The Future Project Workshop 3: Body

This week workshop started with this collage. A collage that illustrated our vision of 2060---a world suffer from radiation.

The tutors suggested that we go big and build a bodysuit so I tried...

Our whole concept were based on the idea of sunflowers were used to pull radioactive contaminants out of the soil in Fukushima site in Japan. (Sunflowers used to clean up radiation) 

We would like to to design something that can help people to survive under radiation and improve human life by making good use of mutated plant that cause by radiation. Instead of making a full protective bodysuit which I think is a bit cliché, we wanted to make a backpack that support basic human needs. At the same time I was intrigued by the idea of making use of nature resources to develop new technolgy, which also what I imagine the future technolgy 'trend' will be. Therefor, we designed two devices, one can purify water, the other is a 'nature' charger (Portobello mushrooms could power your future phone).

The actual props making.

We built our water filler by connected two plastic bottles.

We were happy with the size and the look of it so we continued to add colours to give it a more futuristic/ mutated look. 

I was also in charge with the sculpting of the mutated mushrooms.

The design of the mushroom were inspired by the college we made earlier with the use of Ernst Haeckel's illustration.

The final outcome.

The result was very pleasing as I think it was not only illustrated our idea very well but also fitted quite perfectly in the location. As you can see at the image above, we used the extra mushroom that painted in bright colour to mimic its nature habitat by placing them on the grass next to some daisy, which I think it add a more interesting touch to the whole showcase.

The only unfortunate thing was we did not have enough time to assemble them into a backpack (so I added a illustration for people to understand the idea) but all in all I am very proud of the work that we had achieved.

So that's the end of our 3 weeks workshop :)

Yan

The Future Project Workshop 2: Food

We were all quite happy with the first week collaboration so the majority of us decided to work in the same group for the next project as well. Just like last week, we had a long discussion and brainstorm. At the end we decided to develop a product that we learned from the lecture---Soylent. 

We were not aim to invent new food but to discuss the food cultural in the future. If people force to only drink Soylent, there will be less food gathering, ultimately a major part of people's social life will disappear. In order to illustrate that, we design a virtual reality experience that people can look at while drinking 'Soylent' (at the end we change the name to 'SoyJoy'). 

In a world with no food gathering, government might come up with a virtual reality service to give people the illusion of eating with others and satisfy their craving for solid food. Lucky we already have the virtual reality viewing glasses (if that's the name...), so we only had to think about what scenario was the best. Well, It was spring time so we chose Picnic~

Basically we brought as many food as we can and did the virtual reality record in the park (both image and sound from the surrounding).

After that we made the leaflet for some information and the label for the product.

Very soon it's the day of the Banquet.

Our SoyJoy setup.

People weren't really into SoyJoy, which was our intention to make it less pleasant. Even though it already taste much better than we imagined (btw it's a mix of soymilk, protein powder and water). However, the virtual picnic experience had some really nice feedack :)

Still have one week to go.

Yan

The Future Project Workshop 1: Community

We started our 3 weeks workshop by doing a test on our thought for the 2060 and ultimately got a score that show our level of optimism. We getting into groups base on the scores so we roughly had similar vision on how the world will be in 2060.

The first week was about Community which was a very broad subject. After looking at all of our primer works we did over Easter, we decided to develop the idea of gender boundary. Our idea was that the future would have a decline in segregation and that the rigid definition of gender, countries borders, sexuality and religion would be more fluid. It was quite a lot to say and we have to think how can we present this idea to the public. Additionally, we will be presenting our work in Peckham Square so we have to come up with something that can interact with people as well.

After a long discussion, we decided to hold a passport office in Peckham Square. A passport that doesn't identify people as male or female by the gander that they're born with. The aim was to give people the chance to think about their identities and to consider what the world will be if we didn't limit ourself by our physicality.

We did not have much time for the preparation so we wanted to keep everything as simple as possible. Our plan was to give out '2060 passport' to people, that included a gender neutral name, the age group and their own ratios of them as a male or female.

My role was to design the inner page of the passport. I thought a abstract diagram will look futuristic and unique. I will say I was very much inspired by Alexander Calder's work as I went to see his exhibition at Tate a while age. I think the combination of 2D shapes and thin line have a very modern look, which is what I wanted to achieve. I started to make numerous of sketches with simple lines and shapes to find the best design.

Sketches I did while I visit Alexander Calder's exhitbition.

Rough sketches of the design.

While I developed the design I found it would be quite interesting to design the diagram as a face so we could do an quick and simple abstract portrait for each of the person in Peckham. I thought that will add a lot more individuality and character to the passport.

The final design.

We finish the passport with Ai and with the help of my fellow group members (graphic design students), our 'passport' printed out perfectly and we were very happy with that.

The front and back cover. We even added the number of prints at the back.

Although it was SO WINDY and COLD that day. We gave out all of our passports, which mean I did 63 portrait in that hour or so (I didn't do my own one). A lot of people seems to enjoy having a new passport. So I call it a success:)

I got cold after that day though.

Yan

2060 Primer.

In the past Easter I did a primer task of the summer project, which I had to use cut-up technique to develop 10 divinations of what will happen in 2060. And here is what I came up with.

I really wasn't thinking much when I made these 10 "divinations". So they might not necessarily represent how I see the future but some of them were quite interesting and at the end I did some quick illustrations for each phrases.

Additionally, I cut up some extra images from newpaper when I looking for phrases to cut, so I decided to made some collages as well. Some how I think these images illustrate my vision better(maybe).

( For some reason I like this one very much, I mean I wish cakes are still a thing in 2060...)

That's it :)

Yan

Project Review #2

Another drawing I did for the same editorial project. This time was an article from the New York Times the tittle is Surf for Love, Not for Gold, which argue that surfing is not the right sport to add to the Olympics. It list a lot of reason about how surfing is not appropriate for competition. One of them is surfing really depends on the waves, "Lulls between waves are long, rides mostly short and unexciting." And that was what I want to focus on and illustrate.

I made two version of drafts. One with collage and one pencil. It shows how surfing is not as exciting as people think it would be as a competition.

It was very nice to got comment in this stage to see if I'm in the right direction. Luke (the tutor of this project) said he like the the idea and it will work well and should add more variety of expressions to the people. Also he likes the pencil drawing better, so I started working on that.

The final draw is pretty much the same as the sketch but really like how simple the characters are and I don't want to overwork it.

I kept the color palette very simple. I was going to use only different shades of grey but I ended up using pink and pastel blue just to add a bit of playfulness and I personally like how it looks. 

Thanks for reading.

Yan