Nominee BA Research Award
Meet Victor Coste! Victor was nominated for the 2021 BA Research Award with his graduation project ‘Light Space’. In this interview, Victor tells us about his work and future plans.
Can you tell us a bit about your graduation project and how it came about?
My research started during the Covid pandemic. Clearly, quite a bit of large changes took place in our lives during that period. Being confined to my home, I realised that there were many aspects that I disliked about my surroundings. So I started looking into Artificial Reality (AR) and how it could influence our perception of our surroundings.
I interviewed a group of eighteen to twenty-four-year-olds living in small studio spaces. This group was affected heavily by the Covid lockdown, as it confined them into a small living space with very little social interactions. I realised that living in such a small space affected their mental wellbeing and that this problem will persist even when the lockdown finishes. Something that the people I interviewed mentioned was that living indoors tends to blur the division between ‘rest’ and ‘work’. This is where I saw the potential of AR to develop more meaningful and engaging experiences that could help young adults take proper rest.
This led me to create my graduation work, which is called ‘Light Space’. It is completely dedicated to taking proper rest. Rather than changing the physical living space, as some people might do by renovating an office space or creating a spare room. Through this project I invite the user to take a moment in their day to tune in with their senses and create a moment of rest. The project shows how a part of the user's living space can become an interactive experience. This new space (or Light Space) acts as a divider from the rest of their daily routine. It is fully customizable, allowing the user to change their environment by changing sounds and objects that are created by means of projection based AR. This is a form of projection mapping that makes use of sensors, allowing one to interact with the digital space in the physical world.
Which themes or societal concerns are you addressing in your work, and how?
I believe the main themes which I am addressing in this work are human interaction, connection through space and simulated materiality. It aims to facilitate the merging of the digital space and the physical space while visualizing non-materiality in the physical world. All revolving around the balance between rest and work, of course. That is where mental wellbeing came in. I researched things such as ASMR, mukbang, and trends like ambient wellness, in which the environment, the lighting, the smell and the sound are used to create a better space. Nowadays offices are changing into ambient wellness spaces, and so are some airplanes as it seems to help passengers with their jet lags. I tried to bring some of these principles into my project.
What will you be working on in the near future? What are your next steps?
I just started a full-time job as a graphic designer at Megawatt in Eindhoven. Megawatt is a commercial advertising bureau. Here, I hope to develop myself further and focus on my skills in branding, both visually and conceptually. I would like to see how I can implement my interest and experience in immersive technology within the field of marketing. As a graphic designer and digital designer, I see immersive technology as an interesting tool for storytelling and creating experiences. I would like to explore this further.
To read more about Victor’s work, pay a visit to his Graduation Catalogue Page. Furthermore, his journey can be followed on Instagram and his Website. The winners of the BA Research Awards will be announced during a festive ceremony as part of the Graduation Show. Keep an eye on our Graduation Show page for more information.
