An installation exploring the form or formlessness of identity.
The installation aimed to create a conversation about the definition of identity, away from any generically imposed terms that are usually used as tools to talk about it. What I wanted to do was to set up the installation in a progression of translucent panels, and have the space allow the viewers to interact with the three elements, character/context/environment, simultaneously and separately, while having their position influence their visual of the piece as a whole at any still moment. I wanted the space to challenge the questions about identity that are usually brought about in any discussion around the topic, such as what terms are encompassed within that one word, what influences identity, and what happens when one of those elements is taken away.
The development of the work came about when I realised that what I am doing is attempting to discuss formlessness through a form that is never constant, to tackle issues of meaning/identity/cognition in a way that creates a tension between form and formlessness, to produce a physical entity that would not hinder either. This generated an installation that opened up a perceptive discussion (of viewer within the space) about the process of the production vs. the product. The process of creation of the work was experimental, with the final visual never being pre-defined, but dictated by the overarching narrative. The installation was a recording of this process, and in this process the only tangible element was the intention to change the state, induce a loss of form, and forcefully capture a form to talk about.
The process ended up having no beginning and no end. It began and ended with a hybrid of form and formlessness at the same time, and of the three visual markers that I had produced to enable me to visualize this process. Their form, therefore, became almost dispensable, physically, without losing its intrinsic meaning.
The aim was for the viewers to witness within the space a battle that the physical entity is undergoing between the two induced states, form and formlessness. The work defined formlessness as a state that exists as the lack of a state, and not as nothingness. It is the constant loss of a state. Formlessness had to come in two places: the first being the loss of form (the absence of a constant form), and the second being the process of the production of the form, which was visualized as the space (void) between the phases that the entities moved through throughout the space (Hybrid, Prelude, Birth, Development, Awakening, Conversation, Transcendence, Hybrid.)
The work posed a series of questions that attempted to redefine the terms 'identity', 'form', and 'formlessness'.
Formless was funded by the Young Arab Theatre Fund (www.yatfund.org), among other local sponsors, and exhibited in Amman, Jordan and Beirut, Lebanon.
The installation was featured in a campaign featuring emerging artists, that was designed for AIZONE, a high-fashion retailer.
Evolving Beauty
A speculative scenario that places visitors in the year 2050, and examines the future of art, technology and beauty. In the near future, this piece foresees a world in which environmental and urban pollution, as well as global warming, have started to take a toll on the human body. Beauty brands are the new cartels, and with the support of governments, their aim is to protect citizens by providing them with disposable skin that acts as a shield against the harsh conditions of the environment. Beauty is redefined as the natural human body, and layers are added to protect that, rather than to change its natural aesthetic.
We aim to create an experience that poses a question about the level of awareness and responibility towards the current environmental conditions, and how they might affect every aspect of our lives as they continue to worsen in the future. The experience highlights the tension between a decaying environment (in which our film is set) and a clean, luxurious one. The space is set in a slick, white, organically shaped capsule that looks as if it had landed in YiHaus, from another time. The visitors are intrigued as they notice a white mist seeping out from underneath the entrance. The doors slide open, and upon entering the space, visitors are placed in the centre of the toxic world of the future. Stretches of what looks like skin, toxic smoke and screens showing the threat of this future environment, weave a tapestry of decay behind glass screens. The visitors peer into this world, and begin to understand the repercussions of the impending threat that the environment is facing, and the effects it could, in turn, have on their bodies. A soundscape that drones in the background sets the tone, and to enhance this experience, even the quality of the air is slightly compromised, feeling a little warmer and more humid than usual. After taking in this immersive part of the space, they are guided by that same white mist that was their cue at the entrance, into the second space, in which they experience a sense of relief as the air starts to cool, and the humidity subsides. They enter through the sliding door into a futuristic world of luxury; a boutique skin store, where they are greeted by a beauty assistant, and can view a range of novelty second skins in a window display. They can choose from limited edition, natural, and novelty designs, and simulate wearing them through the virtual mirrors that are available at either side of the space. The experience ends with the assistant handing them a business card with a web address through which they can track the availability of the product. The experience aims to present them with a problem, then offer a heavily connotative solution to it in a branded, high-end manner. It also creates this anticipation for being able to purchase the product, which they cannot, thus creating a contrast to the shopping experience they would then proceed towards in YiHaus.
