Department Blog
Department news, events, and snapshots of student life at SVA in New York City.
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A MASK THAT REVEALS: Exploration and Expression Through Anonymity
Before Jingting He started her thesis, she did a year-long project that consisted of sliding anonymous thank-you notes underneath the Department Chair’s office door every Monday morning. By designing these letters anonymously, she felt she could express herself more freely and creatively. She wouldn't have realized she was creative enough to produce such delightful work if she hadn’t given herself a mask of anonymity. Therefore, Jingting developed A Mask That Reveals: Exploration and Expression Through Anonymity, a thesis that creates anonymous platforms to help people explore and express other sides of themselves.
INVISIBLE POSSESSIONS: Reclaiming Our Relationship With Products in an Augmented Age
Louis Elwood-Leach’s thesis Invisible Possessions explores the rise of these invisible products and considers opportunities to reclaim our relationship with possessions in an augmented age that increasingly values access over possession, experience over product, and machine over individual. Elwood-Leach argues that in losing sight of the possessions in our lives, we are losing the means to engage with our memories, culture and sense of self.
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDSCAPES: Design to Prioritize Untapped Aural Potential in the Visual World
"Currently, we live in a world that is a consequence of ignoring sound. We have reached peaks of noise pollution in our physical environments—especially in urban landscapes. This has occurred because the visual has been given priority over the aural, and continuous ignorance has led us to create and use noise abatement measures to reduce the effects of unintentionally designed soundscapes." Through his thesis Contemporary Soundscapes: Design to Prioritize Untapped Aural Potential in the Visual World, Antriksh takes the opportunity to explore the use of untapped audio potential as a medium of experience and product design through which he can engage people with the meaning of sound in its various forms.
ME, MYSELF & A.I.: How I Learned to Love the Machine That Took my Job
As artificial intelligence’s capabilities continue to expand, there’s a growing anxiety that the impending AI Revolution may automate more jobs than it creates—triggering a crisis of worker displacement to rival the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. In response, Will Crum developed Me, Myself and A.I.: How I Learned to Love the Machine That Took my Job, a thesis of speculative designs that imagine near and distant futures where AI is used to increase individual agency—not diminish it. Crum’s proposals and provocations address access to work and other ways to protect human dignity in an automated age.
GENTLEmen: Challenging Adults to Raise Feminine Boys
In his thesis GENTLEmen: Challenging Adults to Raise Feminine Boys, Andrew Schlesinger explores gender identity, masculinity, stereotyping, parenting, education, and male culture. Andrew has been investigating the restrictive nature placed on men and the necessity for them to conform to a masculine ideal, which is destructive to themselves and those around them. Through the feminist movement, most would acknowledge there has been a significant approach towards teaching girls traditionally masculine traits. This thesis argues we need a similar, foundational shift to teach boys feminine traits.
Josh Corn's Multi-ccino Mug in the New York Times!
Florence Fabricant (herself!) wrote up an item in the New York Times about Josh Corn's Multi-ccino Mug in the New York Times this week—one of 6 MFA Products of Design objects that will be celebrated during the month of April in both MoMA retail stores! (The department is also designing the window displays for both the midtown and SoHO stores.) Congratulations Josh!
DOMINION: Redefining the Relationship Between Animals and Humans
In her MFA thesis Dominion, Ailun Sai discusses the relationship between animals and humans. Through a series of design—including product design, experience design, and interaction design—Ailun encourages people to reflect on their role in the natural world and to question their perceived sense of superiority over animals.
JUSTICE BY ALL: Revitalizing Civic Engagement in the Judicial System
Julia Lindpaintner’s thesis work was inspired by her own experience of serving on a grand jury in Manhattan during the summer of 2016. It profoundly changed her understanding of the judicial system, and in particular, the way she saw her role in it. “My mental model shifted,” Julia states. She further explains, “Instead of seeing the judicial system as an autonomous force over which I had no influence, I felt viscerally the way in which we, as citizens, are collectively responsible for the system and the outcomes it produces.”
INSTIGATIONISM: Inciting Activity in a Sedentary Population
Michael Lee Kenney’s master’s thesis Instigationism is built on a foundation of design work that is intended to incite physical activity in sedentary populations. By combining research insights from the fields of psychology, game design, behavioral economics, and immersive media, Kenney pushes us to reexamine our relationship with exercise.