
Catalogs



This catalog is a study on the connection between stairs and social class. As I documented stair cases I started to notice that each example looked different depending on location. An expensive hotel or whether I was at a hidden stairway in LA next to a homeless encampment each one had a uniqueness to it. Not only are they a connection to different levels, but they serve as a connection to status within the city.
City Excursion Takeaways
I found myself inspired by stairs. I saw stairs as a type of bridge to different interfaces. Stairs can be a place for gathering, community, and listening. Stairs can be a place for tourism and people watching. Stairs can take you to monuments, vistas, history and culture. Stairs can be behind bars, tucked away leading to places unknown. Stairs can also appear different depending on social class. Stairs can be political.
I found glimpses of what I like to think of as the guts of a city. Wires sticking out, weird plastic cylinders with numbers labeled on them. A metallic skeleton with attachments everywhere. I wonder what the a city would look like if everything else was stripped away except for the wires and guts that light it up at night.
I remember as a kid playing with my toys and pretending to build cities out of them. Sometimes I'd make homes for my toys out of dirt, legos, twigs and leaves. Little cars going through tunnels built out of sand, action figures scaling tall furniture imagined to be buildings.
Imaginary City Drawings:
City of Bus Life
City of Transitions

The City of Transition is made from photogrammetry scans of stairs and bridges. In this city the people are constantly in a state of transition as they are moving down, up, and across to get to where they want to go. The city is fragmented as if it was permanently in a state of loading, the ethos of the city.
City of Disrupted Views
The City of Disrupted Views is constantly in a state of flux. Its citizens are always on the move as they slide from wire to wire. The city cannot function without the kinetic energy as it fuels the city with electricity. Although everyone is on the move and seemingly headed somewhere their view of a destination is disrupted by wire and movement.





Piecing Projects Together...
Collaborating Designers: ALAN AMAYA, ALISON CHANG, GUOWEI LYU, RONGDA TAO, ZEYU WANG, QIANYUE YUWENThe Eye of Providence City, named after the "All-Seeing Eye of God,” to symbolize a benevolent order; Maintained by the eye machines who keep a watchful eye over the lower corners of the city. The all seeing machines are not allowed in the upper half of the city because residents who live closer to the "Great Architect Of the Universe" are least likely to commit crimes...so they say.
This photograph was taken by one of the all seeing machines in the lower level of the city. It depicts the development of the city. Made from old transportation vehicles called buses. Residents who are considered working class live in the lower level people here are always under the watchful eye.


This image taken by a passing residents show the way in which machines detect suspicious behavior. Whispering is considered suspicious and the machines work to identify people who are to be kept under heavy surveillance. This couple has been missing since this photo was taken.
The eye machines follow residents throughout the city, always knowing where and what they are doing. This is designed to control citizen behavior and prevent actions that may be considered a threat to the ruling class.
Project Brief:
Your brief is to create a city, a metropolis. This is, of course, an absurd task to try to tackle literally. Your project - your city - will be a creative and radical abstraction, a speculative imagining where certain conditions or situations are reinterpreted and amplified. Crucially, rather than taking a top-down approach to designing your city, you will create it from the inside out. You will let its form emerge through the act of combining custom parts which you will formulate. Consider your city as a condition which spreads out in all directions, an immersive environment without beginning or end. Your custom kit of design elements – the building blocks of your city – will emerge from your group's shared and individual investigations, interests, subjective experiences. Your city will ultimately take the form of a composite multimedia drawing, which you will collectively engineer, annotate, and imagine inhabiting.
Brief
Design a technological something (e.g., wearable, device, tool, space,software, infrastructure) that gives YOU, or one of your peers, a special ability or superpower. The final deliverable is a prototype or prop, brought to life through demo, performance, enactment, and/or visual narrative.
Project Statement
Digital Altar is designed as a place to find creative power. What motivated me to make it is to discover a new understanding of practice and ritual through the process of making. As a creative, I sometimes myself confronted with creative blocks. A lot of times this is due to stress and anxiety that tend to inhibit my creative ability. Therefore I wanted to create a power that uses the blocks to gain access to something new and lean into it. The way that I have interpreted super power is rooted in spiritual and ritual practices. Having a consistent practice like meditation or art, I can gain a deeper relationship with the self and gain access to new abilities that strengthen the practice.
I embarked on a ritualistic path of making, to put this idea into practice. I made 3D digital altars, made from GIFs; ingredients from the internet, and then I made a 11.5x11.5 acrylic cube, with a laser cut pixelated texture, as a relic to offer the altar. By offering a 3D GIF to the altar the system becomes circular, and therefore regenerative. Creating a regenerative cycle between the physical and the digital is a new practice I am proposing through this project. I am inspired by a quote by Alfred Gell from his essay, “The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology,” where he makes the comparison between art and religion, “Just as anthropology of religion commences with the explicit or implicit denial of the claims religions make on believers, so the anthropology of art has to begin with a denial of the claims which objects of art make on the people who live under their spell, and also on ourselves, in so far as we are all self-confessed devotees of the Art Cult.” (Gell 42). Which makes me wonder about the properties of art that ensnare an audience to it. Gell goes on to argue that the Technology of Enchantment is based on the technical process which casts a spell in order to see the real world in an enchanted form. As such I was interested in investigating the technical process that art uses in order to cast a spell, such as gestalt properties which pull in observers by exploiting characteristic biases of human visual perception which work to find patterns. I wanted to work with GIFs because they have a circular pattern, and hypnotic gestalt properties. I invite others to join in on the ritual by following the instructions in the video and create a dialectic with the work.
Process
Installation



