Rebordering- the body in space by marielena_andre

T H E b

S P A C E

A THESIS presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design in the Graphic Design program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, Vermont. By Marielena Andre | April 2021

APPROVED BY MASTER'S EXAMINATION COMMITTEE

David Peacock

Natalia Ilyin

Tasheka Arceneaux Sutton

Ian Lynam

P 1

III 01

INTRODUCTION

Tonight

PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION Skin Body is a Home

TECH-New-HUMAN Pixels Presence

THE BODY IN SPACE Materiality & Communication Sensory Design Ui/ UX What Does Design Solve For?

91 100 106 108

THE MOTHERS The Mothers Project Materialism Conclusion Material Activism Recipes

116 123 127 128

05 146 149

ABSTRACT

Mediated Boundary Post Humanism Communication & Intimacy

60 62 77

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Social Construct Inner/ Outer Self Object vs Subject Skin Hunger

16 34 44 50

INDEX BIBLIOGRAPHY COLOPHON

The Mothers

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

o many beautiful people have helped shaped my journey. To my parents for their unwavering support of my career in the arts. My siblings for the endless musings of the status of these documents, and to friends whom were patient in my absence. To my VCFA family, I thank you for creating that special space for weirdness to unfold. Thank you for the conversations, the laughs and the tears. Explicit thanks goes to my advisors. Dave Peacock for giving me the freedom to explore. Natalia Ilyin for encouraging my deepest voice to come to the surface. Tasheka Arceneaux Sutton for reminding me to not take myself so seriously and to Ian Lynam who met me in the space between—stretching my imagination. Lorilee, Ryan, and Luke, my "sloth" cohort—getting to know you has been such an enriching part of this journey. Long text chains, rolling laughter, and endless support when hard drives crashed. Thank you for being present with me.

Thank you Erin Stalcup, for the amazing experience of working together on Hunger Mountain and then again as my editor for this thesis. These pages are exponentially better for the conversations we've had surrounding their intent. Your advice and friendship has meant so much. To my partner Philippe, this would not have been possible without you. Besides endless hot meals and wake up calls, the world around us stayed together because of you. You have my eternal gratitude for supporting my every dream. Lastly, to Vincent and Isabelle, my little miracles, thank you for understanding the importance of this work and helping me experiment as I brought these materials to life. We have so much more to create.

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

A B S T R A C T

" I. ABSTRACT

Imagine a body that is no longer tied to its skin. Until now the surface of the skin has been the place where the world begins and the self simultaneously ends. But now it is expanded and rendered permeable by technology. Skin no longer means closure. If surface and skin rupture, it is as though the inner and the outer dissolve.

his comment by Australian performance artist, Stelarc, was ahead of its time while simultaneously short sighted. With the existence of technology these boundaries, where one space ends and another begins, is increasingly blurry. I am continually fascinated by the mutability of skin; how it enters the discourse with such breadth while holding so much weight within society. As the largest sensory organ of the human body and an entry point to our identities, I’m curious about the negotiation of these boundaries. How do we reconcile their relationship in space?

Approaching skin first through a historical and philosophical lens, I was interested in the societal repositioning that was occurring as a result of Industrialization, and with the entrance of consumerism. This cultural shift in America, inherently modified our associations and connections to our own bodies. I dug into the politics that gave rise to Feminism and Postmodernism while drawing from the theories of Existentialism and Post Humanism to trace that story to today. I explore the metaphorical, the physical, and the technological aspects of “skins” within the framework of society.

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

Despite the cliches we are guilty of repeating, skins have a responsibility to protect the contents of what’s beneath it. As such, it is not accidental that this terminology is presented in multiple design capacities. In gaming it is a “skin” that changes your identity, in animation it’s a process of creating a mesh or a “skin” as the framework for movement. For websites, it’s a “skin” that is the base structure of the look and feel—what we now call UI and UX. In a graphic software it’s a layer and a mask (root interrelations) that dictate, what and how intensely an image penetrates. The list extends to countless examples both in and out of graphic design. We bind to these metaphorical connections because our social construct relies on these as markers of their purpose. What is our allure with the surface of things? And how are these surfaces controlled and manufactured?

I. ABSTRACT

The role of materiality is an important semiotic and literal framing in this work. The project portion of the thesis consists of home grown biomaterials. My love for tactility, passion for sustainability, and a background in textiles made the prospect of growing my own surfaces exciting. The leather specimens are a growth of a bacterial yeast; the

byproduct of fermented black tea, AKA kombucha. When this material is dried it can form a self— fusing, no—waste, biodegradable leather. I was drawn to its likeness to human skin. It grows in layers, is regenerative, durable, and conditional to its environment. The ironic name for the pellicle, “A Mother,” is as much a representational form of skin as it is literal; I survey the relationship of a healthy mother to a dried mother. The bioplastics, foam and paper became a secondary form of creation that are paired with a curiosity in tele-haptics, and sensory design to inform the materiality of the work.

With these properties, I set out to explore the communicative value of skin; more specifically how touch is central to lived experience and intrinsically linked to our perceptions of pain and pleasure, withdrawal and connection. As our lives become increasingly digital and our bodies caught in this friction; what will be lost from the human condition? What does it mean to reconstruct our senses in these touchless times?

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

II.

M O T H E R — M A K E R

he genesis of this body of work started when I returned to writing after a decade hiatus. Much of what I began writing about was circling on concepts of boundaries, identity, and connectivity. The topic of SKIN entered as I contemplated the layered characteristics of human interaction while reconciling with sexual assaults from my youth.

This quest into the depths of skin was layered with a lifelong battle with my body; its shape, its weight, the changes it has undergone as I birthed twins, as I become older. Initially, I was drawn to the portion of my skin that society has placed as constraints. The expectations placed upon women to play, dress, and act like ‘girls’. For the constraint of silence we were taught to keep while forcing our bodies to be something other than what we were given. For the binding of ideals that have made countless humans feel ‘outside of’ and inadequate; lost or dissociated.

II. INTRODUCTION

This has been a personal journey of healing through my body; f inding peace and respect for it in spite of its trauma. The poetry within this book explores my struggles of being a body in this space, in this moment in time. In COVID. In chaos and in forgiveness. While I’m technically new to the history and mechanics of Graphic Design, I have been a communication designer my whole life; crafting

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

SCOBY trials drying test: new and old skins

words, shapes, and images in form and on pages, including textile print design, fiber art, fashion design, sculpture, display design, and photography. The connection between these art forms have been the materials—or more accurately the joy of discovery in working with multiple mediums. Above any classification of designer I am placed in, I am a maker. I came to graphic design in particular to learn how to pull from these sources and experiences and use them to be an advocate for sustainability and inclusivity in design. The project portion of this thesis is centered on biopolymers. Over the course of my study, I manufactured several types of materials which are threaded throughout these pages. They are made of accessible ingredients, then cured and naturally dyed to form replacements for some of the most common plastics, foam, leather, and paper. These biopolymers all will decompose without harm to our planet.

II. INTRODUCTION

While smart and biomaterials are a relatively new focus of mine, cloth, thread, and f iber have always been at the foref ront of my creative thinking; f irst through my ancestry and upbringing, and second through my career in

textiles. Materiality had me reaching for pieces to touch, while the body and human connections have been at the center of my curiosity. As a textile designer working in mass-produced goods, I have conflicted feelings around materiality. Being a mother and woman intensifies my contentious relationship with being a consumer, knowing that my choices are often limited by cost. As a feminist, I understand that my material choices put forth messages.

The scientist in me is intrigued when physical objects become enmeshed with emergent capabilities. Some of these are derived by nature, others combine art and science to meet new challenges in body boundaries. I am fascinated with how touch is central to the material world—and further how the material world is mediated by technology. The investigation of this thesis is intended to inspire conversations around the resources we use and how we build the language that supports them. It considers the modalities of authentic connection to ourselves and others in this time, in flux.

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

in the depth of the moon i breathe i do not cry but feel your pain. weighted the

heavy

pushing pages forward

i breathe you life in you

a breath weightless to carry

tonight in the darkness your mask of

courage

lifts,

hope

breaks

silence

i believe you fallen words cupped ears clogged in fear how tears must display kind

the right of pain

tonight in the light is your freedom give faith telling to healing

to love

to trust tonight i breathe

to safety

01 p

“

S O C I A L

C O N S T R U C T

01. PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION

photo of me coming out of the bathroom at my parents’ house: I’m roughly my daughters’ age of eight, and my older brother was waiting outside the door to call me a “fatso” as the flash went off, blinding, resulting in a Polaroid with my mouth open and eyes stretched. I wore a white tank top that hugged my overhanging belly to the band of my turquoise terry shorts — you know the ones from the 80’s with the rainbow trim running down the side. I was a meatball build, with large breasts for my age, and for a brief moment I stood tall above my lanky peers. I was awkward, sexually curious, and increasingly aware that my

— GOETHE

The Human being has many skins to shed before he is even somewhat sure of himself and of worldly things.

Rubenesque curves didn’t match the standards that the media depicted. Since that moment, as a girl, a woman, a mom, and a worker, I’ve received countless attacks on and claims to my outer beauty in relation to my competency. Others have dictated what my skin should look like, what weight I should be (or what thinness I should aspire to achieve), how the color of my hair should tell the story of my age, and have given a barrage of other “requirements” that have shaped the opportunities I’ve had and the discourse I have with myself.

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01. PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION 18

"Paper Armour" woven from Hunger Mountain #24 drafts , "Pom Mask" Papier-mâché with pom poms and tulle M.Andre 2020

Claudia Benethien wrote that the skin is the boundary between body and culture; and that perhaps we are overdue for conversations on the intersection of the humanities and the science of skin (Benethien 2002, viii-ix). It is the place where we negotiate these boundaries and the relationship it reveals to our processes of personal reflection. This divergence of inner and outer, real and fake mark how we build relationships and view ourselves in the material world. Skin is often tied to the kind of materiality presented in beauty culture because societal language forces a symbolism of skin to outward aesthetics.

If something is true it is described as naked. The absence of makeup is a sign of authenticity. The phrase “only skin deep” speaks of superficiality. We say we have gotten “under one's skin” when we have aroused emotion.“Thick skin” is a badge of honor, a form of armor. “Skin in the game”

means there are valuable stakes to the individual. The skin—and by association, the body—is often viewed as an armor—a literal boundary of protection and a metaphorical one. Colloquial expressions also place value in the sense of touch. We “pat each other on the back,” we are “held” by a moving performance. Someone is “out of touch,” fear makes one’s skin “creep,” a voice makes one’s skin “tingle.” AT&T made a clever appeal to the distance, isolation, and loneliness of so many Americans when they came up with the slogan “reach out and touch someone.” “What is very revealing … is that there is something very special about the feeling we have for the word ‘touch.’ For example, we speak of the ‘feminine touch,’ giving a ‘personal touch,’ having the ‘Midas touch,’ or ‘touched by G-D.’ These metaphors place special attention to the role of touch in our lives (Montigue 1986, 12).

