Design for Debate

Soup Tang
4 min readMar 1, 2017

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Back to before industry age, crafts man is concieved as who have the most knowledge of materials and skills, the artifacts itself is the reflection of the ancient wisdom and the oath between physical objects and human spirits. Althought it is much appreciated to carefully processing an unique artifact with devoted contribution of time and thoughts, the original intention of the design might have been shifted in this digital age.

Design scenarios empowered by digital manufacturing and Internet communication — the so called third industrial revolution, are proposed by some artists to make objects that facilitating social discussion about social, culture, applications of technologies in everyday life, and with Internet to future prolong the discussion. One of my favorite artists Sputnik0! designed her first “social debate” — MENSTRUATION MACHINE in transsexual issue, the discussion originated from Youtube and then swept all main social medias. There is no coincidence, for an important segmentm of this digital future, Internet attaches more importance to every single file that could transform to every corner of this world through Internet. What is the role to play for the artists, designer in this world-wide co-manufacturing?

MENSTRUATION MACHINE — TAKASHI’S TAKE (2010)

I am not a artists, even not a designer, just someone who is fassinated by the enormous influence a art work could have and touched by the responsibility design took. Maybe, a single piece of myself could be attached to the work and make sounds, even weak is enough, when someone happend to have a glance at it.

Starting Point

The are moments when a man hurts a women with their words, behaviors and actions by unintentionally or carelessly be unaware of the gender discrimination behind it, and that leads to a worser situation. Dare a man admit his concealed superiority and confront the tension of this issue being exposed to the public?

Be aware of this concern, I designed this high heel model which the heel is made of glass and the characteristics of the material indicates the physically disadvantage(fragile), innocence(transparence) and elegant beauty(fluidity) of woman.

Sketches

Other than all these characteristics, a woman has confidence, tenacity, talent and the firm belief of standing for herself without being persevering because of existent privilege, prejudice and discrimination. I looked for strong and indomitable body gesture that could convey this message yet not domineering and still elegent.

Body Gesture

Then I made the 3D modle in Rhino by extract the body structure with Polyline and Fillet them into curves and PlanaSrf into a surface, then use commond LOFT to make a closed body.

Snapshot 1
Snapshot 2
3D Printing

Orginally, I tried to make it multi dimentional. However the outcome is not satisfying and may fail to 3D printed.

Original Model

This work is devided into two parts and I till need to finish the uper body of the high heels. After individually mould these two parts, they should be conjected together as a completed artifacts.

3D model

Here is my Pinterest boarder link for “Body Gesture” : http://pin.it/Vldt0ze

For “High Heels”: http://pin.it/JbBrvEk

For “Feminist”: http://pin.it/WWmekq1

For “Multi Dimension”: http://pin.it/tq0T_Jk

For “Glass Artifacts”: http://pin.it/fKgvNWY

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