OVERVIEW:
‘INTRANSIENCE’ is a site-specific installation that aims to instigate conversations around the construction of the legacy of a place on the verge of destruction. The work highlights the power of individual stories through the collective creation of a legacy.
The aim was to accommodate for the varied narratives that the audience would come with, taking into account the subjectivity of the perceptual experiences of the pier. The designed experience allowed for the simultaneity of these narratives to be reassessed in ways that are not tied to its Cartesian existence, making way for the construction of a polyphonic narrative that is independent of the pier itself, and could outlast its physical being.
The work looks to take on a dialectic, collective approach to creating a legacy for the pier. It aims to examine the elements and voices that might play into the creation of that legacy, by offering the audience a chance to revisit the past and possibly contribute to editing it, as well as be critical of the present, culminating in a record that is both an antidote for transience, and an orchestration of entropy. The collectively written version of the story is offered as an alternative to the current (or projected) one, which is likely to be left up to the more authoritative (albeit somewhat detached) voices - those found in the museum archives and history books.
NARRATIVE:
The installation takes the audience into a parallel dimension on the site of The West Pier in Brighton, placing them in the moment of its collapse, and transporting them into the Afterlife of Buildings, where they eavesdrop on a debate panel between representatives of different parts of that dimension around how to usher the pier into the afterlife and where to place it. The arc of the debate develops towards a point of high anxiety, during which the characters’ agendas clash and culminate in a decision to allow the people in this dimension to shape the legacy of the place. The audience members are then invited to explore a set of elements that could dictate the telling of the legacy of the pier, before contributing their opinion towards the discussion.
THE SCRIPT
The narrative of the ‘Afterlife of Buildings’ was an attempt to encompass all the insights, themes and threads that came out of my research of the site and the stories that were attached to it - including, but not limited to, the common practice within the community of anthropomorphising the pier. The idea was to bring in other anthropomorphised buildings that had already physically ‘passed’, and treat the Afterlife as a narrated experience that would engage the audience in a critical conversation. In order for the debate to be critical, engaging and challenging, the buildings represented by the different characters were chosen from the UK’s history, and for their relevance or ability to be compared to the pier. The common points where chosen based on similarities in structure, date of building and what kind of legacy was left behind, among other characteristics.
The themes discussed in the script were ones that were selected based on the next phase of the experience: the elements of legacy: Imagination, Memory, Intent, History and Form. The script raised questions about each of these themes in order to set the audience up for the second half of the experience, where they would have to make a decision about which of these elements would take the lead in shaping the story of the pier.
In order to make the audience aware of their role and responsibility in the construction of the story, the script was intended to play out with a sense of urgency and anxiety. Drawing from Jaques Lecoq’s levels of tension, the structure of the script oscillates between different states of urgency, aiming for that tension being translated to the audience’s fluctuating levels of anxiety. This tension was at the forefront of designing the heterotopic experience of The Afterlife of Buildings, and in expanding on that, the layering of meaning, language and references was core to delivering a provocative outcome.
Inspired by the idea of the chorus in Greek theatre, the characters exist within a juxtaposition of different timelines, which enabled the bending of the rules of linear accounts of time in terms of content.
The script ends with the characters claiming that the final decision is up to the audience, before the space transitions to display the elements of legacy. In this confrontational moment INTRANSIENCE removes the audience from their roles as ‘spectators’, and mobilises them towards taking on the responsibility of creating a story that could outlast the physical structure of the pier.
