Object Mediated Interaction
Yang Yu
Yang Yu is a designer with a background in user experience and art history. He explores the shaping of experiences and imaginations about social and technological developments, with a current focus on nature experience on earth.
His works make people recognise the inconspicuous things and sights around them. Most of his design inspiration came from films, from which he summarized a set of design methods that combined visual sense and multiple narrative techniques.
Exhibition
Royal College of Art / Design Products x OPPO: Smart Habitats in the 5G Era, Ventura Future, Milan Design Week, 9–14 April 2019.
Sponsors
OPPO
I intended the work to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness.
I keep looking for different ways to tell stories within the product.
Concept rendering
Elements in Space
The piece presents an octagonal pod-structure composed of multiple reflective panels, with a projection screen at the far end which reflects and multiplies the image of earthbound experiences into a fully surrounded immersion. Once inside, the viewer is not only confronted with a personalised combination of images and sounds but also a vivid earthbound sensory experience and brings back belonging to the earth.
Humans are destined to go to space. NASA and other agencies are carrying out experiments to explore how people will live and work in space for long durations. The next step is Mars. It takes 3 days to go to the Moon, but 1-3 years for people to return from Mars. The obstacle to a long-duration human mission is the endurance of the human psyche. People who live on the International Space Station for a year forget what it feels like to live on the Earth and miss the feeling of the elements as well as their loved ones.
How will the space living environment change? The work explores the idea of living in space for a long time while being homesick for the earth. It is a simulacrum of the ‘comfort lounge’ pod-which will soon be delivered to the ISS.
This work utilises reflective materials and personalised images and sounds to create a more intimate earthbound experience. Ultimately, the work alludes to the inseparable connection between humans and the earth.