Graduation paper

Forward/Introduction

As a modern graphic designer, you design and create for communication purposes. But in the traditional sense, you do it for clients, either in the form of print or a screen. As a creative designer, I always wanted to dabble my feet in other media like photography, film and the physical world. At this point in time, I experience the traditional way of graphic design as very limiting. There are many senses the human species can use to get communicated to that don't get to be used if you just stick to print and/or screen, or complicated behaviors and situations that you can’t provoke or comment on. I work to discover and learn new ways of expressing and communicating my ideas and findings using other materials and mediums. In this way in the future, I have even more freedom to think outside the graphic design box. Though limiting, being a graphic designer does give me the advantage to already have a clear understanding of what to do in order to communicate ideas, principles, and feelings.

As a craftsman, I'm a conceptual creator. I find a story, a metaphor or a happening and create a project around it. We as humans are very complicated creatures. How we interact with each other, the physical world and with the digital realm, created a lot of opportunities to discover, highlight or enhance different corks and characteristics that we possess. Doing this, I hope to bring more awareness to how humans interact. This can be taken into consideration when developing new products or technologies. Or if newer technologies get produced, I can use them to let people reflect on the situation, either positive or negative, in order to create a better understanding of what really makes people tick in the progression and development that we experience.

Abstract

The world we live in has become smaller and smaller ever since access to the internet has grown and become more accessible by mobile devices. We have created tons of applications over the years to make it easier to find and connect with one and other. By using emails you can do business with people on the other side of the world and using facebook, twitter, Instagram we can stay connected with friends and family or even make new ones. But the same devices and applications helping use doing this are encouraging us to say connected every moment we have. We are too distracted to focus on daily tasks or listen to other and get bored if we are not confronted with the constant flow of information. As a result, we are losing our moment's solitude and collecting all sorts of anxieties. I ask myself, is this the future we want for our selves or is there another way?

I want to make an artistic expression that will bring awareness to a more conscious way of using our devices.

(in 250 words or less, explain the essence of your research project)

Central Question

How can I use our mobile device to move us away from the negative behavior we are creating with it?

(state your research question)

Relevance of the Topic

We are still in the infancy of using and creating technology like our mobile devices and the internet. And it is already changing our lives rapidly in ways that we could have never imagined. it is improving our lives in great ways. But just like everything else it also comes with its pitfalls. Vilém Flusser said in an interview at the European Media Art Festival in 1988 that, every revolution as in Neolithic revolution or the revolution or the bronze age, iron age or the industrial revolution, have all been technical evolution mimicking the body. The current revolution is the first time our new technics simulate the nervous system.

Because it is a new frontier we have to learn and evolve together with our technology in ways that will give us the benefits of having access to constant information but is also mindful to us as humans.

Hypothesis

As our relationship with our devices and technology evolves to a more complex situation, it will be of utmost importance to take a step back en re-evaluate our behavior towards our social environment and more importantly ourselves. We are just now starting to realize that we are unknowingly getting pulled in to misusing our devices and technology. With my project, I will try to bring an artistic solution to the problem of lack of solitude and try to bring awareness to what we are going through now. with the knowledge, people can take more control over their time and lives.

(what do you think will happen or what will the effect be of your work?)

Research Approach

(how do you define and design your research? what activities/approaches/methods will you pursue while conducting your research?)

Key References

(how does your work relate to contemporary makers? what a key analogues/works of inspiration?)

Literature

Before starting my project I had some inkling ideas that there were negative effects to constantly using a mobile device with all the social aspects it presents us. So I started out looking what the opposite is of being hyper-connected. The answer was solitude.

Solitude is when you isolate or seclude yourself. Over the years the definition has changed somewhat. In the article What is solitude on the website psychologytoday.com they say, Where solitude is choosing to be alone and can lead to self-awareness, not choosing it and feeling isolated would be loneliness.

With a better understanding of what I wanted to accomplish I started looking for information on how it related to the modern day. That is how I found Sherry Turkle. In her book Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, Penguin Press, She states that our hyper-connectivity is making us lose communication skills and it's affecting our social en empathy skills towards ourselves and others. The book gave me a good starting point on what the effects can be but I realized that its a lot more complex.

Experiments

(what are you going to test out and why)

Insights from Experimentation

(what have you pulled from your hands on practice based research?)

Artistic/Design Principles

(what is your own criteria for designing?)

Artistic/Design Proposal

(what do you propose to make)

Realised work

(what did you actually make)

Final Conclusions

(what was the point? what do you take away?)

Bibliography

(what did you reference in this text (other texts, images, films, exhibitions)? Remember to use proper in-text citing!!!!!!!!!!