The Aesthetics of Power: What Makes Good Design

Kerry Lee

“I took this idea of the 'norm' and how we decipher aesthetics and developed it into my synthesis project analyzing how we are affected by those around us into shifting our aesthetics.” This project is designed for adults to observe and think about how creating art is affected by interactions with children. An infographic describes the Tree Test but purposefully does not include any illustrations. Five scenarios depict how an adult could draw a tree in various settings involving children: solitary play, onlooker play with younger children, onlooker play with older children, parallel play, and cooperative play. An additional, mini-test affects adults choosing different mediums to create art (crayons, markers, charcoal, etc.) which could correspond to how children are present. Discussion questions relate to observational recognition of choices made in creating art.

Bridget Fischer-Linkogle

“This project imagines that if, instead of the current streamlined globalist architectural style that strips away cultural roots often reflecting colonial histories, urban areas embrace different styles of its immigrant populations, indigenous peoples, and native flora and fauna.” With the help of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) Generative Imaging software, Bridget presented initial concepts on how the Los Angeles architectural style of bungalows, Spanish and Mission revival homes, and glass high-rise office buildings could echo the natural individuality of the area.

Nastassia Meija

“By creating opportunities for community engagement and communication, we can use aesthetics to promote social cohesion and inclusivity.” To guide people to special locations in Miami, the tour guide and a series of interactive maps—including a series of text messages—will help visitors witness the local beauty. This interactivity highlights historical aspects vs. personal stories; some walks feature locations of colorful lifeguard stations along the beach, suggested shopping/eating in a four-block radius, and mango trees in lower-income locations.

Cyrus Froning

“This exploration in form and analysis was the synthesis of my attempt to realize a space that explores the complex relationship of aesthetic and culture while minimizing my own biased desires for form and function.” Distilling the intersections of space, thought, and aesthetics, this project imagines a physical form that can be interactive as the concepts it's trying to present. The resulting transparent, 3-D sculpture incorporates overlapping and interplay of elements, symbols, and text to create the three representational planes.

Rebecca Brown

“The retelling and reiterative nature of this project shows how recreation and memory are not reliable in an objective way but consider that it is reliable in a subjective manner.” This project explores how stories, concepts, and ideas are changed as they are handed down over generations. Generating interpretation and responses, a website provides an image that the first user picks from a previous answer. The next user must create a reply based on the first user's re-creation of that image. The underlying question is how long can users keep the original image “alive”? How does imagery change?

Jingyi Ge

“I want to use Ranciere's view that the aesthetic revolution will liberate art from rules and destroy and innovate traditional norms, while Julien's view is that Chinese art and literature must conform to specific types and conventions. I want to integrate their views. Can I use ‘innovation’ to destroy the regulations of tradition?” This project explores how by disrupting a form, you can change its meaning. Using walls as the conventional form, a new construction design was inspired by how acoustic walls can change the sensory identity of the environment. Pushing the concept further, walls can be created out of soft material and placed in a light space to alter the environment and mood, which, in a library, will invite visitors to fall into the wall with a book. AI sketches show texturally pleasing possibilities.

Shupeng Jiang

“By acknowledging the irregularities, imperfections and pressures of young people's lives, we can create designs that celebrate and empower them, rather than trying to impose narrow cultural norms of value.” Inspired by the pressure-filled lifestyles of young people, this project began with exploring how concepts and items that are considered ugly or unconventional can be treated as beautiful or valuable. The workspaces of young people often are filled with empty soda cans, cups, and glasses, which leave damaging water stains on work surfaces, but when examined closer, these stains can be abstractly beautiful. The stain design can be transformed into a 3-D eyeglasses lens, a response to young people’s dependency today on viewing screens.