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

The basis of these constructs were first introduced (and later abandoned) by Freud in what he termed as Ideal Ego and Ego Ideal. At first glance these terms seem interchangeable, but the distinction lies between reality and the idealization of that reality. The fundamental difference between the two terms is that ideal ego connotes a state of being, whereas ego ideal connotes a state of becoming. Ideal ego is explained as the inner image of oneself as one aspires to become. The ego ideal, he explains, is a modification of infantile narcissism. It appears to be the dynamic formation that sustains personal ambitions towards that progress. The famous superego in Freudian theory is the manifestation of these personal ideals in conjunction with the internalization of cultural rules. Stemming from the Freudian concepts on ego, French Philosopher Jacques Lacan asserts in his Mirror Stage theory that, appearances notwithstanding, the ego is an inert, fixed bundle of objectified coordinates. Lacan

makes distinction between the ideal ego and ego ideal with three psychoanalytical terms to describe how these personas are intertwined in and how they evolve through three stages: the orders of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. The Imaginary is the fundamental narcissism in which the person creates fantasy images of both him/herself and the ideal object of desire. The Imaginary realm continues to exert influence through adult life. The Symbolic order is the social world. It is language, communication, intersubjective relationships, knowledge of ideological conventions, and the acceptance of these as “law,” where the laws referenced are the restrictions that control both your desire and the rules of communication. The Symbolic order works in tension with the Imaginary and the Real order.

The Real order is defined largely by need. It arises when it is faced to acknowledge the materiality of our existence. It is through the entrance into the Symbolic world where rules define our

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

“ — LOEVINGER 25

"Shaky Shadow" M.Andre 2020

Ego development emerges out of the self’s encounter with the world as it seeks to make sense of, interact with, and construct images of the world and relate to other people within it.

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

01. PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION

Contemporary psychologist Jane Loevinger expands on these stages to encompass nine developmental stages of the ego. She believes that “ego development emerges out of the self’s encounter with the world as it seeks to make sense of, interact with, and construct images of the world and relate to other people within it” (Armstrong 2020). The individual will develop in reaction to how they adjust to the social world as well as how they perceive themselves within their world. I am continually fascinated by the mutability of skin, how it enters the discourse with such breadth while holding so much weight within society. As the largest sensory organ

of the human body and an entry point to our identities, I'm curious about the negotiation of these boundaries. How do we reconcile their relationship in space? What is the imagery that comes to mind, when I say the word “skin”? Perhaps pause for a moment and think about the intersection of physicality where your body meets another surface. When your body presses into another surface, both skin and object give. Do you think about the temporal world, the tactile value of skin; its texture, its surface, how it feels in the season of winter vs. the denseness of summer's humidity? Do you think of what it feels like to be touched? A tattoo you’ve imprinted? Do you see a particular color? Does it tie with your emotions and identity? Eighteenth-century medicine believed the physical skin was a

SCOBY leather and paper. M.Andre 2021

actions, coupled with the ideals of the Imaginary world, that we suffer need. In Lacanian theory the subject of the unconscious speaks through the ego while remaining irreducibly distinct from it.

passage from one world to the next; what lay beneath the surface was linked to otherworldly spiritual denotations. These pre-modern beliefs thought of the skin as a boundary to be conquered, understood, and penetrated.

01. PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION

Claudia Benthien, in her seminal book Skin on the Cultural Border Between the Self and the World, writes that for a long time only phenomena that took place on the outside of the body, or were externally manipulated on the body, were considered to be subject to historical change: dress, hairstyle, tattoos, makeup, surgical modifications, body shapes, corporeal measurements, or skin color. Corporeal self-perception— and thus skin and touch—was considered a purely physiological matter. The cultural perception of the skin was increasingly turned into a perception of distance as a

consequence of being reduced to the visual impression of the bodily surface (Benthien 2002, 12). It wasn't until the late 19th Century that advancements in clinicalanatomical medicine changed the perceptions of the collective body from that of a mystical porous surface to a closed boundary, a vital organ serving as protection from the environment. It was then that the observed skin became tied to cultural signs: interpreted, classified and coded linguistically. Skin is the physical bearer of signs, our packaging, our billboard, the messages about ourselves we put on display. It also reflects uncontrolled categorization such as age, race, state of health, and cultural identity. In addition, there is the tactile experience of one's own skin, an entity with sensations and perceptions that are as unique

as ourselves.

experience of having a sense of home in oneself is not universal.

What we define as skin is so profoundly shaped by history and culture that it is impossible to give it a singular emotion; its meaning is as individual as the grooves on your fingerprint.

“Home” is described by psychologists and sociologists as a place of sanctuary or safe haven, a place in which positive experiences of belonging, security, privacy, and comfort help shape a healthy sense of self. Though, the

Carraggean , Spirulina Bioplastic. M.Andre 2021

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

the postmodern era with the discourse of What we define as skin is so profoundly shaped by history and culture that it is impossible to give it a singular emotion; its meaning is as individual as the grooves on your fingerprint.

"Body is A Home" Collage. M.Andre 2021

We conceptualize the interior of the body as a kind of space or container, which consists of many entities: mind, emotions, soul, thoughts, etc. The body as a container, a physical object implies its 3-dimensional form in space and time: having an inside, and an outside boundary. It is generally believed that what is inside (metaphorically) is more important than the physical body: “Beauty is only skin deep”. Hard fought is the shift in ideology that came again with the postmodern era with the discourse of the body and studies in humanities becoming more malleable and democratic, though challenged by factual and fictional worlds. Capable of distortion and subversion.

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

01. PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION

I see a tension between the tools we associate with skin and therefore our bodies, and their relationship to the technologies so intertwined in our lives. This friction obscures the boundaries that exist in both physical worlds as well as in imagined spaces. Humans house a full sensorium that interprets incoming stimuli based on perceived and lived experience. The products we design to mediate with our bodies should be just as much considered. Technology simultaneously interferes with the reality of the senses, while expanding our ability to explore simulated spaces. De Kerckhove explores ontology, intimacy, and perception in his book The Point of Being, where he equates tactility with proprioception, which he defines as the “sense of one’s own body, of being present with one's body”(De Kerckhove 2014, 9). He claims to be an individual who is “rediscovered” through new media, stating, “The only sense we can really trust is touch, for it is where we also truly are” (Ibid 10).

understand, and love, never leaves us.

Our self-reflection, which we try to penetrate,

with ourselves in search of personal acceptance.

puzzled by our own being, and thus preoccupied

facets of our ego, to disguise or hide them. We are

always been a basic desire to represent the various

self is not new to our history as a society: It has

The idea of the inner self being masked by an outer

“

01. PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION

I N N E R // O U T E R S E L F

from an assumed contained label.” (Sorel 1973, 12)

persona stems from a desire to remove ourselves

a fundamental human impulse to assume a new

communicate the significance of identity. Perhaps

representation of masks has been used as a way to

are. From Paleolithic times to today's runways, the

creation represents our desire to know who we

It is the artist in us that creates the mask and that

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

01. PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION

e hold true to the laws of our bodies in physical space. In doing so we agree to a certain level of conformity to these social rules while understanding that metaphor plays a rich role in that discourse. We increasingly place altered selves in the digital realm. With very little effort, in these worlds we may be whoever we want to be. It has never been easier to cast a new persona and see what kind of a response we get, and escape whatever reality we came from. Today humans are not just visually oriented, we are visually obsessed and hyper connected through digital consumption. It has never in history been easier to reject, ignore, shame, or humiliate each other. While not answering a call 25 years ago meant that the person just wasn’t home, a nonanswered text or call today means, I can see that you have contacted me, but I am actively choosing to not answer you for x,y,z reason. The phrase “I didn’t see your call/text” simply does not exist in the age of digital communication. I believe every single human with a smartphone knows the feeling of being digitally ignored or rejected by someone important to them. Not

having a text answered for days or weeks can feel devastating—as if you have no value for the other person, pushing you into storms of low self-esteem, anxiety, or feeling excluded.

01. PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION

Personal identity is now tangled with social media. Your worth is measured by algorithms, how many likes you’ve received and how many followers you have. The posts that are seen depend on a recipe that has been crafted to keep you clicking and liking. As a result, viewers are increasingly located in a liminal space devoid of physicality in a usual sense. Our addiction to social media and the effects it has on our emotional development is a well-documented and studied genre. It is not new news and yet we have done little mediate the negativity it brings. Social media has simultaneously opened the world unto itself. It connects us across land and sea to long lost lovers, friends, and family; to opportunity, to understanding, and a new way of communicating cross culturally. Arguably it has saved us in this unique moment of social distancing; while also overwhelming our senses. How will we as a culture be on the other side if it?

Will we crave so much our missed physicality that it brings us to remember a simpler time? Or will it be the crutch that will set the path for us to remain in a constant state of digital representation? While it’s true that the glass can be both half empty and half full, problems arise when the shared reality we are living is no longer upheld by common truths. These truths are currently under assault by made up news and lies intended to distract and confuse the us from truth. Discerning between real and fake is a prolific dilemma in American culture today. The theory of “relativism” and Derrida's deconstruction have worked hand in glove with postmodernism to undermine the notion of truth. Since postmodern discourse came to center around relative states of truth and means by which self-referential forms of art augmented the conceptual aesthesis, it is no surprise that increased advancement in morphing technologies would lead us down this path.

As a designer in the 21st Century I am equally beholden to my tools as I am conscientious of the responsibility this requires. Doctored graphics, virtual worlds, typographic distortion, and multiple avenues of manipulation—there's a certain amount

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

Me as Maleficent

of God-like fascination that comes with the territory of dreaming up a space and making it come to life, and it’s even more exhilarating when that form can be put in space on a x,y, and z axis.

01. PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION

Me as Sandra Bullock

A co-worker of mine recently approached me with uproarious laughter. Turning her phone to me, she shows me a video clip with Jean Hagen in Singin’ in the Rain. At first glance there was nothing special—a section of the movie I must have seen a dozen times. “Look further,” she says and I do, and it is HER face in place of the late Hagen; seamlessly blended as if she were the actor herself. Several clips later, one after another, no matter the age, race, sex, identifying style choices—she was blended. This is one in a sea of apps called Reface that can map your face to the body of others. Its novelty is such that it could suck a few hours out of your day if you wanted it to. These f iltering aps, made popular by the likes of Instagram and Snapchat, sell hyper-digitized and altered representations of the self. I accept that they exist for a level of novelty, but when f ilters like these appear in my latest version of Photoshop, I suddenly feel a little queasy. It’s

true, I’ve been waiting for almost two decades for a plugin to exist in Photoshop that helps take my little motifs on a canvas and facilitate a mechanical repeat without my needing to place the motif in the precise location. Well, I did get my wish—but it also came with several other options that allow portraits to be distorted to new realms. They are called “Neural Filters,” which implies a certain sucking of my brain matter and spitting out a better model. With a few clicks and slider options I can add to or decrease my age, level of happiness, surprise, and anger. I can make my hair thicker, change my gaze ... etc, etc. I’m a little insulted and baffled by the addition of these tools to what is largely viewed as a professional editing software.

Me as Rene Zellwegger

This re-imagining of the self seems benign. But what happens when we hide our true selves so deeply we’re no longer sure of who we actually are—or worse, we become victim to a nefarious deep fake.

Me as Cardi B

Me as Kylie Jenner

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

O B J E C T

V S

S U B J E C T

rt locates viewers within their corporeal selves by engaging the senses; such experiences are unique and individual to each viewer. The aesthetic experience is evoked f irst through physical components, and then through an intellectual engagement with materiality, through time.

01. PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION

French performance artist ORLAN has been blurring these boundaries of subjective and objective for decades. The root of her work is based largely in Existentialism and the theories from Jean Paul Sartre which state “existence precedes essence”—that is, only by existing and acting a certain way do we give meaning to our lives. According to him, there is no fixed design for how we should be, no God to give us purpose. Therefore, the onus for defining ourselves, and by extension humanity, falls squarely on our shoulders. This lack of pre-defined

purpose along with an “absurd” existence of infinite choice is what Sartre calls the “anguish of freedom.” With nothing to restrict us, we have the choice to take actions to become who we want to be and lead the life we want to live. According to Sartre, each choice we make defines us while at the same time revealing (to ourselves) what we think a human being should be. This incredible burden of responsibility that the free “man” has to bear is what relegates him to constant anguish. ORLAN is famous for using her face and body as a canvas, with plastic surgery as her medium. In one performance called “Carnal Art” she asserts that she is not “interested in the plastic surgery result, but in the process of surgery, the spectacle and the discourse of the modified body which has become the place of public debate” (ORLAN 2003, 44-48).

Yet in theory, it is not her body in actuality that undergoes the morphology, but the layers at the surface of the body. ORLAN’S reconfiguring of the skin was in aspiration to become a synthesis of classical beauty. She altered portions of her face to simulate the features of several historical icons of feminine beauty created by men; the forehead of the Mona Lisa, the chin of Botticelli’s Venus, and others, which in critical art have been studied to be composites themselves of idealized beauty. Her objective is not to become beautiful, but rather to suggest that the objective of beauty is unattainable and the process horrifying. Her work treads a difficult line between control of, or surrender to, transformation by technology in her critique of beauty standards and a woman's right to selfdetermination (Deepwell 1999, 89).

She traffics in notions of an ambiguous and constantly shifting identity. Her actions call into question whether our self-representations conform to an inner reality or whether they are actually carefully contrived falsehoods fabricated for marketing purposes. Advertisements’ clinical neatness of surgical procedures downplay the potential for damage and scarring, and are

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

in direct contrast to the visceral experience we witness as glimpses of flesh, blood, and prodding unfolds. As I watched excerpts on Youtube. com, when my stomach curls and I feel a wave of nausea run through me, I realize that she has achieved her objective of making me feel embodied in her experience.

01. PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION

The exteriority of her skin on the screen I watch is superficial, much like her transformations and reconfigurations identify her exterior in the eyes of a man. At that moment we are engaging directly with each other's bodily sensations and I am ever more present in the transparent process of her skin morphing to another. Mary Douglas, author of

Natural Symbols, describes how the body is a symbol that can be read as a text, a signifier of the social world it inhabits. It is these pillars that we are left to explore identity and the notion of authentic self. The physicality required at every juncture of her transformation was part of the purpose, but I wonder if she would have had the same conviction if the level of digital distortion we have today were available to her. The ease of modification through digital application perhaps facilitates the desire and the novelty of modifying ourselves endlessly, while for ORLAN this process is more permanent, transformative, and painful.

ORLAN recited this excerpt from Eugénie LemoineLuccioni’s “La robe” before her fifth performance operation:

“Skin is deceiving… In life, one only has one’s skin… there is a bad exchange in human relations because one is never what one has… I have the skin of an angel, but I am a jackal, I have the skin of a crocodile but I am a puppy, I have black skin but I am white, I have the skin of a woman but I am a man; I never have the skin of what I am. There is no exception to the rule because I never am what I have.”

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

01. PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION

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The Body is a Home

One day the body came home Like the wet summer when my toes danced wildly in the grass Decades to see it was always there Hiding in closets Under blankets Beneath masks All emotion swooping in naked and bare When does a body become a home? Language so thick it permeates the body before it knows Confused by its form, too pure for its harm The dark The tingling The depth it sews The needles stitch in pieces and darns How does a body come home? Does it slide between armor in secret Impressions, made to the skin Sensations Thrash like the ocean Unbearable weight Where rock and water begin

When does a body come home? The other night I dreamt I was floating Adrift the among the stars As life flowed beneath me unknowing Little miniature avatars I didn’t always have my body Some days I still do not

Though I woke it from a slumber No silence left to fester Forgiveness freed the rot Of limbs now made of lumber Who gets to claim the body? I thought this choice was mine A roof above I’ve made The walls erect in time This home that I have saved

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

S K I N

H U N G E R

01. PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION

he skin is the largest sensory organ of the body. Our skin acts as the protective barrier between our internal body systems and the outside world. The skin's sense of touch is what gives our brains a wealth of information about the environment, including temperature, humidity, pressure, pain, and pleasure. With millions of receptors sending signals to our brain, our bodies are able to feel an infinite array of textures and stimuli. It is truly amazing how much information we receive about the world through our sense of touch. We sense with our bodies the objects we encounter—the cold door knob, static from the carpet, the breeze fluttering at our cheeks. Nerves uniquely adapted for sensing a dizzying array of stimuli cover our skin, sending their impulses racing to our spinal cords and to our brains. These receptors regulate temperature and pressure in a way that determines how much force to use while cracking an egg, opening a jar, or squeezing toothpaste. Our sense of touch is the very thing that separates a human being from the world of objects and surfaces; it also attunes us to each other. This is why our sense of touch is often called the “mother of all senses”.

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

Wet stage of Agar agar bioplastic. Dyed with concineal dye

Dry stage agar agar bioplastic. Dyed with concineal dye

Human f ingertips have a remarkable sense of touch which is particularly acute in those who are either blind at birth or have lost their sense of sight in early childhood. These individuals are able to detect subtleties in texture that escape those who are sighted. For a person with long term blindness, the visual cortex (the part of the brain where sighted people interpret visual information) is actually recruited to interpret stimuli received through touch and hearing (Jablonski 2006, 98). The need to communicate and bond was a driving force in the evolution of the finely tuned sense of touch that humans have. The impact of lack of touch, too, has been studied in early childhood development— with minimal touch correlated with cognitive delays, anxiety, and emotional distress in infants—while the benefits of touch are clearly

documented as a “protective layer against stress,” releasing oxytocin (a bonding hormone) and decreasing blood pressure (Field 2014, 40). In a 1950's experiment led by Harry Harlow, baby monkeys were taken f rom their mother and given to either a wire "mother" or a soft cuddly "mother" made of terrycloth. Regardless of whether or not the "mother" had food, the baby monkeys systematically gravitated towards the soft hug-able “mother." This became the groundbreaking evidence of the relevancy of the Parent Child Attachment theory and the importance of touch in infant development.

While touch is established as a critical need in child development, a study conducted by the Touch Research Institute (Field 1999, 753-758) between cohorts of both French and American students suggests there is

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

01. PROTECTION, PROJECTION, PERCEPTION

a rise in aggressive behavior in the less tactile of cultures. The French students touched others 110 times in 30 minutes whereas the Americans touched their peers only 2 times in 30 minutes. The Americans didn't lose their need to touch, but instead engaged in self touch such as playing with rings on their fingers, twirling their hair, cracking knuckles, biting lips, and they also showed more aggressive behavior such as pushing, hitting, and knocking others down. A contributing factor to Americans lack of touch in school and among adolescents is in part to "no touch" policies that were developed to curb potential litigation from parents for misconduct. We have as a result taught our children to keep their hands to themselves and create personal space between them and other people. Interestingly, high-touch cultures have relatively low rates of violence, and low-touch cultures have

extremely high rates of youth and adult violence. We also know that there are both positive and negative forms of touching. Humans deprived of nurturing contact but subjected to physical punishment are prone to patterns of low self-esteem, behavioral issues, drug addiction, and physical violence. Orphans in an environment where they are never touched, or prisoners in solitary confinement, experience touch deprivation which has been proven to adversely affect the immune system. Individuals who experience longterm skin hunger also have increased rates of depression, anxiety, insomnia, and psychological disorders. We need positive touch in our lives. It is life blood; the defining marker of our human existence. The variance of experiences we encounter makes it uniquely challenging to discern between how much touch is good and if that touch incites fear or comfort.

It is part of what makes the polarities surrounding pleasure and pain so individualistic. A simple, encouraging arm around a shoulder or a momentary grasp of a hand conveys a message of affection that arguably cannot be manufactured. The message of touch is simple. As humans, we are programmed to form emotional bonds that strengthen our relationships. Verbal communication facilitates those bonds. Physical communication confirms those bonds.

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

02 e

“

M E D I A T E D

TECH- NEW- HUMAN

"POST HUMAN"

The voluntary manipulation of the human body through surgery, cosmetics and exercise, combined with recent technologies allowing us to simulate the experience of reality, have produced a culture in which the body no longer serves as a cohesive, organic reference point... No longer the domain of privacy and difference, the body has become a public crossroads where the merging of real and artificial, organic and synthetic, and even good and evil, is taking place right before our very (ahem) eyes”

— DAN CAMERON FRIEZE (1992)

B O U N D A R Y

Speculative touch sensor M. Andre 2021

he majority of the digital products we use have some sort of touch screen technology as its interface. It is almost forgettable that only twenty years ago designers like Levi's x Philips [ICD+] were fashioning garments with pockets to house the bulky technology that allowed for a host of separate devices to be connected via remote control. Remote control! How far we have come in such a short span of time. The digital era is characterized by instantaneous communication via haptic devices, and social/digital media writ-large. We exchange vast amounts of information at our fingertips with an unprecedented ease. The abundance of sensory stimulation and the speed of its transmission have created a new environment, a battle of communication and obfuscating. Technology has changed how we are in our skin, our bodies. How we touch.

