2019
Spilled
Sonia Zhang
Viewing Device
Class: Space + Materiality
Professor: Shari Men
In this project, we are told to make a viewing device that projects how we see the world or what we want others to see through the use of this device. For my device, you can wear it both ways. I tried to convey through this piece that since I’m from Beijing, a similar city to New York in China, I spent my childhood in the countryside where I was surrounded by nature. Now living in New York, I miss nature back at home and the city where I was from. So I have one side of the glasses cut in shapes of nature (there are animals, trees, my house, and my family) then on the other side is the two cities that I live in (Beijing and New York). To differentiate the two cities, I have the signature buildings of the cities on each side of the glasses. When someone wears these glasses, he or she can flip to the other side whenever they want.
I used illustrator to trace out the device then went to the laser lab to cut it out. It was simple to make until I had to use a heat gun to bend it. The first copy I made broke in turning the glasses, so I had multiple copies just in case it broke again. After bending the front, I had also to bend the earpiece because it didn’t fit my ears at first. But after all, I enjoyed doing this project, and that I liked the result because it is exactly how I imagined.
