God Design

you tell me your daily life concern, a god that I designed will be given to you to address that problem. Believe it or not, keep it or not, it’s up to you.

Chenhe Zhang

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9U7Tred8X8

Description

Human beings create gods or gods create human beings, that is a romantic question. Growing up in a society where I could be exposed to both polytheism and monotheism, I was thinking, while new gadgets and tools were invented and upgraded to enhance people’s lives, gods haven't been updated for a rather long time. To explore the possibility of creating new gods who could specifically address problems and issues in human's daily life in a contemporary context, I use the term “god design” which means utilizing design thinking in creating new gods, everything in this project begins with this concept.

The basic layer of god design is to “design” new gods that work in a modern way, they use familiar objects that we usually see in our everyday life to impose their power just like the traditional gods use their weapons, however, the scenario they use the objects is not as usual. To showcase the gods and communicate with the audience, a booth-like interactive installation and a website are developed as “god search engine”, where the audience could input their daily life concern and being returned with a certain god that relates to their input in the form of a card. The installation took the concept of small size “pop-up” shrines that usually can be found in Japan and India, it will be finished in a hi-tech product aesthetic, and the website will be visually simple and playful.

This project is not aiming at creating a new religion, it is more about looking at everyday life from another angle, focusing on the small daily problems and concerns, delivered in a more absurd and playful way, but still, with its whimsical nature, I hope it could bring positive attitudes and a delightful experience to the audience.

IMA/ITP New York
ITPG-GT.2102.00003
Thesis
Art

Beyond Case Closed: 2020 U.S. Top Colleges by Open Title IX Investigations

A web-based resource guide and participatory project with map visualization, dynamic updates, real-time database designed to inform survivors and advocates about Title IX investigations, and acknowledge their lived experiences.

Winnie Yoe

https://vimeo.com/412822442

Description

“2020 US Top Colleges by Open Title IX Investigations” is one of the projects in my thesis “Beyond Case Close”, a series of projects driven by my experience filing a Title IX complaint at my undergraduate institution and at the Department of Education. In navigating the stressful process and aftermath of filing a case, I realized the limitation of procedural measures in seeking social justice and became motivated to find alternative approaches. This project is a resource guide built to inform survivors and advocates about Title IX investigations and to acknowledge lived experiences.

The website draws data from all currently open Title IX cases at the Office of Civil Rights, a sub-agency of the U.S. Department of Education that enforces civil rights laws against discrimination in educational programs. Once launched, you can see the schools currently with an open case at the OCR listed in descending order according to the number of total cases. I reference US college ranking websites and I chose to represent the schools not only with their names but also with images that I scraped searching the school name and the keyword “students”, displaying their promotional images to give a satirical overtone. I also included a Title IX timeline and featured the latest Title IX related tweets to reflect current sentiment and a write-up with diagrams about the filing process. To search for missing narratives about the lived experiences, I also created a real-time survey.

IMA/ITP New York
ITPG-GT.2102.00003
Thesis
Education,Social Good/Activism

Tofu

Tofu is a VR interactive installation that presents the consumption experience of convenience stores and street food in the city in a surreal way. It reflects consumers’ different relationships with food and the disappearing local marketplace culture behind this confrontation.

Nianqi Zhang

https://vimeo.com/412757973

Description

Tofu, an affordable ingredient with hundreds of shapes and cooking methods, is a common ingredient in China from ancient times and shows the evolvements in our eating habits. The virtual reality installation Tofu is showing these changes in a surreal way: The first chapter provides a scene of how young workers buy food in a convenience store. Players will find themselves getting off work in a city, entering a convenience store, and choosing different tofu products with appearing packages and marketing strategies. The second chapter is about the decreasing local food marketplace. The convenience store suddenly collapsed into soybeans, exposing players to a street food carnival where chili, fried tofu and other street food are wildly floating in the city. The third chapter shows how tofu is made in rural villages. The player will see villagers making the simplest tofu. In each chapter, players can grab and eat different forms of tofu, unlocking the voice narratives.

The piece is aiming to bring viewers a reflection on the changes in our consumption culture: In today's rapid urbanization, unified brands reconstruct our local life with their convenience and brand images. The market is promoting the disappearance of our neighborhood culture. City residents are enjoying the consumption of grand stories and values, but have little interest in getting to know the history of the street we live in, which is actually harmful to the diversity of our cities.

IMA/ITP New York
ITPG-GT.2102.00003
Thesis
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