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

P O S T H U M A N I S M

n order to understand what posthumanism is, it’s important to start with a definition of what it is departing from. Humanism is a term that captures a broad range of philosophical and ethical movements that are unified by their resolute belief in the value and agency of human beings.

Emerging during the Renaissance, humanism was a reaction against the superstition and religious authoritarianism of Medieval Europe. It wrested control of human destiny from the whims of a transcendent divinity and placed it in the hands of rational individuals (which at that time meant white men—actually it still does).

TECH- NEW- HUMAN

The first Humanist Manifesto was issued at a conference held at the University of Chicago in 1933. It defined an ideology that espouses reason, ethics, and social and economic justice, and calls for science to replace dogma. The humanist worldview still holds sway over many important political and social institutions. Recent months have highlighted the fissures of these ideologies in our current politics and social fiber.

Humanoid robot: Sophia Citizenship The Ethics Centre 2018

Posthumanism, is a set of ideas that have been emerging since the 1990s, it challenges the notion that humans are and always will be the only agents of the moral world. Posthumanists argue that in our technologically mediated future, understanding the world as a moral hierarchy and placing humans at the top of it will no longer make sense. Transhumanists (those who hold views in the middle of these two ideologies) claim that in the coming century human beings will be radically altered by implants, biohacking, cognitive enhancement, and other bio-medical technology. These enhancements will lead us to “evolve” into a species that is completely unrecognizable to what we are now.

This vision of the future is championed most vocally by Ray Kurzweil, a chief engineer of Google, who believes that the exponential rate of technological development will bring an end to human history as we have known it, triggering completely new ways of being that mere mortals like us cannot yet comprehend. While this vision of the posthuman appeals to Kurzweil’s Silicon Valley imagination, other posthuman thinkers offer a very different perspective. Philosopher Donna Haraway,

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

for instance, argues that the fusing of humans and technology will not physically enhance humanity, but will help us see ourselves as being interconnected rather than separate f rom nonhuman beings. In Haraway's 1985 essay, “Cyborg Manifesto,” she argues that becoming cyborgs—assemblages of human and machine—will help us understand that the oppositions we set up between the human and non-human, natural and artificial, self and other, organic and inorganic, are merely ideas that can be broken down and renegotiated. More than this, she thinks if we are comfortable with seeing ourselves as being part human and part machine, perhaps we will also find it easier to

SCOBY paper, Concineal dyed. M.Andre 2021

break down other outdated oppositions of gender, race, and of species. She creates an analogy using current technologies and information to imagine a world with a collective coalition that has the capabilities to create grand socio-political change. It is a thought experiment: defining what people think is the most important thing about being, and will determine what the future holds with the presence of increased artificial intelligence. These debates of mutability and boundaries are central to critics of the postmodernist era. While postmodernism isn't the f irst time the body— and therefore the skin—has been on display, artists of this period greatly challenge the body politic of patriarchy and capitalism, namely the multiple oppressions of the body's interstices of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and class. The offshoot into posthumanism comes with the awakening that our bodies can be limitless in design.

American artist and educator Dan Friedman was a true modernist. Like many in the 1970’s he became disillusioned with aspects of the modernist program—particularly the way it had

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been co-opted by corporations. His response was a vibrantly humanistic style that maintained a belief in the political ideals of modernism, while shedding its formal orthodoxies to embrace the more uplifting "radical insights" and "multiple realities" characteristic of postmodern theory (Poynor 2003, 152-153).

He had a varied career and would spend years seamlessly morphing in and out of artistic genres which included writing, teaching, graphic design, furniture design, and activism. A few years before his death in 1995 he created two installations that became part of the co-authored exhibit Artif icial Nature and Post Human with gallerist and curator Jeff rey Deitch.

Post Human brought together the work of young

TECH- NEW- HUMAN

artists focusing on technological advancement, social and aesthetic pluralism, and new frontiers in identity. In a 2016 interview Deitch reflects on the exhibit stating; “I am always looking for intersections between art trends and social trends. Artists have an uncanny ability to see developments in society before they happen. Matthew Barney, Jeff Koons, Christian Marclay, Charles Ray, Cindy

Promotional Material "Post Human" Exhibit Promotional Material "Post Human" Exhibit

Sherman, and others who were included in ‘Post Human’ anticipated the coming biological century. Their work predicted much of what we now experience in our daily lives.”

Stelarc raises the issue of the history of our cyborg identity. In his performance work, he argues (similarly to Donna Haraway) that humans have always been cyborgs through their connections to technological devices, and that a reconceptualization of technology in contemporary culture suggests that we interiorize technology rather than locate technology outside the body.

TECH- NEW- HUMAN

As Stelarc describes it, the body becomes conjoined with information. A twinning of the "virtual" and the "real" body occurs in which it is no longer meaningful to speak of either in isolation from the other. Within the metaphorical space of cyborg identity, Stelarc creates an ongoing dialectic between the node of technology/intelligence and the physicality/materiality of the body. His performance of this dialectic serves to resist the unthinking inscription of codes from one to the other, instead calling into question the interdependent relationship between the two.

For Katherine Hayles in How We Became PostHuman, the cautious aspects of the posthuman condition derives f rom the concern about of humans giving up (willingly or not) their agency to machines; the concern that, as a species, we can be replaced. The apocalyptic views therein remove the important fact that human consciousness and awareness unfolds in ways that a computer cannot replicate, nor can be taught; our “evolution is sedimented” in history (Hayles 1999, 284).

Gelatin bioplastic: colored with tumeric, concineal, and blue/violet thermochromic pigment. M.Andre 2021

TECH- NEW- HUMAN

What the technology is and how it incorporates the experience of the body is perhaps the key differentiation here. Let’s take for example the microscope. Our existing visual acuity can only go so far in the perception of our world. But with “artificial eyes” we can enlarge our natural perception of matter and space. Does this transcend our senses to a new visual place, or permanently render us interdependent of that technology? If we think of this in terms of transcendence versus interdependence we can see a relationship of how technology can advance our abilities, but doesn’t necessarily transform us to have these abilities. Which is not to say that a technological advancement can’t be applied into the body to enhance natural or underperforming senses.

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

We may enter “symbiotic” relationships with machines and we may be displaced by intelligent AI’s, but there is a limit that keeps humans distinctively different in all their embodiments. For Hayles, we must accept the posthumanist and anti-humanist notion that we are not in possession of our consciousness, but this is so precisely because consciousness is embodied. She goes further, arguing that the “basic topic” of representations in the mind are those of “an organism anchored in the body” and that therefore “human mind without human body is not human mind” (Hayles 1999, 246).

TECH- NEW- HUMAN

Our virtual lives, electronics, and prostheses have brought us exciting possibilities that are challenging the relationships of human subjectivity to its environment. How might we find closer relationships to the world in which we live, when the larger system we are a part of, is virtual?

There is no question that we will see greater opportunities for personal enhancement and be challenged with the biggest ethical concerns of our time. But will this lead us to a posthuman future? I would like to think that our most human characteristics of consciousness and agency will keep us from selfdestructing as a species, while releasing us from holding only one position within humanity.

SCOBY Leather Pressure Glove with internal cooper conductor. Specualtive Design. M.Andre 2021

SCOBY Leather Sensor Pad with Conductive paint. Specualtive Design. M.Andre 2021

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

SCOBY Leather with conductive thread. Motion sensor speculative design. M.Andre 2021

TECH- NEW- HUMAN

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C O M M U N I C A T I O N

A N D

I N T I M A C Y

have been writing about loss and loneliness since adolescence without really understanding why I felt an underlying lack of connectedness. I spent a lot of time in my childhood being alone. I was the baby of four living in a household that I couldn't have known; was undergoing emotional and financial shifts. It was the 80’s and life in NY was unsettling. I didn’t have a terrible childhood though for me it lacked definition, those moments that tie our collective circumstance into memorable packages. I piece together the memories with photos, while having big swaths of black empty space. I was aware that my existence meant sacrifice so I guess that’s why I tried to organize myself to be as self-sufficient as possible. I wasn’t discarded, but I often felt forgotten, unconsidered.

I was happiest in the confines of my room where I would write, where I had a wall I could draw on. I was fascinated with the scribblings of body parts pushing their way through the boxes I drew them in, reaching for each other beyond the scope of their walls. I suppose this thesis was in motion long before I had the words for it.

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

To understand me is to know that at 7 I was molested, at 16 assaulted, and in the earlier parts of my 20’s often thrown across the bedroom—the markers of a loving relationship were confused with fits of passion drowned in euphoric elixirs. Trust was hard, friendships were fleeting, and the trauma I held onto left a hole that’s taken decades to fashion a net for.

I can’t say I understood the depth of this lack of intimacy until one month into lockdown, when I found myself at the edge of the water bank hysterically crying. To come back into myself after so much time in disembodiment has been awkward. I have viewed my time in grad school as a kind of re-wiring. Assessing the tangled and misfiring connections and slowly soldering them back together.

TECH- NEW- HUMAN

Today, people are in an era of digitally mediated human-to-human interaction that introduces various possibilities of engaging with people from anywhere in the world. However, due to the lack of emotional cues that are normally conveyed by the human body it is difficult to express emotions through technological agents. People are social beings that are always in communication with each other through their bodies.

“

— ESTHER PEREL

For all of human history, cultures have used the body as a vessel for social control. At a very basic level, our internalization of negative messages about our bodies—and prohibitive instructions surrounding our agency—block our ability to turn to ourselves for a sense of well-being.

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

While the human body works as a collector and a decoder to perceive others’ emotions, it is also an object, whose signs are read by others. Body language, non-verbal communication, conveys emotions and adds meaning to spoken language.

As our worlds become increasingly remote and virtual, how will our needs for tactility evolve? Is it possible that certain signals, currently experienced through touch and spatial acuity, could become numb, even irrelevant? Will we develop a technology that harvests the sensations of being together, while actually remaining distant? Will our methods of communication and collaboration be forever altered?

