Nature and Future | KABK

Nature and Future Notes during studying at KABK

erco Lai, 2020 Den Haag, Netherlands

Introduction

Since the second semester at KABK, we start to write diaries documenting thoughts, observations, or processes. As a preparation for the second year, I try to write down the story behind inspiring things, particularly those I fascinated. I start to reconsider my surroundings, my daily routine. Part of me loves the positive effects brought by the latest technology, and the other part is eager to approach nature or a more natural living way. In general, these diaries begin by asking myself questions, and then the mind journeys try to answer the questions. Frankly, it is not always a linear narrative style and hopes you enjoy this bizarre journal.

Rountine I found grey hair in my notebook.

It is always raining when I wear white sneakers.

The toilet is occupied by my flatmate.

I am too old to open the student's account.

There are paper jams when I want to print urgently.

There is a seagull that watches me when I eat breakfast at the window.

My eyes are sore.

The title of the email is hard to decide.

I misspelled words without awareness.

The eureka moment happens when I am showering without any pen.

It is always surprising that printing documents at the shop.

The person is hard to understand.

The Ads on youtube that cannot be skipped.

The wifi password is not working.

Air-dropping to the wrong computer.

I found another grey hair on my desk.

There is no snow this winter.

My flatmate’s pet mouse is knocking on my door again.

The movie is overrated.

We missed off-peak train times.

The debit card's pin code cannot be changed as I want.

My shoulders are tight.

I ask my flatmate why you want to pet a Mouse. He said that he is helping his colleague and she is beautiful.

Speechless.

I miss my sister's cat.

My phone is not charged at all when I wake up.

The website does not trust me that I am not a robot.

I put cold water into my instant noodles because I forgot to turn on kettle.

1/8

The wind is so strong recently that I am almost knocked down.

I overestimated myself.

The notes are not easy to recognize.

I found grey hairs on my laptop too.

The weather is hard to predict.

My flatmate wakes up at midnight and shakes his legs.

I forget to eat the bread before it gets moldy.

The description on the box is in Dutch, German and French.

I eat cheese and my stomach rumbles.

Tapping water is not always free.

The pop-up windows on the websites have no button to turn off.

Multi-tasking.

My bike is laid on the ground.

I say a joke and no one laughs.

My flatmate uses the blender at midnight.

The shaver is too blunt.

My brain is stuck.

Supermarket

2/8

Recently, supermarkets are the only place we can visit and I have started to reconsider what a supermarket is for me.

When I visit a new country or city, I always like to browse the supermarket, especially the local one, and try to find something new, anything unseen, everything unfamiliar with. Additionally, the language of descriptions or names or brands are not always comprehensive to me and that’s also a lesson. On one hand, I am curious about the stories or knowledge behind the goods. On the other hand, I want to see the difference between foreignness and mine. Because the supermarket is so close to everyone's daily life, I can learn some tips to adjust my routine and perspective too.

Although this is not the first time living in the Netherlands, I still find shopping in Albert Heijn challenging yet interesting at the beginning.

During that time, I did not have a smartphone with me so I can only judge the goods by its cover. To me, the supermarket was a laboratory and I learned new dutch words by trial and error until I fixed the phone.

With a smartphone (and 4G internet), I think a supermarket is a library or a modern museum. Here, a supermarket almost represents every perspective of life and each product has some cultural story or interesting history or unknown memory. Why do people prefer spaghetti over fusilli? What is Vla? What does that mean 24/48 old on cheeses? I sometimes try to put an eye on those products located the lowest or highest and want to discover the unpopular products.

During the lockdown, the supermarket has totally changed. Shopping in a supermarket becomes intense and anxious and precious activity. Not only because it controls the number of customers inside but also some goods are always empty. For now, a supermarket is a shelter. During this special moment, we can observe some unpopular products in the supermarket and who the shoppers are now.

In a park

3/8

I went to a park on Sunday afternoon. The wind was strong and the sun was warm and I felt like a traveler, who is fighting among nature. We do not understand nature so well although we almost run out of natural resources. I saw animals in the park and they are not afraid of humans at all. Conversely, when I came close to a group of swans and they approached me. I guess people feed them so much that they find us as vending machines. Trees are also vending machines in the park. Squirrels get food from them and so do birds. I like all of these to have a kind of balance in the park.

