged commentary on spaces and moments shared together as future memories was really great, I got to activate that level of telling stories and making videos I want to explore more later.

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A conclusion that is only a beginning.

I found a lot of myself in the short time at VCFA, and I’m very happy to have made the choice to come here, it’s exactly what I needed. I’m still very young, sometimes it makes me wonder if I’m ready for something like this, especially when confronted with the monolith of peers and faculty as designers who have established practices and long careers trailing in their wake. I hope to feel even more confident that this was the right decision as I continue on my tracks.

And thus, a warm thank you to everyone at VCFA.

I drew this in the sandbox one day while relaxing in the lounge, I liked the form of the type and the look of the sand mounts in contrast.

Our Cohort Picture!