DESIGN:
The installation aimed to challenge how we inhabit spaces by constructing an inhabitable enclosure - designed based on a collapsed kiosk that stood on the boardwalk above the space of the installation - in which the ‘death’ of the pier is performed.
In doing so, it situated the audience inside a space that is outside of the currently standing skeleton, but inside an insinuation of the parts of the pier that have already collapsed.
The space itself is a single enclosure, but through the use of sound and video, it transitions from one version of itself to another. In the first half of the experience, while the script is running, the space is more focused on being diplomatic in terms of the division of content. The characters’ voices surround the visitors equally. As the script ends, the ambient sound comes into play, altering the experience of the space. Videos representing the elements of the legacy are activated by the audience’s proximity to them, allowing the audience to shape the narrative in that version of the space with their behaviour.
MATERIALITY:
Designing the experience - part of which was the Afterlife of Buildings - meant thinking of how to transport the audience into a place that felt like a parallel version of the beach, in a different dimension. I went through a process of elimination in order to reach the right kind of aesthetic, stability and materiality.
The threshold was designed to alter the experience of walking on the pebbles, which is usually a difficult task, by making the beach feel like it is lifting the visitors’ footsteps off the ground. Using memory foam rolled out under a thin layer of pebbles gave that effect.
In speaking of a place that was considered a work of architecture, but now stands more as a sculptural version of itself, I wanted the space of INTRANSIENCE to be more like an inhabitable object. It took on more of an architectonic approach to the enclosure, rather than that of built space in its architectural sense.
By eliminating everything that looked and felt foreign to the site, I was able to make the decision of manipulating the fabric of space of the beach itself. The result was what looked like mounds pinched up from the surface of the beach, as if the word 'fabric' were taken literally. The mounds served as an implicit part of the narrative that spoke of an urgently and rapidly assembled marking of space for the Afterlife of Buildings to convene in at the moment of the death of the pier.
The mounds themselves were designed to mirror the traces of foam that the waves left on the pebbles as they pulled back into the ocean, with the pebbles rising to form the bottom of the mounds. Using alum salt to crystallise the mounds was a decision based on the need to embed the narrative of transience and decay within the space itself. Salt is used to preserve (and in the case of INTRANSIENCE, metaphorically, to preserve meaning), but is also one of the elements that are contributing to the decay of the structure. The close proximity to the water imbues the space with a sense of anxiety around collapse and decay, as if it were at a threat of dissolving into the ocean.
Supervised by ARUP's foresight team in London, our team studied the site of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London, and identified 5 trends that are likely to affect the development of the city within the next 10 years.
THE TRENDS:
Inequality:
StratSmart’s status system has created a class divide in Stratford. The citizens of the city have chips embedded in their index fingers, that glow a certain colour indicative of their status in Stratford.
Quantified Self:
StratSmart’s point-class system quantifies each person based on 5 categories: Expenditure, Income, Property Ownership, Pavegen, and Urban Farming.
Identity:
Identity is key for StratSmart. The systems are implemented to control and maintain the identity of Stratford.
Green Infrastructure:
In order to be the cleanest, greenest hub of London, Stratford has strict green infrastructure regulations and building standards.
Privately Owned Public Space:
StratSmart owned public spaces are trending in Stratford. Usage depends on the status of the person, thus maintaining an image of the public spaces.
STORYBOARD OF THE FUTURE SCENARIO:
We aimed to explore a scenario where the commodification of the life in Stratford affects the health and wellbeing of its citizens. We imagined a 2025 when everything and everyone in the metaphorical bubble of Stratford is highly controlled by StratSmart, in order to maintain the city’s identity as the smartest hub in the UK. The perfect bubble is then shaken by a financial crash, which exposes the deeply rooted class system within this technocratic capitalist city. The stratification extends to the private ownership of public spaces which restricts their usage by the people based on status.
