Hypothesis as Survival: Rethinking the On a regular basis By means of Digital Storytelling
In a world more and more dominated by know-how and fractured narratives, Darious Shan stands out as a voice dedicated to interrogating the intersection of private reminiscence, speculative design, and emotional resonance. At the moment pursuing her postgraduate research in Artistic Computing on the College of the Arts London (UAL), Shan’s work radiates from a novel nexus of design, narrative, and digital tradition. Her tutorial trajectory, which started with an undergraduate diploma in Interactive Media on the College of York, laid the muse for her present creative observe—one which questions, imagines, and reconstructs potential futures by way of an intimate lens.
Shan’s artistry is formed by greater than formal schooling. She can be a digital creator on TikTok below the username Darious’s vlog, the place she explores a video type and aesthetic she refers to as woyoungism, a journalist producing e book critiques, and a passionate photographer. These parallel pursuits converge to tell her distinctive creative voice, mixing the immediacy of digital tradition with a reflective, typically poetic engagement with design. Her background in media research has geared up her with the instruments to interrogate up to date interfaces and cultural signifiers, whereas her immersion in storytelling permits her to reframe the mundane as speculative artefact. For Shan, creating artwork isn’t solely about making objects however about constructing fictional methods by which these objects achieve new layers of which means.
This convergence is most seen in her dedication to narrative creativeness. Shan’s observe facilities round speculative storytelling, utilizing design as a crucial instrument to mirror on potential social and technological shifts. Whether or not by way of app prototypes, conceptual pictures, or object-based narratives, she crafts immersive experiences that immediate viewers to reassess the boundaries between truth and fiction. Her aesthetic is deeply influenced by fantasy and emotional symbolism, typically borrowing from magical woman iconography and sci-fi tropes. But, moderately than merely mimicking style conventions, she recodes them to discover deeper questions on id, reminiscence, and survival.
Darious Shan: Protecting Artefacts from a Misremembered Future
Shan’s most evocative work up to now, Gentle Shell: Earth Fantasy Sequence, encapsulates her skill to merge design hypothesis with cultural critique. This ongoing venture explores how future societies, significantly on Mars, would possibly reinterpret Earth’s cultural artefacts—particularly the personal objects as soon as carried by ladies. Prompted by a hypothetical state of affairs that imagines the results of long-term colonization, Shan asks what which means these remnants would carry when stripped from their authentic context. The result’s a poignant meditation on cultural amnesia, gendered survival, and the poetic misreading of the previous.
Every object within the Gentle Shell sequence is designed as each a practical instrument and a misunderstood relic. Drawing inspiration from camouflage within the animal kingdom, magical woman transformation sequences, and social media tropes like “What’s in my bag?”, Shan constructs artefacts comparable to combs, pendants, and baggage that serve twin functions. On one hand, they’re speculative instruments meant to defend their customers from photo voltaic radiation and emotional estrangement; on the opposite, they’re deeply symbolic vessels of emotional care and misinterpretation. By means of mixed-media object pictures and interface design, Shan introduces a speculative world the place this stuff achieve mythic standing, not by way of performance alone, however by way of the tales imagined round them.
The visible language of Gentle Shell is deliberately smooth, iridescent, and magical—designed to attract viewers in earlier than revealing its crucial edge. Shan balances aesthetic seduction with conceptual density, guaranteeing that every component, regardless of how fantastical, contributes to a bigger inquiry into survival and cultural storytelling. Her use of digital media enhances this expertise, as app prototypes and interface simulations increase the narrative house and permit audiences to check themselves as members on this future. The result’s an inventive expertise that isn’t solely visually fascinating however intellectually provocative.
Coding Fiction: Designing for Feeling, Perform, and Future Reminiscence
Shan’s work is pushed by a permanent query: how will we embed which means into objects, and the way would possibly these meanings shift over time? Her strategy to narrative design blurs conventional boundaries between artwork and prototype, fiction and performance. In Gentle Shell, she resists the necessity for decision or readability, opting as a substitute to assemble artefacts that exist in a suspended state—half idea, half critique, half fantasy. These will not be blueprints for precise merchandise, however thought experiments that mirror our present anxieties about gender, know-how, and emotional resilience.
What distinguishes Shan’s observe is her skill to mix speculative pondering with tactile design. Bodily fabrication performs an important function in grounding her imaginative ideas. Every object is hand made after which digitally recontextualized by way of interface design, constructing a layered narrative that oscillates between bodily and digital house. Her references are various and sometimes playful—starting from social media aesthetics to organic camouflage—however they’re at all times used strategically. By rooting her speculative artefacts in recognizable cultural references, she invitations viewers to enter her fictional world by way of acquainted pathways.
Interactive design is central to this technique. Quite than treating viewers as passive observers, Shan crafts digital interfaces that act as portals into the imagined futures she constructs. These parts serve not solely as an example her ideas however to foster emotional and mental engagement. She makes use of digital media to bridge the hole between the fabric object and the viewers’s creativeness, encouraging customers to take part in speculative pondering. For Shan, interplay isn’t a technical function, however a philosophical one: a approach to query how we interpret, misremember, and emotionally interact with the objects that form our lives.
Darious Shan: Delicate Futures, Vital Play, and the Aesthetics of Misreading
On the core of Shan’s creative imaginative and prescient is a want to impress a number of modes of engagement—emotional, crucial, and playful. Her initiatives will not be didactic however inviting, encouraging viewers to venture their very own narratives onto the objects and methods she constructs. The mild glow of her aesthetic decisions, the layered symbolism of her artefacts, and the speculative interfaces she designs all converge to create an area of imaginative play. Inside this house, guests will not be solely allowed however inspired to misinterpret, reinterpret, and co-author the which means of her work.
She views the Earth Fantasy artefacts as fictional objects that stay someplace between artwork set up and conceptual prototype. Their perform is to not remedy design issues, however to open up cultural and emotional inquiries. For example, a mirror mistaken by Martian descendants for a photo voltaic navigation gadget turns into a metaphor for a way which means is distorted throughout time and context. This playful misreading turns into a instrument for crucial reflection, highlighting how assumptions about historical past, gender, and know-how are constructed and perpetuated. Shan’s artefacts don’t simply mirror imagined futures; in addition they reveal blind spots within the current.
As Shan appears forward, her inventive ambition stays targeted on increasing the boundaries of crucial and interactive design. Her present research at UAL have strengthened her resolve to discover initiatives that unite bodily and digital parts into unified narrative methods. She envisions future collaborations that stretch throughout disciplines—bringing collectively curators, designers, and storytellers to discover the narrative potential of digital objects. By means of her continued observe, Shan goals to problem audiences to rethink how we interpret the artefacts of our lives, and the way future generations would possibly sooner or later misremember the truths we take as a right.
