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Moving Making Moving


2021
Senior Thesis book

In Moving Making Moving, I explored my cultural identity through a suite of experiments that used movement and graphic design as familiar identities. 


Thesis Statement
Even structure begins with improvisation. Movement is the mental and physical state of feeling both free and in control of one’s body. This body language can inform how we think and how we make, becoming a channel for identity expression. This thesis seeks to explore how the fluidity of graphic design and dance as familiar identities can help me navigate my cultural identity. I use design to create conceptual relationships, and I want to use improvisation and chance as opportunities to form these new relationships. In my graphic design practice, I utilize physical language to produce visual language, showing that movement informs form-making in a methodology of three stages:

  1. Movement as mental and physical state: What does movement mean beyond dance?
  2. Chance as conditional freedom: How can chance and randomness be used as creative tools?
  3. Gestalt as composing parts as a whole: How do we perceive and form compositions?

Moving Making Moving reflects my personal cultural awakening as a Chinese-Taiwanese American, graphic designer, and dancer. I seek to bridge the gap between these identities using the flux of movement to bend and build my sensibility of self. Through viewing movement as methods—such as improvisation, collaboration, communication, and craft as a process—I perform and document a range of experiments that weave identity research with multidisciplinary processes. By starting with what I can control most, the body and language, my methodology provides a space to observe movement and design as a freeing act. In turn, this freedom to express becomes an invitation to rebuild myself and my practice, as well as inviting the viewer to consider movement as a facilitator for identity exploration.

Typefaces
Aerobik by Lift Type
Surt by Blaze Type