In order to protest against the commodification of a healthy lifestyle which should be freely available to everyone, the citizens collectively protest by walking and marching on the only available free spaces- the pedestrian walkways that are paved with energy harvesting tiles.
The protest is two-fold:
- Walking against privately owned public spaces.
- Generating points by walking on the tiles to turn the system against itself.
THE FUTURE ARTEFACT:
A cover for the chip-embedded index finger, made out of FabriCan, a sprayable, non-woven fabric that is patented and being developed by FabriCan at the London Bioscience Innovation Centre. The cover is sprayed on, then can be removed and reused.
*For presentation purposes, the prototype has been made out of latex.
Their aim is create a mockery of the capitalist system, by using the most basic and effective medium of a healthy lifestyle: walking.
Collaborators: Sachiko Osawa, Prachi Joshi, Vishanka Gandhi, Yiman Huang.
Background/setting illustration: Yasmeen Ayyashi
Character Illustration: Yiman Huang
GoTime app
Contracted by London based XR Game Design studio - PRELOADED - to design a playful storybook aimed at helping children develop healthy toilet habits for life!
GOAL
To help people adopt healthier toileting habits and assist parents through the difficult stage of potty-training their kids, British hygiene brand Andrex launched a new educational platform called GoTime. Featuring advice, tools, and personalised toilet training plans, parents and caregivers will find everything they need to educate their children in a fun and engaging way.
As part of this platform, Andrex asked PRELOADED to design and build a digital product, and learning framework to provide children and caregivers with the supporting material and tools to help children to practise the health habits that will last a lifetime – The GoTime app was born! An app featuring multiple playbooks, each of which tackled a different aspect of the child’s journey to toilet independence.
A PLAYBOOK FOR EVERY STAGE
The GoTime app offers children a series of playable stories or playbooks that tackle different toilet training challenges, scaffolded by the parent who is asked to take the child through the experience a few times, before letting them play independently. The playbooks tackle various parts of the toilet training journey, from learning the sequence to understanding the correct way to perform certain skills like wiping and flushing. The playbooks also help children gain confidence through familiarity with different toilet mechanics outside the home.
To cement the child’s knowledge in their mind and further enhance their confidence in their knowledge, the playbooks position the child as the GoTime characters’ teacher, helping them learn all the skills that the child is learning in real life, and mirroring the child’s experience through the characters’ challenges and successes in the playbooks.
Central to the playbook concept is a world of friendly and relatable characters – Bunny, Mouse, and Bear – each of whom helps reinforce the learning at a different stage of a child’s development.
SUPPORTING FAMILIES AT EACH STAGE
At each stage of Design and Development, PRELOADED, in partnership with Fundamentally Children, tested and refined the proposition with children and parents to ensure the current, and future value of the ongoing product offer.
The GoTime app is conceived as an ongoing product, which can adapt to meet the different needs of care-givers and children on their toilet training journey. By creating focused ‘playbooks’ that children WANT to play, we could ensure the best opportunity for learning, in line with the celebrations and regressions unique to every child.
GoTime is available to download now on iOS and Android devices.
Role: Narrative and Experience Design Lead
Images and parts of text courtesy of PRELOADED
“How?” is probably the most pressing question today within the context of reversing the effects of global climate change. The ambiguity of the answers to that question is where most inaction is rooted, but rather than letting the story stagnate there, we see an opportunity to turn the moment of acknowledging that lack of clarity as the key to catalysing action.
Our proposal relies on museums acknowledging that they don’t have all the answers, and pledging to stand with whoever is willing to search for them, thus empowering visitors to engage in that search, and to rally the public, in hopes of creating cascading movements. We aim to convert museums from temples of knowledge and answers, to places for questions and action. A humbling step down from a pedestal, is a step up to opening up spaces for experimentation, inclusion, and collective action, and to brazenly confront our present ‘earthly’ reality.
