Assessment 2 - Major Project
1. Art and design often explore relationships between humans and non-humans, the environment and ecology. How can contemporary art and design propose new possibilities for imagining the ‘human’ and the environment?
For assessment 1, I focused on the relation between the natural environment and human, which nature can be a best art tool for its unique colours and patterns. As I reflected on assessment 1 and my chosen question, one thing came to my mind: ‘Is nature the only environment?’. As we think of the word ‘environment’, most of us tend to recall ‘nature’ first. Thinking deeper with the question, I thought that everywhere in our daily lives that surround us can also be an environment as well. For example, for me, school, home, train, church and etc. can be my environment. In order to find out the accurate meaning, I looked up the word ‘environment’ in dictionary and it came out like this: 1. The aggregate of surrounding things, conditions, or influences; surroundings; milieu. 2. Ecology. The air, water, minerals, organisms, and all other external factors surrounding and effecting a given organism at any time.1 According to the definition, both interpretation of ‘environment’ were right and as I did assessment 1 on the second meaning, this time I wanted to focus on the first meaning of the environment.
Surroundings and environments that most of us are involved in will be school, workplaces, transportation and etc. As I was finding the common feature of these places, I started to think about what object that these three all have: chair. I then imagined about chairs in each places which I figured out that nearly all of the chairs had a curved back seat which was an ergonomically designed object that let us to be comfortable and safe. From this train of thought, ergonomic design came up to my mind of imagining the human and the environment, which ergonomic is an outcome of human changing environment for their better needs. Ergonomics aims to improve workspaces and environments to minimise risk of injury or harm which create safe, comfortable and productive workspaces by bringing human abilities and limitations into the design of a workspace, including the individual’s body size, strength, skill, speed, sensory abilities (vision, hearing), and even attitudes.
Artist that I got inspired by is a German industrial designer ‘Luigi Colani’. The prime characteristic of his designs were based on nature which were in organic forms and rounded. As he studied engineering, he used his knowledge of engineering as a tool in ergonomically and biodynamical way to tune his design into the nature. Due to this, most of Colani’s works are designed ergonomically which resembles the nature curves of the body and fits right in, which make us to be more comfortable and effective.
Getting some ideas from Colani’s ergonomic designs, I wanted to make an object that relates to ‘my’ environment. As I spend a lot of time in transportation like trains and buses, I decided these places to be my environment for my object which then during the week, I observed some features in this environment that people had in common. Conclusion of my observation was that nearly every people in trains and buses tend to look at their phones. Among the effects of using a smartphone on the musculoskeletal system, keeping a posture of staring at a monitor, located below the height of eyesight, for a long time makes the head move forward, which is known as the forward head posture (turtle neck posture). This turtle neck posture is being increasingly common, with the popularization of smart phones as it makes the leaning forward posture common. Due to these reasons, for assessment 2, I made an object that corrects turtle neck posture. It is a simple design that has a supporting board for the neck and an adjuster for fixing. As keeping the neck aligned is the most important part of correcting the turtle neck, the supporting board helps people not to bent and twist their neck while using smart phones. It works like this: first you wear the object on your neck and adjust the belt to fit your neck. Then, as you lean the upper part of back of neck towards the supporting board, the board corrects the posture as it aligns the neck.
During researches and experiments, I found out that ergonomic designs can be a one way of relating both human and the environment which can also further to art and design industry. And from this work, I wanted to collaborate the human and our environment by fixing the discomfort and ill-condition which is created from our everyday environment.
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1 "the definition of environment", in Dictionary.com, 2017, <http://www.dictionary.com/browse/environment?s=t> [accessed 14 September 2017].
[Bibliography]
"What is Ergonomics? - Dohrmann Consulting". in, 2017, <http://www.ergonomics.com.au/what-is-ergonomics/> [accessed 15 September 2017].
"10 Principles of Ergonomics". in, 2017, <http://www.danmacleod.com/ErgoForYou/10_principles_of_ergonomics.htm> [accessed 17 September 2017].
"Luigi Colani". in, 2017, <http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/luigi-colani/#_> [accessed 16 September 2017].
Kang, Jung-Ho et al. “The Effect of the Forward Head Posture on Postural Balance in Long Time Computer Based Worker.” Annals of Rehabilitation Medicine 36.1 (2012): 98–104. PMC. Web. 20 Sept. 2017.