Luke Sacapano

“With her camera, Diane Arbus asked which aspects of these more traditional families could survive. What bonds of affection could remain intact? What forms of community could be gleaned from them? Or, conversely, what final vestiges of an earlier family life needed farewell?” This project explores how photography captures what Walter Benjamin describes as an “aura,” a strange tissue of space and time." Taking old photos from his grandparents’ collection, the student restored the images, adding his own manipulations for a projection show. By examining the subjects and their relationship to the photographer, the student found images of community and affection which gave him insights into his journey and provided inspiration to tell his own stories more authentically. Having a visual record of his family history connected the student to how his Filipino American grandparents valued and interpreted the “American Dream.”

Sybil Ye

“This experimental art piece explores the nature of surveillance and self-perception through setting a camera in my room… to capture a candid and unguarded depiction of my daily life.” This project explores the relationship between self and the social norm—and how self-perceptions are shaped by the presence of the camera. To embrace the unexpected, this work challenges assumptions about the nature of surveillance of the self. Using a bedroom as a mirror of our true selves, this compilation of moving images shows the student among piles of clothes as she organizes, declutters, and moves through daily activities. Insights include how the student felt more self-conscious when the camera was on, and even though she frequently noticed the camera, she came to the conclusion that it was easier to “get used to surveillance than I expected.”

Enea Sernesi

“How can design be a decolonizing tool? I want to map the texts that we have been engaging in class and reflect on the ways they can help me rethink my design process.” To explore the ways that Latino Urbanisms are manipulated by forms of power, this exploration asks: What are the implications of “barrio” aesthetics? What is being manipulated? Who benefits from altering cultural aesthetics? Found in areas of East LA and Boyle Heights, Latino Urbanisms are “ethnic enclaves,” sources of social connections, spaces that adapt to community needs, dynamics, and rituals. City leaders and developers want to invest in these historically radicalized and disinvested neighborhoods for economic reasons. The aestheticization of Latino Urbanisms as "The Barrio" often leads to gentrification and a colonization of meaning. Planners and policymakers have effectively agitated against and ignored the lived experiences of the people who call these neighborhoods home. Instead of recognizing the richness and complexity of these communities, they have reduced them to a set of readily marketable symbols. Some examples include: how cashless businesses are discriminatory to those lacking digital assets and visual elements (e.g., murals) that recycle in-group aesthetic tropes toward out-group, commercial gain.

Janine Hernandez

“How do you make something about the internet, for internet users, without actually using the platforms they heavily rely on?” To avoid getting posts removed or down-ranked by content moderation systems on the internet, social media users have embraced Algospeak, which embodies code words, emojis, and turns of phrases to create a brand-safe lexicon. To create a compendium of Algospeak without affecting algorithmic learning patterns, this project imagines a physical (yet, interactive) installation space that encourages participants to write on post-its and share emojis, stories, or other contributions related to Algospeak and its politics of use.

Grace Johnson

“With these projects, I critically examine the evolving role of the designer and how I can use my skills to challenge existing norms and subvert dominant paradigms… All of these pieces come together to demonstrate the potential for design to raise awareness about systemic biases and inequalities. I have found new meaning in being a designer and envision a future of inclusive, empowering design.” Questioning current design standards’ authority, these graphics series present concepts and themes in explorative designs. The first is to discover if AI can design a music festival poster; the resulting imagery features bold graphics, energy, and excitement. Today’s marketing practice of appropriating aesthetics languages from specific communities, such as Indigenous, Black, and/or Queer aesthetics, interrupts the self-determination of narratives, images, perceptions, and, consequently, power of the groups in which insider cues have been exploited. To counter that practice, window dressing designs and posters call attention to how Pride’s rainbow aesthetics are being commercialized. Finally, ornamentation has often been conceived as either frivolous or shallow. Exploring the tension between decoration and minimalism, this student critically retooled a user’s manual for an IKEA chair, leveraging ornamentation to enhance reader comprehension and the assembly process. Of course, decoration was not totally reduced to an instrument of utility but, instead, was deployed to highlight modernism and how, over time, it has institutionalized and habituated boundaries for dominant design norms, cultures, and rituals.