TECH- NEW- HUMAN

The iconic researcher and TED star Brené Brown has shared insight that authentic connection requires us to be vulnerable. Feeling safe to share your truth, and daring to talk about your fears and insecurities, is key for feeling connected. I would add that having an active listener to hear your story

is equally as important. Technology can help my f riend and I maintain contact—but without the human skills to apply in real life, technology alone doesn’t serve us. Most days I’m frustrated about the ways in which technology enters my children’s lives. I’m not saying I’m perfect (I am considered a Millennial after all), but with COVID here; their time spent immersed in altered reality is 100% of their digital allotment. It’s hitting a crescendo in our house, affecting how they talk, their ability to relate to people and things in the real world. Instead of having a conversation about an array of activities that would have occurred on a normal day, I hear stories about fictional avatars, and cyber parties.

A few months ago I was listening to Debbie Millman, host of the podcast Design Matters. She was talking with Tiffany Schlain, author of the book 24/6, about her tradition of taking, one day a week, a digital Shabbat. She spoke of what it was like building this tradition with

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a young family and how, over time, it came to be a day that boosted creativity, and their connections: to themselves, to each other, to nature, and to time.

TECH- NEW- HUMAN

I haven’t instituted this yet but I am carving out small ways to disconnect, to be more present for myself, my family, and friends. It’s an inconsistent thing at best, constantly fighting with ingrained notions that I must keep going—that I must not be doing it right unless I'm tired, and at my wits’ end. I am mothering differently these days. One of the great silver linings of this Pandemic is that it has brought everyone's lifestyle to a screeching halt. I feel like many people are taking stock of their lives: getting rid of the stacks that have piled up while deconstructing ourselves to build a better version, a newer model, someone closer to the person we wanted to become—at least in a perfect world. That doesn't mean it comes easy or that it is accessible to all. It just means that for a small slice of time, some of us are looking deeper and reaching to be better.

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"Under Construction" collage M.Andre 2021

THE BODY IN SPACE

“

M A T E R I A L I T Y

A N D

C O M M U N I C A T I O N

— ELLEN LUPTON

Rarely naked, never alone, the new body requires constant attention and prophylactic shields against disaster.

ateriality is the skin that serves as the threshold between humans and objects. The role of the industrial designer typically focuses on the physical appearance, functionality, and manufacturability of a product. The skins that cover the mechanical components are just as important as the guts that lay underneath. In the 1920's and 30's designers such as Raymond Loewy, Henry Dreyfuss, and Marcello Nizzoli employed principals in engineering that brought aerodynamic forms into product design. These curved, sleek structures conveyed modernity, and a human-like aesthetic, but it wouldn't be until the 40's and 50's that malleable materials and organic forms would

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bring a humanist vocabulary that established a f irm correlation between materiality and a connectedness to its products. The paradigm of industrial design expanded when in 1972 Mario Bellini designed a calculator for Olivetti that was covered in flesh colored rubber— a foreshadowing for how our technology would become extensions of our f ingers, our skin (Lupton 2002, 31). Materiality crosses into many industries, and I’ve been trying to think if all facets of design employ a certain amount of materiality by its expanded view, which encompasses a broader range of actions in the process of art making for both physical and digital materiality.

THE BODY IN SPACE

In graphic design, materiality can possess this two-fold phenomena of the physical and digital. In their book

Visual Research: An Introduction to Research Methods in Graphic Design, Bestley and Noble describe

the reflective process of material investigation as “research into design” because we explore methods and practices that include visual testing and experimentation. Every artist decides to work with a certain set of materials, which convey a meaning through their material nature and play an important role in the understanding of the creation. “We choose how it is printed, its binding, the materials it is constructed from, its size, mass, and volume, texture, paper thickness or stiff ness, its status as an object beyond its content and functionality as a form of communication” (Bestley and Noble 2019, 166). A notable example of this that takes the exterior of construction to symbolic levels is Guy Debord and Asger Jorn’s collaboration for Mémories, an artist book in which the cover was coated in sandpaper to purposefully destroy the other items it came in contact

Olivetti Calculator 1972

Guy Debord and Asger Jorn’s "Memories"

with. I imagine it sitting on an oak bookshelf scratching the surface as it slides in and out of position, gathering oils f rom the readers f ingertips eventually rendering it bare. Helen Yentus employed the use of 3D printing to create a jacket that captures the futuristic setting of the novel On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee. Irma Boom’s book commissioned by Chanel for its No. 5 perfume has no ink—each of the 300 crisp white pages is embossed with a drawing or quotation that helps the story of Gabrielle Chanel unfold. It’s clean, understated, and ephemeral, and somehow still totally engrossing. These artifacts pay homage to these tactile choices we have as artists and designers.

There is an inherent difference in objects that originate through a handmade process vs a manufactured one, yet the removal of the artist’s hand in the work does not categorically lead to a distancing effect. These aspects of materiality become available for interpretation when they are seen as visual effects that bring awareness to the artmaking process and establish the link between what the work is, and what it means. The means of production and the degree to which processes are evident in the final work impacts how viewers experience the work. Perception is further affected by other signs of process, such as degrees of refinement and the limitations inherent in materials.

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An example of the digital realm would include a recent collaboration between Pentagram and Counterpoint Studio where they created the identity for Somerset House’s exhibition

Mushrooms: the Art, Design and Future of Fungi.

THE BODY IN SPACE

The team was intent on having the typeface Hypha be inspired by the way mushrooms grow. Luke Powell of Pentagram tells It’s Nice That, “We wanted to create an identity that embraced the dirt and unevenness of the natural world and made a connection between the organic and digital which is so important to the current resurgence of interest in mushrooms.” They first devised an algorithm that was based solely on the science of mushroom growth. The mutation was random and easy to formulate, though they say harnessing the algorithm for typographic use was the hard part. It required them to create a “substrate”—a fertile area in which the type could grow and an inhibitor for where it could not. To further connect a viewer to the materiality of the typeface, they created an online tool which allows you to enter a word and see it “grow'' both in Mycelium form (wireframing) as well as what they term fruited (surface texture that looks like mushroom skin). Further, one can download the 3D mesh to further customize it to utilize in 3D space or printing. I tested the word SKIN with customizable rates of surface and growth.

HYPA Typeface by Pentagram

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

rica Matlow speaks of the transition from handmade to digital in her 1999 essay “Escape From the Flatlands,” where she evaluates the shifting culture of graphic design and the rate of adoption in academia. I found it interesting to be on the other side of this timeline, understanding what came of an expanding communication design curriculum that was previously only speculation.

THE BODY IN SPACE

It became true that the graphic designer needed to become versed in integrating moving images with sound, time, and space to produce work that appeared or behaved interactively. With this branching of technology, designers now gravitate towards a specialty and work non-linearly in diverse multi modal teams to execute a set of components or initiatives. Where previously the focus had been ‘strictly’ on the integration of static image and type and their relationship to line and proportion. Higher education needed to pivot and diversify. In critical art, the rules of aesthetic and execution were being challenged in a postmodern era. Employing the usual techniques around student critiques were also in need of restructuring in the educational system. Matlow states that everyone was simultaneously learning (Matlow 1999, 95-109).

Her biggest plea is the re-evaluation of curriculum to incorporate a broader range of disciplines such as cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology with perhaps the most important discussion circling around the application of the term “representation.” In cultural studies representation is how we display ourselves in cultural discourse which implies an understanding of power relations between forms of communication and the objects in which we communicate. This critical concept according to Ellen Lupton and Abbot J Miller would “focus not just on the themes and imagery of its objects (graphic design) but rather on linguistics and institutional systems that frame their production”.

The multiplicity of the modern graphic designer as proposed in “Escape from the flatlands” has become a convergence of many disciplines. Representation from a scientific perspective is more about how people acquire and store information about the world around them. It pulls from computational theory, artificial intelligence, environmental psychology, and biological systems to understand how humans categorize concepts in

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the physical world. Matlow asserts that understanding both the scientific and cultural implications will lead to breeding designers that will think past what is already known and done.

THE BODY IN SPACE

During my undergrad in textile design, my class was right at the cusp of technological adoption. For a f ield that would largely be called “CAD design” in the decade that followed, we only had a Photoshop class or two in my four year study. Entering the industry I felt wholly under-prepared for what was already a digital culture. I spent the early years of my career absorbing and ref ining my craft through software, “leaving behind” the hand skills I learned as an early designer. I would later come to appreciate the value of these skills and work harder to not only hone them but incorporate hand elements with the digital. My decisions today are guided by a materiality as it employs the senses. A typographic poster, for example, is far more exciting to experience as hand

Hand carved stamps M.Andre 2021

carved, stamped letters versus one manufactured in CAD; even despite the use of texture and imperfections. The slight rise in texture of ink on the page, the dependence on pressure, the marks where your knife slipped a little too far; these things are hard to plan for. For example, in the physical process of collage making there is a certain liberation in the decisiveness it requires of me. I can’t erase or change my cut line—re-paste. It forces me to work with the materials I have on hand—finding a connection to image and form making; embodied in a way that my Wacom can not. With the ‘option’ to endlessly play it can be equally a blessing as it is a burden. A means for continual modification, where nothing is complete, nothing is permanent. It’s why we’ve had to be creative about our file naming conventions and the use of the word “final” in our design process.

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S E N S O R Y

D E S I G N

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y comprehension of what it means to design for accessibility had only just begun with a dual lecture, the aforementioned Touchy Feely exhibit, and book The Senses: Design Beyond Vision co-curated by Ellen Lupton and Andrea Lipps. Both encapsulate how we might explore graphic design, product design, architecture, experience design, and animation as being more than visual. They highlighted how design with an interactive approach fosters design for inclusivity. As a sighted individual it's easy to pay no mind to the many ways our eyes define what’s in our periphery. With touch we are able to determine shape, surface texture, whether the items were cold or warm, hard, plush etc. But we wouldn’t know an object existed—there in the corner, if we hadn’t placed it there or made our way in its trajectory. Changes in ambiance also give clues to the periphery, a sense that is amplified in those who are ocularly challenged.

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How would you describe to a blind person the activities of a room, a scene in a movie, a spectacle in the foreground? How much of your assumed knowledge would you place in these descriptions?

And with so much information to relay, which parts are essential for painting an accurate mental picture?

“ ‘Visual communication’, is one of graphic design’s most pervasive and exclusionary myths. ‘Visual communication’ is a symptom and signpost of ocularcentrism— modernity’s obsession with

According to the WHO, the estimated number of people visually impaired in the world is 285 million, 39 million who are blind and 246 million who have low vision; 65% of people who are visually impaired and 82% of people who are blind are 50 and above years old. 5% of the 285 Million figure is attributed to childhood blindness. As we see from the data, there is a wide range in sightedness throughout the world. Stemming from Ellen’s lecture, I wanted to further explore how to design for accessibility and understand how these considerations are executed when you look “under the hood.”