Documentation



Installation projection video and sculpture.




Project Description:
Sanctus Intelligentia Artificialis, is an exploration of the possible relationships humans can build with artificial intelligence in the work place. I was inspired to look at the relationship between my father who is a truck driver and his truck to speculate on the future of truck driving as it becomes autonomous. The video follows Guillermo Amaya on a typical workday that includes maintenance, listening, and a lot of time on the road. This context for me provided a lot of room to imagine the kinship that is possible between a trucker and machine or father and machine?
I approached this topic from the standpoint of indigenous epistemologies, inspired by the essay, “Making Kin with the Machines” by Jason Edward Lewis, Noelani Arista, Archer Pechawis, and Suzanne Kite. The video references Kite and Lewis discussing the importance of accommodating the “non-human” by creating complex kin-networks and raising the question “how do we create an ethical framework for AI by using protocols?”
Sanctus Intelligentia Artificialis, is an exploration of the possible relationships humans can build with artificial intelligence in the work place. I was inspired to look at the relationship between my father who is a truck driver and his truck to speculate on the future of truck driving as it becomes autonomous. The video follows Guillermo Amaya on a typical workday that includes maintenance, listening, and a lot of time on the road. This context for me provided a lot of room to imagine the kinship that is possible between a trucker and machine or father and machine?
I approached this topic from the standpoint of indigenous epistemologies, inspired by the essay, “Making Kin with the Machines” by Jason Edward Lewis, Noelani Arista, Archer Pechawis, and Suzanne Kite. The video references Kite and Lewis discussing the importance of accommodating the “non-human” by creating complex kin-networks and raising the question “how do we create an ethical framework for AI by using protocols?”
Project Brief:
How will we work tomorrow? Where will we work tomorrow? What will we work on tomorrow? What will “work” be, tomorrow? Will we work tomorrow? Why do we work? (...and who is "we"?)
There was a time when everything was “work.” In this studio, we will engage in a collective inquiry about this huge topic. Rather than attempt to be comprehensive (which would be impossible), we will instead focus on novel perspectives from guest experts and selected references. Based on these primary and secondary research sources, our central interest in this studio will be on “question finding”: that is, identifying and articulating specific design issues/ domains/ problems/ opportunities regarding the nature of work now and in the near future.
How will we work tomorrow? Where will we work tomorrow? What will we work on tomorrow? What will “work” be, tomorrow? Will we work tomorrow? Why do we work? (...and who is "we"?)
There was a time when everything was “work.” In this studio, we will engage in a collective inquiry about this huge topic. Rather than attempt to be comprehensive (which would be impossible), we will instead focus on novel perspectives from guest experts and selected references. Based on these primary and secondary research sources, our central interest in this studio will be on “question finding”: that is, identifying and articulating specific design issues/ domains/ problems/ opportunities regarding the nature of work now and in the near future.
bubbli is as a community
for creative collaborators and manifests an idea that is bigger than the individual.
This prototype is a Miro plugin and integrates with Zoom for synchronous collaboration. It also integrates with music streaming services for a shared ambience experience. Ultimately enabling endless collaborative opportunities.
Features:
User Scenarios:
for creative collaborators and manifests an idea that is bigger than the individual.
This prototype is a Miro plugin and integrates with Zoom for synchronous collaboration. It also integrates with music streaming services for a shared ambience experience. Ultimately enabling endless collaborative opportunities.
Features:
- Bubble layers
- Organizational views
- Limitless zoom and scrolling
- Merging and joining capabilities with other users
User Scenarios:
- Providing expanded options for communication amongst bubble “mates”
- Navigating bubble and posting content in a bubble
- Group introduction and ideation in a shared bubble









