SPACE, TIME, & GRAPHIC DESIGN

I've taken about a month's break from my thesis topic on Time Capsules so I figure it's time to start back up. I am hoping this blog will help focus some of my fragmented thoughts and to attain outside perspective from the obligated readership of friends and family.

My instincts tell me to tread lightly with this because whenever I explain my thesis topic to friends in the program, I am often met with furrowed brows and polite gestures masking a cynical, 'good luck with that.' But I take this with a grain of salt for all along the battle has been to explain a rather complex connection between Time Capsules and Graphic Design, not to prove its relevance. For the sake of succinctness, I will not explain this connection (at least, not in this entry) but instead embark on explaining why the topic has meaning to me at all.

I guess it all begins with my own archetypal instincts to understand space and time. The first time I grappled with the concept was when I moved from my rural hometown of Plymouth, Massachusetts to Seoul, Korea in 1988. I was only 9, and prior to this the only other Koreans I had met were my family members so the change could not have been more dramatic. I learned early on that there was a larger universe that existed in dimensions way beyond myself and that even the incremental passing of time could result in infinite change.

The largest difficulty was reconciling between my polar opposite existences as a small-town American girl and foreigner living in the bustling city of Seoul. As I evolved into this new existence, I became disconnected with my former self and needed a way of keeping ground. What helped me acclimate were the artifacts of my previous space-time; namely my Barbie and the Rockers doll and my third grade class picture, to name a couple. The tactility of these objects were proof that my former self had actually existed and that she still existed somewhere inside of me.

I would move yet another 4 times in my life and each time was a new challenge in self-reflection and re-acclimatization. What I learned in 1988 would help me to see relevance in the objects around me and the bigger ideas they could represent. This resulted in the ceremonious accumulation of photographs, letters, journals, and souvenirs that I would later survey with melancholy reflection at various times of displacement. Though I did not dub it so at the time, I had created time capsules for myself, to be opened and reflected upon in a future space and time.

I have felt, personally, the power of communicating across an abyss of space and time even if that communication was to myself. The efforts alone have resulted in a better understanding of who I am, how I became this way, and who I want to be. How much more of an impact could a time capsule make if tackled at a global scale? But, as much as I know myself in the present, I cannot foretell who I will be tomorrow or years from now and therein lies the difficulty in constructing a time capsule that will be heartily felt in the future, especially at a global scale.

I am not looking to take on the challenge of defining the ultimate time capsule, but to instead assert the new and tangible forms they may take. But I'll save that conversation for a future space and time...