Downtown Campus Library (Floor 2) | January - March 2022
To design is to give form to a narrative. Often we don’t see narratives as “designed artifacts” but as objective statements about the way things are. They appear fixed, unmoving, flat, and fact.
Narratives are not fixed. They are complex, dimensional, and ever-changing. We are living through a great shift in perspective around many of the narratives pertaining to the way we live: how we think about public health, an urgent and broad reckoning around social justice, and a new approach to how we work. While much of the information surrounding these narratives is not new, the public has begun to see and experience them in new ways.
With a semester’s worth of critical design practice in hand, students in Art 224 approached this very question: how can design shift perspectives of a given narrative by changing the way people experience information?
Students formed groups around narratives they hoped to give more dimensional form to. They researched Appalachian stereotypes, the misconceptions and histories of drug use in the U.S., attitudes toward Asian culture, and the broad scope of planned parenthood. Through “printeractives”: students developed tactile opportunities for viewers to re-approach these narratives.
This exhibit is an invitation to engage with dimensional narratives and forms. Viewers are encouraged to open, unfold, spin, and pull the printeractives as necessary to reveal additional information. We kindly ask that you return them to the state you found them in so that others can continue to experience them.
ART 224 Students: Cara Colleti, Kenny Farmer, Cadyn Fauber, Delanie Gossert, Tara
Hammack, Ella Hardman, Shea Pena, Brooke Saab, Bethany Severance, Kayla Singer,
Marissa Stojanovic, Alison Tucker, Alexis Turner, Desiree Vu, Patience Whipkey,
Nathaniel Windom, Molly Wolfe
Instructor: Abigail Feldman