1

500-WORD FINAL RATIONALE (REBELLION) Project 2 CCDN 231 Jimmy Nguyen Victoria University of Wellington Tutor: Meredith Crowe

500-WORD FINAL RATIONALE (REBELLION) Rationale on Rebellion

For the sensory experiments, I tried to figure out the mood: Rebellion. I did the experiments on my activity in Project 1 listening to music. By altering the taste, I observed my two friends. I had them eat sweet dried plum which was really strong and sour. Furthermore, two distinct people and genders yielded the different results. I once experienced listening to music when I ate a hot, spicy Thai food. The spiciness had me uncomfortable; my tongue went numb and I could barely enjoy the music. Therefore, I wanted to know what reactions from the other people would make. I tried it with sweet dried plum, a Chinese food which they keep plums with salt and some seasonings in a period of time. When the plums are kept long enough, they will get really sour combining with salt which will result in a strong combination. Their taste would be strong enough to distract the taste from the hearing sense. Furthermore, my friends had never tried those plums before, so their bodies would not likely to get used to the taste of the food. On the other hand, listening to music is very enjoyable. However a strong and strange taste will cause rebellious mood when it alters the brains attention. As in design, I presume human senses as basic elements: colours, typography, images etc. they need to be in order and to be applied by some rules which make a design good or bad. Rebellious effects that can be achieved through rule-breaking, it means more those can be achieved by disregarding the colour matching, awkward and even unreadable typography, the use of ugly materials etc.(Asensio, L. and Lorenz, M (2012)) Comparing the human brain, which controls all our senses, to the world as something new and strange appears, they would not be accepted due to peoples reluctances of adopting to those matters. For example, Adbusters is a company with a new kind of lefty rag a slick-

500-WORD FINAL RATIONALE (REBELLION)

subversive mindbomb full of intimate epiphanies, geopolitical insights and ad hominem attacks; a magazines that would fire up the political activist scene with graphic punch and unflinching works of art.. Lot of advisors and consultants told it should not go that route since it was risky and rule-breaking. Adbusters works did oppose the culture jamming in 1990s (Lasn, K. (2006)). For further explanation, Immanuel Kants research on religious believers debates that there are two kinds of knowledge; that which could be determined as fact, that is, phenomenological knowledge, and that which could only be known by faith, that is, noumenological knowledge. This fact/faith distinction stuck and changed the way the mind approached the question of what it could know and not know. For example, people were perfectly willing to accept that since God created the universe, all truth was His and all truth could be known. Over the years the fact/faith distinction became more firmly rooted. (William A. Dembski & Charles W. Colson, 2004)) In conclusion, my sweet dried plum is the most successful experiment for me to elicit the rebellion mood. The strong taste of the plums really distracts the brain from the hearing. Due to my friends reactions, facial expression, I did see they had not enjoyed the music at all. Furthermore, their feedback supported my predictions, and even they did not feel comfortable at all.

500-WORD FINAL RATIONALE (REBELLION)

Asensio, L. and Lorenz, M (2012) Pretty Ugly: Visual Rebellion in Design. Berlin: Gestalten Extract from Lasn, K. (2006) Design Anarchy. Vancouver: Adbusters Media Foundation William A. Dembski & Charles W. Colson (January 13, 2004), The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design, IVP Books