Variation, selection and legacy in design : the chromosome 15 watch collection.

• Main Author: Ong, Nicholas Thian Chai.
• Other Authors: School of Art, Design and Media
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Design::Product
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52395
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Chromosome 15 draws most of its inspiration form the evolutionary theory of Natural Selection in Darwin’s Origin of Species. Particularly where in the quest for a perfectly adaptable species, characteristics that injure the species and leave it with a lesser chance of survival are not chosen and passed on, entailing the divergence of character and the extinction of less-improved forms. Manipulating Darwin’s concepts as a parallel to explain similar concepts that dictate the trends in art and design, a coursework project was scheduled to explore on a micro level, “Design Signatures” and “Designer-Consumer relations” and translating these ideas into a single artefact. Designers often leave bits of themselves in their work, a signature style, so to say. As they pass on, this signature style gets reworked into new designs and lives on. In a sense, it could be safe to say that it gets naturally selected. As consumers use designs, they choose it, select it, and are influenced by it. The designer’s ‘signature’ or ‘essence’ is imposed on them. This is highly visible in fashion companies and brands where after changing of creative directors the general image and style of the brand still remains the same, this gets filtered into their clients adopting the brand’s vision of what a woman should dress like, take for example Chanel and how Lagerfield has perpetrated her style and bred an army of black and white hound’s-tooth tweed clones. However, changing consumer relations has led to the consumer wanting to assume some of the roles of the designer. The project then attempts to manipulate generative and parametric design tools bound by and abstracted tom medical parameters and forms, to create artefacts unique to and embedded with the consumer’s progeny. The April 2013 issue of Dazed and Confused has published an article on how prototyping technology has allowed consumers to now create their own designer products, coupled with the new smart personalization services from Burberry, it is pretty obvious where the trend is going. With further juxtaposition of Darwinism and Design and Consumer trends with the Author’s own genetic heritage and history (Marfan’s Syndrome), Chromosome 15 was pushed into another parallel as a commentary piece on the redundancy or perhaps the undesirability of genetic mutations and disorders and their sufferers so as to allow some form of progeny to be left behind. The project then attempts to create new experiences in product design by shifting the role of the designer to the consumer and by manipulate generative and parametric design tools bound by and abstracted from medical parameters and forms, to create artefacts unique to and embedded with the consumer’s progeny, by drawing inspiration from Darwin’s theories of evolution.