Poetic Involution: Trade-offs and Controversies
Involution has been debated in China in recent years because of its intense controversy. People expressed overwhelming negative comments about the situation, but there were also some supportive and hopeful voices among them. People coexist and live with it, and its form of existence also changes constantly with the development of society. It is intangible but deeply engraved in everyone's thoughts and actions.
Speculative Design | Motion Design
Completion Date: 2022 - 2023
Capstone Project, Pratt Institute
Feel free to watch the video to learn more about my capstone project.
Motion Design
An experimental & narrative animation.
What is [involution] ?
Negative connotations
One refers to excessive work that does not lead to productivity or improved innovation, and the other is that it can lead to unhealthy competition among people, especially for the younger generation. Involution mainly occurs in the fields of economy, politics, culture, education, etc. It matches ideas of the rat race and burnout, and it is also used to describe when putting more into something only results in getting less back.
Dialectical thinking
It has its own reasons for its existence: People get stronger in constant competition. It is a method, and people can choose to use it or not to use it.
Involution is an inevitable part of the social development process, it is a rule that can be used well, and its own ambiguity can bring more possibilities for its future development.
These different viewpoints are bound to be issued by people of different statuses, and they have their own issues related to interests and different perspectives.
2D Visual Experiments
Abstract graphic design to explain definitions and feelings brought by involution.
Low-level imitation and replication.
Meaningless, endless optimization and excellence.
Inward evolution.
The internal competition that limits creativity.
Hypothesis
Can design be used as a language carrier so that all groups can understand the core of involution and its dialectical thinking? How to balance the practical value and the experimental value in the design?
How can works of art reveal a social phenomenon, which refers to involution, most powerfully?
How to visualize involution through graphical and visual ways?
At the very beginning, I held a negative attitude towards the topic of "involution". However, during the primary and secondary research process,
I saw many people's genuine opinions and attitudes towards this phenomenon, as well as the reasons and justifications for why it still exists and is developing. This made me wonder: Why is it considered reasonable? This also led me to my subsequent design direction.
Supportive
Join/Advocate Involution
Dialectical
Improve the Involution
Opposed
Fight against Involution
UNNOON Production
The naming of the virtual company.
This is a factory-like company.
For the employees, what the company is doing is opaque and unknown.
It is responsible for manufacturing high-tech and speculative products,
and the primary market direction for these products is in workplace settings.
At the same time, UNNOON represents eternal night, implying that employees need to work overtime every day until late at night.
Infographic Design
Performance appraisal system of UNNOON.
Speculative Product Design
Modular surveillance camera system.
Speculative Product Design
"Focus Mode" Mask design.
Storyboard
Experimental & narrative motion design.