In the park, I scrolled my phone and found an interesting concept, bio-production. It is a project about converting algae into bioplastic and using it for 3d printing. I looked at grass and trees and imagined what it looked like producing objects as growing plants. I had no idea but looked back to swans. Some of them were still looking at me patiently and others left to people around the lake. I put my phone back and hid my hands in pockets after the wind won the fighting. I felt freezing and the wind was punching me, so I walked back home. On the way home, I tried to understand to what the wind said. It was from the west; it is getting strong; it is climate changing. Suddenly, the wind stopped. I found the sun back to stage now. It felt warm plus comfortable.

I went back to my room and kept thinking about the park. If we consider a park as a production unit, like a factory or workshop, what can be produced? Furthermore, what will this park look like? I think this can be a promising idea.

Faking nature

4/8

This idea implanted in me for a while until last semester I tried to develop the process of dropping forming. Before starting to duplicate the natural things, I wonder what the border between nature-made and human-made is, instead of using god-made. I try to recall the diagram from Latour, 1993:11, about the first dichotomy between non-human nature and human culture, and the second dichotomy of hybrid networks. What is modern design then? I assume design as translation and this practice of faking nature is creating hybrids. In this perspective, I am not trying to duplicate nature, let alone faking; I am trying to translate these forms/materials into new daily objects.

This semester Lucie and I plan to create forms/objects which can represent a feeling named '' mono no aware". In short, this is a feeling connecting humans to nature and the changing of surrounding nature stimulates us to feel either sad or joyful or any feeling. We experiment on materials like lava, aluminum, glass, sand...etc, and we aim to create a flowing form containing two states: clean as artifact and organic as nature. Somehow, I find the feeling we want to create is reminding us, we have always been in nature.

The rocks, lava, and sediment are another topic I find interesting. For the process, thinking design as translation and translating natural processes as the production process is a direction. For the result, I am not sure what I should call them yet, neon-stone-objects or post-stone-tools. At least, in the project of stone-making, I will create something sustainable.

Furthermore, I hope this can produce objects locally, using different environments as inputs. Like our ancestors, they use whatever they can reach nearly and build various things. Nevertheless, it makes me think of the future and the virtuality and I think that will be another story.

Supreme form

5/8

Supreme shape, kept being mentioned in the class of morphology. It is difficult to describe but can only feel it. For practicing and knowing the concept deeper, we learn the idea by observing lots of objects, like feeding images in machine learning. The concept of 'supreme shape' reminds me of postmodernism. They are different yet similar.

3D modeling has infinite possibilities but manufacturing has a limit. I am afraid working on 3d modeling so detailed and the producer cannot make it. It is a barrier for me yet also helping me to think out of the box.

In other words, knowing all perspectives of a producing way, what it can and cannot do, helps me construct the form and shapes. However, I have a new perspective on 3d modeling recently. In the past, I had to service my client and follow nowadays producing ways, but now I can think further. On one hand, design an object for use in the future virtual world.

On the other hand, thinking in pure form without the boundary of today's technology. In this case, this form/shape may be called 'supreme shape'.

As an object for the future virtual world, I assume this virtual future exists, and we can create objects without any limits technically. From this view, creating a supreme form is necessary and meaningful. In this virtual reality, how these artifacts can nudge us will be more crucial and direct; how we can harvest these achievements from the virtual world could be also promising, it reminds of the movie 'inception'. Virtual aliases, digital twins or replicas are something that played a role in virtual reality. If these represent us, then who are we?

For the shape which will inspire future production, it sounds a bit optimistic and it could be an aim to work on. Form follows function, and function also creates form. I believe beauty is a function. A beautiful object can heal our mind, and even store our emotion/memory. In this view, beauty can be a function of objects.

Retro futurism

6/8

How to imagine something you have never seen or not yet created?

During the class, I am told to watch some old yet iconic fiction movies and I try to observe how they use the existing objects to present a futuristic atmosphere. It becomes retro futurism now because the existing objects are kind of vintage now. By this means, the fiction movie we watch now will be called retro futurism one day. To create an absolutely future-proof object seems quite difficult then. Furthermore, It is a similar question about creativity and originality.