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I was curious about the larger world of haptics, coding, CSS, and HTML. Combining these languages with the principles of UI/UX, I started to

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form an understanding of how all of these syntaxes layered together inform how we can design with accessibility in greater consideration.

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Initially these considerations went back to my quest for touch, but I was quickly realizing how all of the other senses were necessary in helping us feel connected through experience. As Juhani Pallasmaa points out in Hapticity and Time, “...the eyes collaborate with the other senses. All the senses including vision, are extensions of the sense of touch; the senses are specializations of the skin and all sensory experiences are related to tactility” (Pallasmaa 2000, 78-84).

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Meaning and memory take form through the senses. As we encounter objects in the world we discern and understand them in relation to other experiences we’ve had. Our senses are individual and in constant motion, they shift as we shift, changing the

nature of interaction over time and place. Some examples of sensory differences would include color blindness, where red and green are seen as similar in hue to blue and yellow. Individuals with multiple sclerosis, leprosy, neuropathy, or severe burns can lose sensitivity to touch. Those with SPD (sensory processing disorder) can feel unbearable distress from tags and seams in clothing or crave constant bodily motion. (Lupton, Lipps 2018, 20). These are a fraction of what is considered a disabled demographic that would benefit greatly from inclusive, multi-sensory design. Much of what we think about in design is grossly based on sight: “We are an ocularcentric culture which has turned the visual image into an art form causing serious sensory impoverishment” (Pallasmaa 2000, 78-84).

— ELLEN LUPTON

communication’ is a symptom and signpost of ocularcentrism— modernity’s obsession with the empire of the eye. Designers’ single-minded devotion to visual communication excludes people who touch, hear, or smell but do not see. Inclusive design practices range from eyesfree interaction design and audio description, to moulded typographics, and topographies of touch.

Designing with the senses in mind is not just about disability. It’s a humanistic view that takes into account the diversity of bodies and how bodies and sensory organs change over time. It deals with the thing-ness of being human. How experience tweaks our skin and muscles as it tickles, pops, and pinches. How it touches us and we touch it.

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Recent years have placed more focus on haptic devices which emphasize the sensations of vibration and sound. Close your eyes and think for a moment about watching a dancer in silence. They are pounding the floor in a beat, to a sound—you can't hear. How differently might you experience it if the shirt you wore vibrated and pulsed, or displayed the highs and lows of the beat with lights. The Soundshirt developed by Cutecircut is one such example that is zoned to “sense” different instruments in an ensemble and relay the incoming data as real time pulses. They are also the makers of the Hug Shirt, a similar piece of technology that constricts in form resembling the hug from another individual. The device uses Bluetooth technology and an app

called HugMe which runs on Java. You create the hug and transmit it to another user connected on their shirt. Other products, such as the Squease vest, gives a “hug” to calm children with ADHD, autism, or sensory disorder, which function through compressions. For many, the limitation to owning these methods of sensory support are their cost. But as technology increases, in theory, the cost of these items will go down. Given that the global wearable market share for 2019 was USD 32.63 billion, and is projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.9% f rom 2020 to 2027, I am conf ident that wearables are not just a novel fad but will be an integral mediator between the environment and our experiences.

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// touch includes U I #include // U X <MPR121.h> #include <Wire.h> #define MPR121_ADDR 0x5C #define MPR121_INT 4

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Iconst int triggerPin = A0; boolean thisTriggerValue = false; boolean lastTriggerValue = false; n the progression of my course of study at VCFA, I came upon multiple cases of language that largely used skin in the metaphorical sense to represent a layering of sorts or more specifically a material choice. UI and UX naturally came up as a linguistic representation, as the UI is often termed the “skin” while UX is considered the “bones and muscles.” When we take into account affect, and how many interfaces we interact with on a minute by minute basis, it’s easy to see how an entire subset of graphic design was built by parts of the originating theory. After all, we are communication designers first.

Material.io published a succinct set of guidelines that cover assistive technology, hierarchy, color and contrast, layout, typography, writing, sound, motion and implementation. Screen readers such as Google’s TalkBack offer users with two modes of navigation. “Explore by touch” where the reader can run their fingers across the screen and hear the words directly underneath. And the other, “linear navigation,” in which users may move the focus of a page allowing them to hone in on certain elements in a linear fashion. Other assistive technologies allow the user to move through page landmarks such as headings. THE BODY IN SPACE

char touchStatus[12] = {'0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0' '0', '0', '0', '0', '0'};

void setup(){ MPR121.begin(MPR121_ADDR); MPR121.setInterruptPin(MPR121_INT);

, ',

;

#define MPR121_INT 4 const int triggerPin = A0; boolean thisTriggerValue = false; boolean lastTriggerValue = false; Like any typographic content, hierarchy plays a vital role in allowing the consumer to understand what’s important. In assistive technologies such as TalkBack, code is written in such a way to establish this structure so the details can be spoken with required breaks. Without setting “class” and “divisions” with strong semantic tags in the HTML, items such as a menu can be read as a run on list with little differentiation between “appetizers” and “main dishes.”

char touchStatus[12] = {'0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0', '0'}; 107

Some syntax like <b> for bold versus <strong> will have the same visual output, however they are understood and interpreted differently by a screen reader and therefore create the visual hierarchy sighted individuals often don’t think about. While HTML and CSS have not been the primary focus, the intricacies and the ability to make something more democratic through thoughtful execution is important to me.

void setup(){ MPR121.begin(MPR121_ADDR); MPR121.setInterruptPin(MPR121_INT); These aspects of graphic design are a new layer of awareness that is intriguing to my questions of tactility and touch. The products we design to mediate with our bodies should be just as much considered for what they enhance as well as what they take away.

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W H A T

D O E S

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arah Hendren, author of What Can a Body Do, How We Meet the Built World, blew open my mind and subverted my preconceived notions of how our bodies are intertwined with the products we use. With clear examples, channeled through the lens of disability, Hendren teaches us about the complexities of “abnormal” bodies in a world already built for someone else. She shows us how well intended design can fail with its approach to fix the broken relationship with cumbersome devices that bring the user “back” to a societal norm. She challenges ideas of “normalcy” and who these ideals serve by calling attention to the awkwardness where enhanced bodies and landscapes of the world meet.

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Her writing has challenged my vocabulary of what assistive technology is, and how Low-fi solutions can be more powerful than Hi-Tech ones. Whether it’s an arm, a chair, a writing utensil, or a means to get from point A to point B, she implores us to question what is revealed when we design for individuals versus the masses. What does it mean to be part of a mass culture of products? What if the technology we develop meets the body where it is vs aiming to restore the body in its spaces?

F O R ?

"Bodies in Space" Illustration M.Andre 2021

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Photo of bioplastic experimentations. M.Andre 2021

I use the term subverted because prior to reading her book I was in search of literal translations of what design solves for. I wanted to make a device that allowed for the experience to connect to another human being. But didn’t I already have that in the vibration of a text message? How could I get closer, a more intimate solution? From a commercial standpoint there are real world objectives in solving body dilemmas and communication interferences, but if we start f irst with a little bit of absurdity, we awaken what Hendren calls “Social Imagination.” Through surveying the works of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, both in Speculative Everything and Design Noir , I am shifting focus to the necessity of iteration, playfulness, and “what if ’s” that are often left behind as we enter the rigid tensions of adulthood, of growing up faster than we should, or when we’re taught “form must follow function.” Words that again and again have us in this continued state of feeling required to have an answer.

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The simple act of slowing down, leaving space in and between an act of doing, as it turns out, invites a host of acknowledgment within the body. It frees us from doing what is perceived as expected, to what is truly needed of the moment. Releasing judgment and expectation from my design practice has been one step towards this liberation. It’s taking time to trust that even if my hands do not know the “right way” they will lead towards a path of discovery and, intrinsically, a deeper method of learning and actuation. It has given me the space to be in the moment in a way that previously I may have tossed off as not having time for. I am still conflicted about the manufactured versus the natural, the real versus the fake. I see value when the end result serves an equitable purpose and places the senses at the foref ront of experience, but the desire to control these

polarities can only be managed by my own material choices, made into existence by my experiences and the ones I share with others. I have viewed my time in grad school as a sort of rebordering. Reaccessing my objectives as a maker, my intentions as a mother, and an acceptance of a body that, despite its many imperfections, is whole and beautiful. In the process of my research and especially living in the time of COVID, I am reminded of the challenges we face with the tangible aspects of human connection. I hope that through play my experiments bring a sense of connection in their tactility, and foster the regenerative aspects of sensory design.

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04 THE

MOTHERS

T H E

M O T H E R S

he came in a silver package with white writing. I carefully opened the outer layer to reveal a clear liquid-f illed pouch. Inside she was the color of warm honey swirled in milk. Fitting in the round of my palm, messy, like me, like jelly. I had ordered her online.

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Some people know that they are meant to be mothers, so sure of that desire, while others navigate their way with hope, luck, and circumstance. I always wanted to be a mother, but I feared that I wouldn’t know how to be gentle, warm, and engaged. I find it strange that even at a young age; I sensed in my bones that my path to having children would not come easy—another boundary to overcome that didn’t seem to stop me. To feel the growth of another human inside of you. To witness your body morph, and, in my case, have four hands and four feet extending from your skin, attached inside you, feeding from you—it is indescribable. It can’t do anything BUT change you.

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I am mothering differently these days, in this most unusual of years.

SCOBY profile view during growth

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These mothers, the SCOBYs, grow infinitely, filling the shape of the vessel in which they lay, growing on top of itself one fiber at a time, needing only food and warmth. The food environment is made with black tea and sugar, the base of a Kombucha brew. The growth is slimy, translucent at first, and becoming more opaque like naked squid. She likes it warm in there, a balmy 82 degrees, which I reach with heat mats and cocooned in towels. She grows slower now. It's nearing winter in the

North East and her caramel skin is uneven, needing more nutrients. In the summer she only requires her elixir once more in her growth. In the span of a month and a half she feeds the baby growth until harvest, who by then is larger than mother, and has become a mother herself!

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Though she is reusable, the original mother will become tired and eventually discarded. Like all natural organisms she can be returned to the earth.

