Ziying Li
Utopia
Prompt: Based on our findings and research from Seminar and Bridge 3, we have to create a project for either a Pop-up or a Start-up. A pop-up design can be a kind of intervention, public sculpture, a fashion collection, a smaller creative space, etc, or a Startup which is something that can help change the field in the future. We can choose either Design Thinking or Speculative Design as an approach for our project.
My thesis for Seminar was “How does the production of mobile phones affect human health?” And I addressed it from two aspects: The relationship between mobile phone production processes and humans and how e-wastes from obsolete mobile phones can affect human health. According to my research, I realized that miners/lower class have been affected the most. For this project, I used digital drawing as a medium to create a comic that is about a story of a miner in 2150. The topic is called “Utopia” which means it is a utopia for people from the higher class but not people from the lower class. I gave a bad ending to this story because I hope it can increase public awareness. Letting people from developed countries realize this issue is important because they are the main customers, and hope to encourage people to change the ending by changing actions. There are some bright and saturated colors to create a futuristic and cyberpunk feeling to fit the future context. I used mostly dark colors in the background because I want to create contrasts between the background and foreground.
