1. Cohort Seminar

This week we held the second cohort seminar presentation this semester! It was both an exciting yet a lil bit intimidating experience to hear about people's progress for their final year project.

Vina's Colla(brand)ation

Deviant Design

In addition to that, I'm inspired by her how she presented her work and the strong sense of branding in her slides and across her outcomes. The layout of the presentation was really clear and I especially liked how she formatted her Research Objective into a hierarchial table (Left) which gives it clarity and structure.

Synthesis of greenery in architecture

Evolution of greenery in Singapore

Diverse explorations

Sustainable Packaging

Eunchae's project that tackles the issue of sustainable packaging was interesting to hear, not just because of her diverse material explorations, but also her fresh approach to the topic. Its also inspiring to see other people tackling environmental issues!

Her project entails explorations into possible methods of producing sustainable packaging from chopsticks (or saw dust for ease of experimentation as she mentioned they were from the same material). She started by mixing the saw dust with various kinds of bonding agents and expanded from there to observe their textures and durability in order to see which one would be the most suitable used as packaging material. I really liked the range of outcomes she presented from her studies (left); it shows how much could be done from a common yet unsespecting material!

2. Graduation Project — Plastic collection

I decided to source all my plastics from Jakarta. Plastics are taken from various places of business in Jakarta, and collected overtime from my household in the city.

Shout-out to my mom and sister for helping me collect them :-] I categorized the plastic based on what kind of establishment they were sourced from. The four categories are: F&B, Malls/Supermarkets, Traditional Markets, and lastly mischallaneous sources which include plstic from an amusement park, bank, clinic, and furniture stores.

I was most excited about the plastic bags with some Bahasa on them, or ones that have any writings that are along the lines of sustainability.

3. Graduation Project — Artefact #1

Sketch of artefact one

(1) Cut plastics and layer them to make a collage

(2) Place a sheet of parchment paper

(3) Iron the plastic in medium setting

(4) Make wire armature

Things I kept in mind in the process

(2) Interesting textures

In general I found that I am more interested in projects that uses a conceptual approach, for example through the use of analogies and metaphors. Both are powerful tools that are able to instill familiarity into the unfamiliar.

(1) Good collage of brands

In my opinion, a microscale scope (personal, local, regional coverage) would allow the interaction or the message to have a stronger impact on its target audience because it is in the context of something so close to them.

(3) Colors

Targetting individuals to persuade self-reflection, or in public spaces to encourage public discussion and collective-reflection. Will need to clarify the specificities soon.

Frankenstein Fabric

There were a lot of scrap pieces at the end of the process, so I gathered them and fuse them together to form a new fabric. The fabric result was very vibrant and colorful, but perhaps a lil too crowded.

3. Weekly Roundup

Presentation, presentation, and presentation.

The artefact making process was really fun. Something I'd like to keep in mind is the branding of the final project because I didn't want it to look like a arts and craft project. With this in mind, I made a pinterest board to help me visualize how I want the branding to look like.

Presentation is just as important as the outcomes themselves. Hearing my peer's presentation,it got me thinking about the importance in presenting properly in terms of the slides themselves, but more so in the verbal presentation skills. I notice that it was the presentations where the presenter was calm and not so serious that was super fun to listen to and they sort of light up the room with them too. Beyond the classrooms, presentations skills are even more important. During my internship, my then supervisor told me once that if I keep avoiding them, it'll lead to missed opportunities for me, and it's been in the back of my mind since then.