Field Recording Gestalt

This project was an assignment for DSGN 264: Art, Design & Digital Culture. Using Illustrator, we created an abstract depiction of our own field recording without using any color or gradients. For my field recording, I recorded the sound of a car driving down an empty highway at night.

We started with three studies, further refined them, and then created a final design based on our studies.

Final Design

In my design, I wanted to depict the hollowness of the sound and the emptiness of the highway at night. I drew mostly from my first study, using different line thicknesses to create the illusion of a gradient and to illustrate movement. I also wanted to create a sense of depth, using the winding band of white and the spacing of the lines to show perspective. Lastly, I created a ripple in the black lines in the middle of the white band to illustrate a disturbance in the smoothness and uniformity of the sound.

Speculative Design Manual

In this project for DSGN 264, we were asked to design a manual for an object based off of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby’s idea of speculative design, or “design as a means of speculating how things could be.” Speculative design explores possibilities of how reality could have been or might be in the future.

The “Climate-Illüsion Window Replacer”

This manual describes a speculative design for an expanding window panel. It replaces original window panels and any covers unsettling views of pollution and wildfires, creating the illusion of a beautiful climate. It also adjusts indoor temperature and provides fresh air. The purpose of this design is to prompt the viewer to reflect on how we cover up and ignore the consequences of our exploitation of the environment.