This Master Thesis is a collaboration of Andrea Ramirez Sabat and me.
In today’s world, technology and digital entities have expanded the horizons of what an artifact can do. The current generation has been born into a world surrounded by screens.
The purpose of this project is to explore the nature of culture and design, and understand how moments in time transform into artifacts and how these artifacts communicate a story. Being born in the millennial generation, we are constantly confronted by digital developments and changes. We are more susceptive of new technology, and interacting with screens and working on tablets and computers have almost become second nature.
These changes, though may seem diminutive and inconsequential when viewed through the lenses of our day to day lives, assume a role of great cultural significance when observed over an extended time period.
The word “artifact”, in colloquial terms, evokes an imagery of an old relic, of something ancient belonging to a time long gone by. This, however, is a false notion to hold as each generation contains objects and symbols; artifacts that are representative of the society, culture and behavior, along with others of that time period and hence are considered iconic. Studying these artifacts and comparing them across generations, therefore, is an intuitive approach towards gaining a better understanding of our society and serves as a window to our own time.
This prospect is an exciting one, and held a collective fascination that led us to form a group and explore this topic together. To begin with the study of our own digital generation, the obvious target group to consider is ourselves, the Millennials. Our approach is to initially create artifacts based on the gestures and movements of the human body while interacting with what we believe is one of the most iconic artifacts of our generation: the smartphone.
By creating fictitious artifacts centered around the interactions of Millennials with technology, and analyzing those artifacts, a deeper insight into the behavioral patterns of our generation can be obtained and therefore analyze the traces we will leave behind us as a generation.
Our final master presentation was very successful with many visitors and an interesting discussion.
