DURING YOUNGARTS WEEK 2018, the Design Arts Discipline was tasked to create a piece that could both be performed with and stand alone. The panelists—Tommy Walton, Julietta Cheung, and Chat Travieso—pushed me to create an entirely conceptual piece. I had about two days to design the piece and about two and a half days to construct it with the help of the graduate assistants. The final piece is the evolution of three previous ideas. My piece is a commentary on the unfair exchange between social media and its users. We pour our entire selves into social media, but what we get in return is not the same as a human-to-human interaction. What is put in is not what comes out. The vending machine’s owner/wearer loads personally-connected, 3D objects inside the machine, and other social media users purchase the items with insignificant black coins. As I moved down the aisle and stepped onstage with the machine, all four objects were robbed from me. As an object was taken, I lost a piece of my personality and drooped lower and lower. The coin travels in between two sheets of clear plexiglass into the black reservoir at the rear of the box. The user pulls a tab at the front of the box that supports a tray holding an item. When the tab no longer supports the tray, the tray flips downward and jumps the item into the retrieval window. TO CONSTRUCT THE PERSONALLY-CONNECTED FORMS, I experimented with various materials until the form evoked an image for feeling in me. The tangled blob of copper coils represents the stress and tension in my life. The two black pieces were modeled in sculpting clay (two right-most depicted) and then scanned and 3D printed. The artery-like form represents my energy. The egg-like shape with a section cut out represents my solidarity. The last form (second from left) was sculpted in high-density foam and represents me going off to college. Other than the four forms, the box is made entirely of lasercut 1/8” plexiglass. With the assistance of the graduate assistant, I modeled every piece in Rhino CAD. Due to the time constraint, I jumped straight into 3D CAD after a few sketches. There are no hinges or other hardware—every piece of plexiglass fits into each other.
I’ve noticed that a lot of my unconcious emotions start to come out. As you make conceptual pieces, emotions start to come out that didn’t before.
SOCIAL VENDING (2018)