Alienation
Category: Accessories
Competitions: Taiwan Region
Creative Motivation: This stems from my observations of modern streets: people stare intently at their mobile screens; ‘distraction’ has become the norm, to the extent that they are willing to risk their personal safety by looking at their phones whilst walking. I have attempted to give tangible form to this intangible social habit by designing a piece of protective equipment. Design Concept: This work uses impact-resistant armour to represent protection and a sense of security. Combined with the rear headrest that forces the wearer to look down and the antennae on the top of the head, it serves as a metaphor for the sensory atrophy and compensation that result from our field of vision being hijacked by screens, symbolising our forced reliance on external tactile sensations to perceive the world. At the same time, it satirises the necessity of being fully armoured in order to survive and move forward in modern society, transforming this everyday habit into an absurd contemporary ritual.