That moment when you label ubiquitous data miners to stay aware of them, and you also label electrical technology that doesn’t mine data, resulting in the discovery of spaces where you’re not giving away free data and are considered “off the grid.”
Project Discription :
Off the Grid is a game delivered as a sticker kit. The intention behind the game is to invert everyday ubiquitous data mining by attaching green stickers to data collectors. Data mining is a process of extracting and discovering patterns in large data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Assigning a “scarlet letter” to the tech will help in demonstrating how often the participant shares through mobile devices, credit cards, gps, home devices, smart cars, living in smart cities/homes, etc. It will also help the user stay aware of what, where, and when each device is mining in their home.
The yellow stickers are intended to identify electronic technology that do not mine data and spaces where your data is safe. This way the user can potentially create a space in their home where the purpose is to be “off the grid” by staying away from data minors. As such the user is given back their right to choose where and when they want to share data, since it’s hard to get around in modernity. If the user decides to bring a phone into an “off the grid” space the use is consciously making the decision to share data.
The intention behind the game is to create a sense of data ownership for the user. It’s also intended to identify spaces in the home where you are actively sharing data, and spaces in the home that are mostly if not totally off the grid. Through my research I found that if a space is close to being off the grid in the user's home they can easily remove the single or few items that mine data. Creating a safe off the grid space in their home is intended to give them a sense of time off of the screen and away from sharing data.
Project Discription :
Off the Grid is a game delivered as a sticker kit. The intention behind the game is to invert everyday ubiquitous data mining by attaching green stickers to data collectors. Data mining is a process of extracting and discovering patterns in large data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Assigning a “scarlet letter” to the tech will help in demonstrating how often the participant shares through mobile devices, credit cards, gps, home devices, smart cars, living in smart cities/homes, etc. It will also help the user stay aware of what, where, and when each device is mining in their home.
The yellow stickers are intended to identify electronic technology that do not mine data and spaces where your data is safe. This way the user can potentially create a space in their home where the purpose is to be “off the grid” by staying away from data minors. As such the user is given back their right to choose where and when they want to share data, since it’s hard to get around in modernity. If the user decides to bring a phone into an “off the grid” space the use is consciously making the decision to share data.
The intention behind the game is to create a sense of data ownership for the user. It’s also intended to identify spaces in the home where you are actively sharing data, and spaces in the home that are mostly if not totally off the grid. Through my research I found that if a space is close to being off the grid in the user's home they can easily remove the single or few items that mine data. Creating a safe off the grid space in their home is intended to give them a sense of time off of the screen and away from sharing data.
Class Brief:
We will consider what “technology” is; explore ideas of prototyping in and with publics; and critically reflect on the resulting implications. Emphasis will be placed on what is being instigated and considered by the design propositions each student puts forward for an individual, community or public to engage with.
Project (including in-progress) critique will drive general discussion of terms, considerations, and the specifics of form as embodiment of idea. Discussions will include both the possibilities and limitations of each student’s propositions as well as how the material and experiential choices embody the intent.
This class is intentionally designed to put students in the field, and to foreground a design and concepting methodology that is completely responsive and iterative. Assignments are not shared until they are assigned - this is by design, because our focus is on learning how to develop and re-develop ideas through on-the-ground observation and prototyping. We will practice generating ideas from OBSERVATION, not from preconceived notions or assumptions about people/situations/technology/
etc.
We will consider what “technology” is; explore ideas of prototyping in and with publics; and critically reflect on the resulting implications. Emphasis will be placed on what is being instigated and considered by the design propositions each student puts forward for an individual, community or public to engage with.
Project (including in-progress) critique will drive general discussion of terms, considerations, and the specifics of form as embodiment of idea. Discussions will include both the possibilities and limitations of each student’s propositions as well as how the material and experiential choices embody the intent.
This class is intentionally designed to put students in the field, and to foreground a design and concepting methodology that is completely responsive and iterative. Assignments are not shared until they are assigned - this is by design, because our focus is on learning how to develop and re-develop ideas through on-the-ground observation and prototyping. We will practice generating ideas from OBSERVATION, not from preconceived notions or assumptions about people/situations/technology/
etc.