Category: UNIT 3

IDENTITY IN 21ST CENTURY

In the 21st century, identity is a complex concept shaped by an individual’s unique traits, experiences, beliefs, together with personal, social, cultural, and digital dimensions.

It reflects how individual navigates in a globalized and interconnected world, the roles they play in diverse social groups, their cultural heritage, and their online presence.

Identity today is marked by fluidity, diversity, and the coexistence of traditional and contemporary elements.

SELF-REPRESENTATION

How individuals perceive or construct their own identity both in physical or/and in digital space. It suggests that identity is a dynamic, evolving construction

Self-representation is the way you intentionally project and convey your identity to others.

ITERATION

As an answer to my references, I started exploring the same approach, collecting materials connected to my identity without limitations and curating them together into one place. I was hoping this iteration may help me narrow the topic of identity and self-representation even more, however, I started with:

Prompts/questions I was considering when curating the items:

Items that are connected to my identity?

My favourite things, books?

Childhood memories?

The visual representation of self?

Map locations connected to my identity?

Items / things that represent my hobbies and interests?

Memories and things connected to them?

Who am I / my role here?

What objects are important to me?

Extending on my experiments from last week and started exploring the creation of an alternative space by building my notion of identity in 3D freely using forms and shapes

In my experiments, I was exploring different ways and platforms (tools) to build and create such as adobe dimensions, spline or blender.

After all I got quite stuck on creating these yet most of my trials didn’t look very pretty 😀 more like a pile of trash

I started trying different approaches, getting inspired by the shapes of the objects, colours of my objects, to create an approach to design I could continue with or eventually introduce to a workshop or collective creation.

Moving further and iterating deeper, I started tracing and simplifying the shapes, re-building / editing them and placing them into 3D space, exploring different approaches – experimenting and exploring possibilities.

I had a goal of creating engaging materials, that can be expanded/added to by engaging with people and collecting more and more items, using that as a tool to a discussion about the role of identity and self-representation in contemporary society.

CONTINUING ITERATION:

In my final iteration, I was exploring ways to create a website and to embed the fictive space.

Found a way to embed a Spline (3D tool) creation to the website made in Frame while I can edit and update it in real time. However, when exporting from Adobe Dimensions, the textures and materials got lost. I continued working with simplified shapes, creating an “Identity Playground” in the space, people can access and engage with.

Can I work with this further??

While iterating I realised still the topic self-representation is too broad. When moving further – what more concrete can I represent in the space?

Moving further – researching and narrowing down the topic down – giving depth to the ideas, making more relatable and engaging work (not only from my perspective)

Engaging with the tools got me interested in exploring the space building space and pushing the tools (and my skills) further – interactive/playable?

How to create an interactive approach to design as a building and engaging tool while questioning and interrogating self-representation?

Continuing the the second week, I wasn’t sure about the shape of the project yet, so decided to take a little snippet to start instinctively iterating with.

As my starting point, I decided to use something simple and visual that is a representation/parallel to my physical identity.

Inspired by the first set of references, I started re-introducing my portrait through different digital processes such as photo manipulation, pixelation etc.

By manipulating the representation of identity (a personal portrait) the experiment visualises and explores the ongoing processes that reintroduce and reshape the identity in the digital space.

I was also experimenting with new tools to me such as Processing and programming to generate some pictures to deepen the idea of the unpredictability (to lose control of the edits)

After the iterations, I was thinking about the context to put the portraits in. While researching more projects and references to develop my position, I stumbled upon a few references that play with the form of objects in an alternative / constructed space. The idea of creating an alternative, distorted representation of identity It identity, doesn’t have one definition seemed like an interesting step in my iterations.

In my experiments, I started placing the edited portraits back into a physical World through the use of AR, freely playing around with forms as shapes, taking inspiration from my latest references.

I was experimenting with AR as it is a tool that balances between digital and physical, distorts and reflects back to the physical reality without actually existing in the space.

These experiments raised interesting questions and moved me deeper into my research and enquiry.

• Can I use design tools to create fictive “spaces“ that explore the topic of identity?

• Identity x Self Representation

• QUESTIONS of authenticity, privacy, influence of technology on our perception of self

1.What does identity mean in the digital age?

2. What is the line between digital / physical identity.

3. How do individuals perceive and construct their identities?

4. How can creation of experimental fictive spaces and an unrestricted (conscious) identity interpretation help to explore the questions and open a speculative dialogue?

Starting with my unit 3 work, I was focusing on the following questions and points to start with my studio practice:

• How can visual representation offer insights into the dynamics of identity in the contemporary world?

• Using design tools to explore the ongoing processes that reintroduce and reshape the identity in the digital space.

• The goal is to speculate & reflect on the question of what is happening to our identities in digital spaces.