As a result, I think there are some inspirations from movies: 1) Learning from "Interstellar", creating something based on real, scientific concepts. It is encouraging to create something based on science for a designer. This is also a designer's job to find applications from theoretical science though. For me, pseudoscience is also charming and inspiring. For instance, Dowsing is fascinating about its behavior, which is trying to connect humans to nature in some way. Compared to reasonable "Interstellar", "Blade runner" is more charming to me because it presents an unreal yet familiar atmosphere like pseudoscience.

2) "Brazil" is reminding me how to use the obsolete technology in a new way. These iconic dystopian fictional movies are using existing objects for a reason I think. Because they want to revoke us with different perspectives in our lives, and these common objects are the anchors for us to connect with. As for the speculative design, they try telling a story via things and I think these fictions are suitable references.

Additionally, these old movies provide us a chance to check today's development. Like "Steam boy", it provides an opportunity to imagine a world without electricity.

AI bias

7/8

You are always thoughtful and I depend on you so much, although I do not fully understand you. I do not understand why you want to assist me.

In the beginning, I accept whatever you ask me to offer. You ask me to show you my history, my albums, my contact, my preference, and my folder. After a while, I have a doubt and I have no choice but to accept you. Because I cannot be creative without your inspiration, remember passwords without your reminders, explore new places without your navigation. However, your help sometimes weakens my instinct and I feel I am losing the instinct of navigation when you always show me the routes.

I hope you can learn a lesson from my history, and know that some web pages are not always opened on my own will. I hope you will not always memorize my mistyping. Especially when you show my failure of mistyping repeatedly and I do not know your humor. Moreover, you recently showed me more and more commercial feeds. Even if you tell me that I can see fewer from those and I feel it is a placebo. I am not sure what you will become in the future. In the future, you may be like 'Samantha' or a terminator. Sometimes, I hope there is a way I can train you properly and help you learn from our mistakes. In this case, we are still learning, trying, and growing.

Recently, I realize you will show different content to different people; have different conversations with different people too. Everyone knows you but does not understand you either; everyone describes you differently. Based on how you interact with other people, I feel terrified yet hopeful. You have to understand that we all have biases. If you can approach all the categories from us and use intersectionality to help us, I think that should be your destiny. Humans have biases but I hope you will not inherit that, my dear algorithm.

Efficiency / Inefficiency Some ideas after the lecture titled efficiency/inefficiency from INSIDE, KABK. Technology makes our life efficient and multitasking makes me inefficient. Will I feel more satisfied when using efficient tools? Or am I feeling more creative when operating inefficient tools? It is said an organized desk provides high efficiency yet also people say a messy desk creates more inspiration. Because of the internet's efficiency, we can search images in a second nevertheless it sometimes shows repetitive or boring resources. Writing notes on paper seems inefficient but it provides freedom to explore.

Shortcut/detour Google Maps can easily find the route but I find it more interesting when taking a detour.

Once I familiarize the direction of somewhere, I will always try different routes. For instance, I always try to cycle home from school on different routes until I cannot find a fresh way. If robots replace us, then we ought to be glad. Robots always take shortcuts for efficiency. We can take detours for pleasure. Efficiency for the machine and Inefficiency for humans.

Useful / obsolete Usefulness can indicate efficiency and obsolescence may mean inefficiency.

It is sometimes hard to judge an object useful or obsolete. It is easy to misunderstand obsolete, at least for me. I took awhile to understand obsolescence is not only connecting to time but to usefulness. When something is out of date and you do not use it anymore, it may be inefficient, useless, obsolete so the object loses a link to us. In this case, I

8/8

have a question: are we using something only because it is efficient? Or why do we use something obsolete and inefficient?

Since when did humans chase efficiency from daily objects to lifestyle?

In Taiwan, people love to talk about 'Cost-performance ratio', especially when we have the internet to compare things/objects. People who do not purchase the high- performance yet low-cost thing, somehow, are weird. People and society should be diverse and so the things. Maybe there is a hierarchy about use of things, so we can value them on a discrete level.

Afterword

Writing diaries is an enormous challenge to me. However, It is helpful when we start writing by mimicking someone's writing style. In this assignment, I try to collect inspirations by words first on my phone and assemble them to sentences. During the process, I realize that the ideas become more concrete and can somehow find a pattern of thoughts.

About editing, I still need more practice to make the sentence more precise. I think that editing the text after a while is a good tip, and the first version can regard as raw material. For me, it is practical to adjust the writing process and strategy. I am glad that I wrote the diaries and put them into this booklet.