We propose a retrofitted “symbiotic” model for existing museums and museum-like institutions, in which ‘symbiotes’, in the form of Tinker Labs appear in the most publicly visible spaces. The aim of the Tinker Labs is to rally people to create localised action by channelling the inherent ‘power’ ingrained in the title of the ‘Museum’. The ‘symbiote’ is nourished by the museum’s resources, whilst using them to feed the planet, becoming part of a global network of Tinker Labs , and converting museums from static spaces (in the context of climate action), to breathing, thriving, responsive organisms. The Tinker Labs focus on the creation of new knowledge as an antidote to the sense of paralysis due to misperceived futility.
It is not enough to create these spaces without highlighting the urgency for action. To do that, the ‘symbiote’ leverages the museum's collection to shift the narrative towards one centred around personal accountability, by transforming it into a tool for gauging the current state of (in)action towards climate justice. Based on IoT interconnectivity, the museum experience starts with an assessment of each visitor’s lifestyle choices, and the ‘weight’ of the climate injustice that they’ve contributed towards. It uses material provenance to localise those injustices on a world map, and denies the visitor access to any content that stems from the most affected areas, rendering it ‘lost’ to climate injustice. The museum urges visitors to take action in order to recover the lost content, and unlock the full museum experience. It provides visitors with guidance on how to approach issues that have been diagnosed through their assessment, and helps them identify their preferred route of action. The museum becomes a breathing entity that shrinks & expands, signalling the urgency of the climate threat with its rapid and shallow “breathing”, prompting increased action.
A data visualisation in each of the Tinker Labs enables visitors to track action in labs around the world, gauging our position in relation to the zero hour. Consciously designed as a 10-year model only, these ‘symbiotes’ work collectively as one, to remind the world of the need for positive action, as little or as large, while also forcing them to pick a future: one where we’ve already crossed the point of no return, or one where we’ve collectively risen to the challenge and saved our planet
RYE LANE's existing model that accommodates for the diversity of businesses and people, serves as an example for a successful self-sustaining economy that is resilient against global economic unrest.
The work suggests a re-examination of the current standard model of the high street, which predominantly consists of big brands that are devoid of real human interaction, and that a high street can be a more people-centric experience that sustains itself through diverse independently owned businesses, and a flexible economic model.
The installation is composed of two parts: the first being a collaboratively activated audio-visual experience that brings the value of the street into focus, through its textures, sounds, and people. The experience is activated when the last seat in the space is occupied. If one person leaves their seat, the circuit breaks, and the experience would come to a halt. This instills a sense of responsibility in each member of the audience, but also creates a sense of collaboration (we are all, together, making this space work). The mechanism, aside from evoking the aforementioned feelings, references the experience of Rye Lane, in the sense that the value of the street is in its people. If council's plans lead to as little as one business closing down, the experience of Rye Lane would not be the same. The structure that houses the installation is crafted out of the same materials used by the traders to sub-divide the retail spaces in Rye Lane.
The second part is the repurposing of this structure. The intention with this structure is to give the traders of Rye Lane a sense of agency through providing a means for them to take back ownership of their street. It is designed to be modular within the measurements of Rye Lane's alleys, and can be sub-divided. Should the regeneration plans result in the eviction of any of the traders, the structure can be set up in one of the alleys, where traders can continue to run their businesses, regardless of license from council, which can be viewed as a form of protest. It can also house traders meetings, which is something that they feel they lack the space for. The structure is stored in a back room in one of the arcades, and can be borrowed by any trader who wishes to use it for any purpose.
The aim of the installation is to highlight the real value of Rye Lane through celebrating its diversity, and to suggest that any work that needs to be done in terms of regeneration, can be done by working around what already exists, and preserving it.
The experience is supplemented by a mobile app that enables visitors to explore the area and the locals that make up its identity, with AR trails leading them to their chosen shop/local to meet.
Collaborators: Sachiko Osawa, Beatriz Mickle, Nuttanun Chantadansuwan, Geetanjali Sayal.