ITP Thesis Archive 2025

Project Description

My work reconfigures everyday objects, transforming them into ambiguous forms that exist between the alien and the intimate. While these objects contain recognizable elements, their functions remain undefined, encouraging viewers to imagine their purpose rather than being told explicitly. Through interactive elements, material choices, and semiotic cues, I invite audiences to engage in an open-ended dialogue with the objects, constructing their own interpretations. By embracing estrangement, ambiguity, and alternative functionalities, my practice resists the fast-paced, utilitarian approach to design. Instead, these objects encourage slowness and contemplation. Rather than offering immediate clarity, they prompt curiosity—viewers find themselves speculating on how the objects work and what they might be used for. As they approach and engage, the meaning of the piece continuously unfolds, reshaped by each viewer’s perception and interaction.

Technical Details

The project combines 3D modeling, digital fabrication, and material experimentation to reconfigure elements from everyday objects. Each piece is developed through iterative design using tools such as Fusion 360, and fabricated primarily through 3D printing. Surfaces are hand-sanded and spray-painted in matte gray to create a neutral, non-directive visual presence that minimizes symbolic associations. A range of materials—including PLA, acrylic, silicone, springs, and cast rubber—is selected based on their tactile qualities and their ability to prompt physical interaction. The formal language of the objects references familiar household items such as remote controls, speakers, faucets, and vents, but the configurations remain intentionally ambiguous.

Research/Context

The book The Practice of Everyday Life offers a perspective that deeply shaped the foundation of my work. The book points out that the world of everyday life is an intersubjective world that existed long before we were born. It was already experienced, explained, and organized by others—our predecessors, our parents, our teachers.

Our own understanding of this world is based on this pre-existing reservoir of experiences, passed down through knowledge and daily behavior. These inherited patterns form a reference framework that shapes how we interpret the world, often without us realizing it. We tend to follow these patterns—routines, functions, roles—that have become so natural we no longer see them. But this can be limiting.

In today’s world, this question feels more urgent than ever. While we appear to have more freedom and access to information, we are increasingly confined by algorithmic personalization. We live inside comfort zones shaped by data, surrounded by content and products tailored to what we already like. Design, too, has become standardized—smartphones, laptops, and all the interfaces often follow a uniform logic of efficiency and familiarity. These smooth, optimized surfaces reflect a culture that avoids friction and discourages deviation and anything that is outside of the box.

This line of thinking led me to revisit Fountain, one of the most iconic works of Dadaism and one that deeply influenced me during my undergraduate years.
An object no one would normally pay attention to, much less associate with art—was transformed simply by being placed in a gallery context.

Duchamp was not changing the object itself, but shifting the way we relate to it. He questioned the boundary between art and non-art, showing that meaning does not reside in the object alone, but in the interaction between people and objects, and in the way we choose to interpret them.

If something as mundane as a urinal can become a provocation, then what other objects might carry unspoken possibilities, hidden just beneath the surface of their “everyday-ness”?

And that is where I see an opportunity for disruption.