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Dear mothers, You amazed me In time I knewthat they’d I learnedof allTheir yourMultiplying moods harvest was quite fruitful cell by cell grow frail The dearmothers motherdied today. In those brighter sunny days They’d wain in bubbling breath AYoupart of methat died Itoo. forget am you You f loated in the darkness Before a cloud ofthesullen blubber Without knowing how to tell As they swam along river Over tired under nourished And in my own Would memoryrob them of their blaze Followingyousugary baited depth Lives a moment once knew In secret Done, doing all -life had tocries do of frustration Dear mothersI placethey uponfed.you Of the very lives We had tea every Resilience is ourOnepillar more chance of giving life third Thursday IItwas warned of their exhaustion holds us Warm threadinbysolitude threadthey simmered Youthey sacrificedwe So much of them shed read I bringin you back to All alone their bed You can't give in restmake in the wild Of the days when things And every time they thought they’d We must not lay were harder It’s theytime that-hasthen before come One last Before these things were said to shed grand had bled sacrifice

The Mothers

The mothers died today. A part of me died too. Over tired under nourished Done doing all life had to do. I was warned of their exhaustion So much of them they shed And every time they thought they’d make It’s they that then had bled Dear mothers You amazed me Multiplying cell by cell You f loated in the darkness Without knowing how to tell In secret cries of frustration Of the very lives they fed.

Warm in solitude they simmered All alone in their bed

And in my own memory Lives a moment you once knew

In time I knew that they’d grow frail They’d wain in bubbling breath

Resilience is our pillar It holds us thread by thread

As they swam along the river Following sugary baited depth We had tea every third Thursday You sacrificed we read Of the days when things were harder Before these things were said I learned of all your moods dear mother You forget that I am you

You can't give in We must not lay before time has come to shed Their harvest was quite fruitful In those brighter sunny days

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Before a cloud of sullen blubber Would rob them of their blaze Dear mothers I place upon you One more chance of giving life I bring you back to rest in the wild One last grand sacrifice

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P R O J E C T

M A T E R I A L I S M

y first (and initially only) specimens were a growth of a bacterial yeast, the byproduct of fermented black tea, AKA kombucha. I became interested in growing the SCOBYs (Symbiotic Culture of Bacterial Yeast) when I understood that they can be turned into a skin-like leather by drying it in sheets. I was drawn to its likeness to human skin (admittedly, it was an odd factor that fits my often morbid curiosity). It grows in layers, is regenerative, durable, and conditional to its environment. When dried, it forms a self-fusing, nowaste, biodegradable medium. The name for the pellicle, “A Mother,” is as much a representational form of skin as it is literal; I survey the relationship of a healthy mother to a tired mother.

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The literal death of the SCOBY mothers—yes that did happen, not once but twice—had me questioning everything I had been working towards. All metaphors aside, I went back to the origins of my purpose which was to explore a medium that didn’t yet exist in the physical sense while considering the environmental impact of its presences in space. This led to investigating a wider range of materials in smart and natural polymer-based mediums.

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What was this for, and to what end? Mostly inquisitiveness, but it spawned a life of its own. My early research into the SCOBY leathers led me to understand that it is considered both a smart material and biomaterial. It is smart because the growth process is self-regenerative—a subcategory of self-healing Natural Polymers; and it is a biomaterial as it will naturally decompose without harm to the environment (pH loving gardens do well with SCOBY in their soil).

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By design a smart material should enhance the efficacy of an object while also performing an adaptability with its environmental condition. Smart materials are more defined by their function as opposed to material properties; these properties are contingent on the environment in which they are in, or in the response of external stimuli. The stimuli could be anything: pressure, force, temperature, stress, or chemical reaction. They are simultaneously actuators as well as sensors. Smart materials communicate, transform, conduct energy, and in some instances grow. They join these phenomena by way of our senses.

When a material is bio-based it means that it is derived from plants and naturally occurring structures, either biologically grown or produced by microbial activity. Agricultural products like corn and cassava can be used to make bio-based plastics—such as bio-PET, bio-PE and bio-PP—that are chemically identical to their petroleum-based alternatives (Goldstein 2020). These substances, while less harmful to the environment, are not a cure-all as they still require being part of a circular recycling system. However, using what are already byproducts from, say, cattle feed operations (like corn husks) that would normally be placed in landfills can be used in better and healthier ways if used to make paper, packaging, or building materials. Prasad Boradkar, Co-Director of the Biomimicry Center at Arizona State University asks,

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“

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— PRASAD BORADKAR

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...I wonder if this anthropocentrism in design has encouraged a myopic and self-centered conception of our goals as designers. Clearly, the things we design with such diligent research and utmost care for people do not impact only people. The consequences of design activity (human-centered or otherwise) reach far beyond humans. We are, after all, one of several million species who live on this planet. Why then, should our design be so anthropocentric? Can we not design products and services keeping in mind not only people, but also other species and entire ecosystems? Can we not envision the potential impacts of all that we design not only on people, but on all inhabitants of our biosphere? Is it time to re-examine our anthropocentrism in design?

C O N C L U S I O N

esign is constantly dealing with the heuristic of things that are in flux. In this process I have had to consider the adaptation that needed to occur, both for my vision of the experience on display—my desire to connect in the physical sense with my peers on this topic, and two, for the actual materiality that needed to evolve as conditions changed; as my connection to them changed. It is through play that I have been reconnected to my roots as a designer—a curiosity that is fed—yes, by a desire to forge a more sustainable path; but also a re-imagining of how tactile materials bring meaning and significance to the world of design.

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As I continue to be a part of the system that produces goods and services, while educating rising generations how to design for said products, I want to always ask questions of the boundaries they cross and how we may shape a culture versus culture shaping us. Internally, this thesis has been a journey of returning to my body by releasing a silence. It is my hope that others find power in my words and come to a state of personal gratitude and grace.

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A C T I V I S M

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ll of the recipes I experimented with are part of a growing open source network tested by artists and scientists similar to myself who are curious about the materials of our future. It is my objective to share my findings in hopes it inspires another to take what I've found and expand on it—or simply play and accept the strangeness of their properties. As part, I made natural dyes, one of which consited of mordants of Oak Gall dye and Iron. Oak galls are formed when a female oak gall wasp lays eggs on the vein of an oak leaf. When the larvae hatch, chemical and hormone interaction between

R E C I P E S

the wasp eggs and the oak produces tannic acid and causes the tree to grow the round lumpy gall. Crushing these and boiling over medium heat for several hours will produce a light brown dye, by adding an iron mordant (white vinegar and rusty nails tincture) the natural material will become a rich purplish/ black color. Soaking the galls outdoors in an old metal bucket will also work as the iron component. I did some mark making by painting first with the oak gall followed by a brush of the iron. It was interesting to watch the chemical reaction transform the tone and weight of the ink.

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Iron gall ink was a common ink used as early as Fourteenth century for writing manuscripts. It remained in use up until the Twentieth century.

SCOBY Leather: Black: dyed oak gall and iron, Brown: no dyeblack tea brew, Cream: green tea brew, Red: concineal Dye

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KOMBUCHA LEATHER

INGREDIENTS ** Will produce enough for a 5"X 7" container about 2-3 inches deep 1 Kombucha Culture SCOBY with starter liquid 2 Liters of water 2 teabags (Black or Green Tea) 130

200 grams granulated white sugar

EQUIPMENT 1 Non- porous container with lid 1 seedling mat with thermometer (ideally covering the footprint of the container) Measuring cup Pot to brew tea Rubber gloves 1 Wooden board ( for drying the leather) Rubbing Alcohol *Utility Knife *Tape

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*Breathable (cotton patch)

THE PROCESS

Step 1 Set up station where you will grow the material. This should be a warm and dark space. *Cut a 3" x 3" hole in the lid and tape cotton patch to lid.

Step 3 Make tea/ sugar mixture. Bring water to a boil and remove from heat. Add teabags and steep for 15 minutes. Remove teabags add sugar stirring until dissolved. Pour liquid into sterilized container.

Step 5 Cover container with lid and cover with breathable cloth. (I skipped cutting a hole in the lid and used a beach towel instead while leaving a corner open to breathe. You want to let air out while keeping heat in.) Turn on heat mat and set to 80 degrees.

Step 7 Once grown to desired thickness, remove f rom liquid and wash thoroughly with dish soap and cold water.

Step 2 Sterilize container with 70% Alcohol solution and let air dry. Place heating mat under container (do not turn mat on)

Step 4 Let liquid cool to room temperature (below 86 degrees Fahrenheit). Add Live Kombucha Culture.

Step 6

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Check growth weekly with sterilized gloves to avoid contamination. In roughly 4 weeks growth should be about 1/2- 3/4" thick.

Step 8 Lay sheet out on wooden board and let air dry for 1-2 weeks. Note dry time will vary based on thickness and material will shrink about 10% in size.

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AVOID CONTAMINATION

To avoid contamination always disinfect your container, area, gloves and any tools before setting up or touching the material. SCOBY should never come in contact with metal (rulers, tongs, containers etc.) while in the process of growing. Breathe away from container to avoid bacteria spores from entering.

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Dye material like traditional textiles. do not boil SCOBYS. The acidity of the SCOBYS will effect the Dye if it is PH sensistive. Concineal, dyes red for the mothers, and purple for the plastics below. This is the reason. Drape wet pieces on top of each other and they will grow together while drying. Note: you can take previously dried pieces, soak in water for a few minutes and then re-dry together.

THE MOTHERS

Pieces can be moulded on a 3D form to dry as long as long as surface is porous. Wet material is heavy and will need to be held in place the form, wire mesh, string or wire can be used to hold in place. Note: Material has a high water content and will mold if water is not able to evaporate. Leather must be sealed to prolong boidegration and prohibit water f rom re-constitution. Seal with natural waterproofers.

EXPERIMENT

To make "natural" holes in the material place objects in grow vat making sure they come higher than the liquid and can stand up straight while still being covered with lid (medium will grow on the surface). Be sure to disinfect them before placing in vat, and avoid any metal materials. When you begin drying, you lay material flat on drying surface. Dried material(depending on thickness) can range in feeling like rice paper to a leather hide. All densities with have veining. For a leather with a more even consistency, blend SCOBY with 1 tsp of activated gelatin (per 2 cups wet SCOBY) to an applesauce consistency. Spread or gently roll this paste out on wooden board and let dry. This will need more time than the conventional dry method. When paste is no longer tacky to the touch and corners can begin to be peeled, use a flat edge scrapper to slowly pull off board. Material will still be tacky. If you find it's too hard to release, continue to dry. Once removed, flip over and let dry one more as needed.

Dried leather with tooth pick holes

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Top: Silicone beads sandwiched between paste layers Left: Concineal dye concentrate added to paste

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Coffee bean filled sensory pouch

Dye Trials: Black= Iron oak , Red=Concineal, Honey= No dye, natural dried 2mm thick

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Finger "massager"

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Kinetic sand filled "hackie sac"

Book covering trial

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Aggressive bracelet

Weaving trial

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BIOPLASTICS The making of basic bioplastics is a fairly straight forward process. You need to cook water, glycerin, and a gelling agent, such as Agar Agar, Gelatin, or Carrageenan. The ratios needed will vary based on desired pliability. Understanding their properties is an important aspect in determining which gelling agent will best suit your desired results.

