#Week2 Environment
Speaking of environment, it could be considered in various scales. As individuals living in the objective world, we perceive the surroundings with our physical and mental sense by touching skin, smelling perfume, talking and listening to each other. Our perception can be the environment where we are living. However, it is showed in some research and science fictions that human’s perception can be fake, which means what we are feeling at the moment may not be what is actually happening there. In terms of this fact, how we perceive the surroundings and how we process the information we are receive is more important than the result of feeling.
Standing at another angel, our opinion towards an issue may change greatly by the environment around us. For instance, wearing makeups or not, living in a big city or a dessert, staying alone or with others, all these changes of surroundings will effect how we treat the world as well as ourselves. However, people may not usually be aware of this. As VR and AR tecnology becomes popular, the boundary of real world and virtual word is being blurred. I don’t know if this trend is good or not, it is affecting our perception mechanism.
As a designer, one of the crucial things for us is to call for people’s awareness. By “reframing” their inherent sense, opinion and viewpoint, designers will be able to make innovations out of the real world and go beyond constraints of thoughts. Such as The Weather Project by Olafur Eliassion, the totally artificial environment becomes a huge prompt to the audience, reminding them of what is the same and what is different between these two worlds, and giving them an opportunity to question themselves: What is real? This is how design impact people’s thoughts and provides a chance to make difference.
