Topher Blair
Description
What do you do when the world falls apart? Extinction Party is an educational puzzle game that explores the history of life on Earth by looking at the five major mass extinction events. It will take the form of a 3-foot high standing pentagon shape, with each side of the pentagon containing fun ways for participants to explore what life looked like before and after the extinction, and how why scientists think it happened in a certain way.
My thesis project is one side of this theoretical sculpture, which will be playable as a computer game. The game will be a proof of concept for a larger physical sculpture, which would be installed in a museum. I hope that both kids and adults will enjoy playing with it.
Vince MingPu Shao
Description
Birds are everywhere in our cities. We eat chicken as food, keeping parrots as pets, and we see sparrows flying across the streets. Between all the living beings, birds are such a unique group of which that's so close to urban humans as three distinct roles: food, pets, and neighbors.
Though humans' needs for birds as products might never be gone, I hope one day all birds could just be flapping their wings as they're born to do. To achieve this wild goal, this interactive website – Chicken, Parrot, and Sparrow – is created to intrigue audiences to review and rethink why and how some birds are objectified as products, compared to the ones living as our neighbors, despite the fact that all of them are all birds born with wings.
Designed to target graphic design lovers, the backbone of this interactive website is a series of hand-coded typography animations consisting of the typeface Helvetica to visualize the processes of objectifying birds. In addition to the animations, the interactions and information on the website are designed and curated for audiences to keep thinking about our relationships with the birds after experiencing the website.
Shu-Ju Lin
Description
When was the last time you wished on a fallen eyelash or said bless you to someone who sneezed? Many of our commonly held beliefs are widely known to be irrational, not based on reasoning, fact or knowledge. Over time and across cultures, people have found ways to explain unexplainable things and to feel control over their fears of the unknown through seemingly random and arbitrary sayings and actions. Studies have shown that this kind of magical thinking decreases as we age.
Crazy Little Belief aims to recreate the whimsical aspect of our irrational beliefs in the world today that is often automated, machine-operated, and algorithmically optimized. My thesis project consists of three objects, the Cautious, the Visionary, and the Charming, each emphasizing the state of mind of people who believe in it. The purpose of this project is not to critique or dismiss these irrational beliefs and behaviors, but rather to encourage them and remind us that many of our beliefs are part of our culture and identity.