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Glycerin/ Glycerol: Is an colorless, odorless, viscous liquid that is sweettasting and non-toxic. It is widely used in the food industry to keep things moist , as a sweetener, or filler. Glycerin is mildly antimicrobial and antiviral. Glycerol is used in medical, pharmaceutical and personal care preparations, often as a means of improving smoothness, providing lubrication, and as a humectant—think wound care, e-cigarettes and soaps. In my purposes higher levels of glycerin/ glycerol is used to increase the plasticity. A range of 0 (brittle)- 60 (flexible) ml of Glycerin can be added as long as water to gelling agent ratio remains consistent.

substitute to Gelatin and is often used in biological labs as a substrate for a petri dish cultures. With a higher Glycerin content this plastic will remain flexible like window jellies.

Agar Agar: is a jelly-like substance extracted from red seaweed it comes in powder or sheet form. It can only be dissolved in hot water and is colorless. It has a jellying power eight times greater than Gelatin but shrinks roughly 30% in size and thickness. It is used int the food industry as a vegan

Carrageenan Kappa/ Lota: is an additive used to thicken, emulsify, and preserve foods and drinks. It’s a natural ingredient derived from red seaweed (also called Irish moss).

Gelatin: is a glutinous substance made from bones, connective tissues, and skins of animals. It goes through a process of cooling and evaporation to separate the calcium from the tissues and de-fat the coagulated substance. It comes in sheets or powder form. Gelatin can dissolve in cool water and should be "bloomed" in this manner before adding with other ingredients. It has a low boiling point and can not be heated above room temperature. Gelatin shrinks roughly 10% in volume.

EQUIPMENT

Stainless steel 4 quart pot Stove or hot plate Silicone or stainless steel utensils spatula, spoon, whisk Measuring cup Food scale Medicine cups (I used cough syrup cups) Non-porous surface (such as *acrylic sheet or baking tray) 137

*Wooden frame (I used canvas stretchers- Ideally you'll want a flatter frame with no beveled edges)

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The mixing process is the same for each recipe. 1. Using food scale measure ingredients. 2.Mix water with gelling agent (apply slow, low heat) add Glycerin once water and gelling agent are fully absorbed. 3. Cook to rolling boil until liquid becomes viscous then remove from heat allowing to slightly thicken. Add pigmentation now or experiment during the pouring process. 4. Pour into mould or on non porous surface (in frame or free form). Allow to rest for 24 hours then remove from mould or cut away from wooden frame. 5. Material is dry when it is no longer cool to the touch.

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RECIPE 1 : AGAR AGAR 320 ml water 13 g Agar Agar powder 43 ml Glycerin

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This specimen used Concineal dye which is a natural dye derived f rom the blood of a scale female beetle that invades the nopal cactus species. it is used in making Carmine and is widely used in cosmetics for its rich red hue. The beauty of this dye is that it is modif ied by the acidity of the base. Low pH or more acidic mixture will result in brilliant reds, higher pH will produce purple. R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

RECIPE 2: AGAR AGAR/ Spirulina

500 ml water 25 g Agar Agar powder 30 ml Glycerin 2.5 g Spirulina 1 g beeswax pellets (food grade)

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Spirulina is a blue-green algae, and is believed to be one of the oldest life forms on Earth. It is believed to be an endurance booster

RECIPE 3: Carrageenan/ Spirulina

350 ml water 16 g Carrageenan Kappa 4 ml Glycerin 2 g Spirulina

RECIPE 4: Gelatin

240 ml cold water 48 g Gelatin 10-24 ml Glycerin

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This specimen used highest ratio of glycerin and has dried thick but flexible. Tumeric spice powder was added while cooking the ingredients. This mixture was sticky and clung to everything. ** I may have cooked this too quickly at too high a temperature.

Gelatin crystals

This specimen used lower quantity of Glycerin and has dried to a hard translucent plastic. Tumeric powder, concineal dye concentrate, and blue/ violet thermo-chromic pigment (liquefied) were added after pouring in wooden frame while liquid was still hot.

RECIPE 5: Gelatin Foam

240 ml cold water 48 g Gelatin 24 ml Glycerin 7ml dish soap

THE MOTHERS

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** Added step** Whisk the water and gelatin until it be comes frothy. It will have a farina consistency. Continue to whisk as you add glycerin. After 3-5 minutes, add dish soap. You can play with amount of soap. When you cook low and long the foam will separate to the top. And you can scoop it off and form as desired. The remaining liquid will form a solid plastic once cured.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y Armstrong T., “The Stages of Ego development According to Jane Loevinger” American Institute for Learning and Human Development, January 2020, www.institute4learning. com/2020/01/31/the-stages-of-ego-development-according-to-jane-loevinger/ Benthien, C, Skin on the Cultural Border Between Self and the World, New York, Columbia Press 2002 Bestley R., Noble I., Visual Research: An Introduction to Research Methods in Graphic Design, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019 Boradkar P., Core Jr., “Design for All Life”, Core 77, March 2015 www.core77.com/ posts/31264/Design-for-All-Life Coole,D., Frost, S., New Materialism. Ontology Agency and Politics, North Carolina, Duke University Press, 2010

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Cutting Edge Women’s Research Group, Desire by Design:Body, Territories, and New Technologies, London, I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1999. Deepwell K. “Digital Sampling” pp7793. Matlow E., “Escape from the Flatlands: The impact of New technologies on Graphic Design Education”, pp 95-109 Deitch J., “Exhibition Histories: Jeffrey Deitch on “Post Human” in 1992/93”, Spike Art Magazine, Issue 47, Spring 2016 www.spikeartmagazine.com/articles/exhibition-histories-0 De Kerckhove, D., De Almeida C., The Point of Being, Newcastle upon Tyne UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2014, pp. 9-60 Dunne A., Raby F., Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects, Basel Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 2001 Dunne A., Raby F., Speculative Everything: Design Fiction and Social Dreaming, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2013 Field, T. (1999). "American adolescents touch each other less and are more aggressive toward their peers as compared with French adolescents." Adolescence, Vol34, 753-758.

INDEX

Field T., Touch, Massachusetts MIT Press, 2014

Genova,A, Moriwaki, K, Fashion and Technology a Guide to Materials and Applications, New York, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016 Goldstein N., “Demystifying Biopolymers And Compostable Packaging”, BioCycle, December 2020 www.biocycle.net/demystifying-biopolymers-and-compostablepackaging/ Hayles, N, How We Became PostHuman. Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999 Hendren, S, What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World, New York: Riverhead Books, 2020 Hook, K, Designing With The Body. Somaesthetic Interaction Design, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2018 Ilyin, N, Chasing the Perfect. Thoughts on Modernist Design in Our Time, New York, Bellerophron Publications 2006 Ilyin, N, Writing For the Design Mind, London, Bloomsbury Visual Arts 2019

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Jablonski, G, Nina, Skin, a Natural History, California, University of California Press 2006 Kolk, Bessel Van der, MD, The Body Keeps the Score, New York, Penguin Books, 2014 Lupton, E., Abbot Miller, J., Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design, London UK, Phaidon press, originally published 1996, 2008; Lupton E., Lipps A., The Senses: Design Beyond Vision, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2018 Lupton E., Miller J., Design, Writing, Research, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996 Lupton, E, Skin Surface Substance and Design, New York, Princeton Architectural press 2002 Millman, D., host.“Tiffany Shlain” Design Matters with Debbie Millman, Podcast App, October 26,2020

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space

Montagu, A. Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin. United Kingdom: Harper Collins, 1986. Orlan, “Manifesto of Carnal Art/L'Art Charnel and Refiguration/Self-Hybridation series and other works”, N.Paradoxa International Feminist Art Journal, vol.12 July 2003: pp.44-48 www.ktpress.co.uk/nparadoxa-volume-details.asp?volumeid=12 Pailes-Friedman,R, Smart Textiles for Designers Inventing the Future of Fabrics, London UK, Laurence King Publishing, 2016 Pallasmaa J., “Hapticity and Time”,The Architectural Review, vol.207, issue 1239, May 2000, 78-84 Picard, R, Affective Computing, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1997 Poynor, R, No More Rules Graphic Design and Postmodernism, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2003

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Quinn, Bradley, Textile Visionaries Innovation and Sustainability in Textile Design, London UK, Laurence King Publishing, 2013 Sorrel, W., The Other face, The Mask in the Arts, London, Thames and Hudson, 1973: p12 Turkle S., Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Eachother, United States: Basic Books, 2017 https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/mushrooms-art-design-and-future-fungi

OPEN SOURCE Biomaterial recipes: https://www.instructables.com/Kombucha-Fabric/ http://kombuchahome.com/how-to-divide-a-scoby-remove-baby-from-mother/ https://materiom.org/

INDEX

https://www.materialactivism.com/recipes-for-material-activism

C O L O P H O N

TITLE FONT, HEADERS & SUB HEADERS: Rebordering 11pt, Kerning 500 Designed in 2020 by Marielena Andre specifically for this project. This font was conceptualized when she was gifted an incomplete set of letter guides from her Aunt Ro. The vintage lettering guide No. VC 3/8P by Wricoprint USA Pat.1926 was used to form the base of the capital letters and has been expanded (though not in this volume) to a full family inclusive of core glyphs. BODY: Monteserrat, regular 9pt CHAPTER NUMBERS: Monteserrat, Bold 200pt 149

The old posters and signs in the traditional Montserrat neighborhood of Buenos Aires inspired Julieta Ulanovsky to design this typeface and rescue the beauty of urban typography that emerged in the first half of the twentieth century. As urban development changes that place, it will never return to its original form and loses forever the designs that are so special and unique. The letters that inspired this project have work, dedication, care, color, contrast, light and life, day and night! These are the types that make the city look so beautiful. The Montserrat Project began with the idea to rescue what is in Montserrat and set it free under a libre license, the SIL Open Font License. Updated November 2017: The family was redrawn by Jacques Le Bailly at Baron von Fonthausen over the summer, and the full set of weights were adjusted to make the Regular lighter and better for use in longer texts. In fall, Julieta Ulanovsky, Sol Matas, and Juan Pablo del Peral, led the development of Cyrillic support, with consultation with Carolina Giovagnoli, Maria Doreuli, and Alexei Vanyashin.

R E B O R D E R I N G the body in space