Filtering by
- All Subjects: Creative Project
- All Subjects: COVID-19
Especially during the current COVID-19 pandemic and age of social unrest in the United States, there has been an increasing need for comfort, yet the idea of comfort is quite vague and rarely elaborated upon. To simplify the idea of comfort and communicate the ideas around it effectively, I am defining comfort as a subset of escapism in which a person escapes to reduce or alleviate feelings of grief or distress. As companies rush to comfort their customers in this current state of uncertainty, marketers are pressed to identify people’s insecurities and comfort them without coming off as insensitive or trite. Current comfort marketing focuses on inspiring nostalgia in its customers, having them recall previous positive experiences or feelings to comfort them. Nostalgic marketing techniques may ease mild grief in some cases, but using them to alleviate severe distress probably will not be as effective, and has contributed to several seemingly out-of-touch “COVID-19 era” commercials.<br/>When addressing comfort, marketers should understand the type and hierarchy of comfort that they are catering to. Not all comforts are equal, in that some comforts make us feel better than others and some do not comfort us at all. A better understanding of how and why comforts change among different individuals, and possibly being able to predict the comfort preference based on a product or service, will help marketers market their goods and services more effectively. By diversifying and specializing comfort marketing using this hierarchical method, marketers will be able to more significantly reach their customers during “uncertain times.”
Virans is a book comprised of illustrations, hand-written text, and digital elements The book was conceived as an encapsulation of the broad social changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. With a unique art style utilizing distorted human forms, complex line patterns, pointillism, and flat compositions, each of the book's 15 spreads represent an issue observed during the pandemic. These issues include isolation, political concerns, conspiracy theories, and the overall human toll of the pandemic.
Whispers from Above is a creative project that aims to normalize the conversation and validate the emotional experience of grief, through the use of art therapies. Art therapy can be expressive in which someone creates their own work, such as visual art, poetry, performance, music, movement, etc. Art therapy can also be receptive in which someone analyzes and understands someone else's artwork. This project was released on SoundCloud in order to make grief resources more accessible to all and to build an online community.<br/><br/>Whispers from Above worked with twelve poets, fifteen artists, six different interviewees, and multiple musicians to create a month of grief support. The finale piece of Whispers from Above was devised from the twenty-nine poems used within this month-long healing journey. All the individual poems were woven into a single devised poem to be presented as the final piece symbolizing that no one is alone in grief.<br/><br/>Whispers from Above is creative community exploration of grief, loss, and death in which we hope contributors, and listeners find solace and support. This series will exist on SoundCloud after March 27th, 2021 with a monthly release of a poem or interview accompanied by art, and music.
Through the research of the temporary built environment, technology and experience, in addition to the relationship between the three, a better understanding of how the interior design can shift to accommodate our changing society and desire for ephemeral experiences were developed. Pop up installations and events were studied to understand not only how they are designed and built within existing environments, but also to learn about the impressions they leave on viewers. Furthermore, social media trends in relation to the temporary environments have been observed to understand their influence on design. This means of communication has added a layer of complexity to these experiences and how they are now inherently connected to cater to the desires of Millenials and Centennials. Technology-based research will be necessary to then explore in a creative project how both interiority and technology relate to create experiences.
Ultimately, two creative projects were developed, which demonstrate the relationship of technology and interiority in the creation of experiential environments, by constructing two interactive design-build pieces. This was done through the combination of theory and creative project, or praxis, which highlighted existing research and explored new applications for use in the world of interior design.
The research in this thesis has two main components: the study of interior environments, especially those created as pop-ups, and also the study of technology along with its relationship to the built environment and human interaction. For the technology component, different interactive technologies have been explored by learning how to write code in order to use an Arduino system and python language to manipulate light, sound, and projection. As a result, two interactive light pieces were created which harnessed the power of technology to transform the built environment into a memorable experience.
This entire creative piece is a testament to pursue writing in the film and theatre industry, and acts as a student’s own personal take on how creative writing can be developed, analyzed, and improved. The scope of this project was to better understand modern writing and playwrights by creating my own piece. The general findings in this project demonstrated the high difficulty that storytelling demands. Specifically, linking dialogue in plays to meaningful character development.
As such, a major conclusion indicates that masterful script writing falls on each character being fully developed so that they may move through scenes and the plot with the proper emotional stakes.