Sitting in the Penn Museum - Stoner Courtyard, Digital Paradox is a Curious Cabinet that uses color, hierarchy, and scale to express the relationship between the digital image and the physical world. Overall, it aims to appear in a unique way to the viewer at all angles.

CONCEPT

DRAWINGS

The figural geometry forms curves around four hidden artifacts from the museum and creates reveals for the voids in which the artifacts lie. The cabinet's geometry is divided into separate pieces that interlock and rely on each other in order to stand. Each piece needs another to hold the artifacts in place.

PHOTOGRAMMETRY

The materiality is meant to draw viewers close to the form and encourage them to consider how we view the physical and digital worlds today. Heavier in form on the upper half than the lower, Digital Paradox is curiously stable even though that does not seem to be the case with its change in material from top to bottom. This materiality change is a central theme in the cabinet's design.

TEXTURE ANALYSIS

The color choice is a response to how the digital image is constantly distorting our perception of reality. We may look at screens everyday and upload or download files to and from the Internet, but we have lost sense of what real is. Throughout its form, the color scheme changes only in texture, scale, and distortion.

The plywood base emphasizes the container's final design concept: digital masking. The overall geometry is divided into three strips and masked by both physical and digital textures. Moving from the outside in, each side of the base is overcome with the normal texture that influenced the whole design. Wherever the normal texture is shown on the base, the container's material is not yet influenced by the digital world and remains in its natural state. As viewers walk around Digital Paradox, they get a glimpse of the back and forth of both the physical and digital worlds.

FABRICATION

IN SITE

Sponsored by: Rittenhouse Hardware & Color Reflections