sherylpeng.com
Posters, 5 x 60 in.
Calendar booklet, 5 x 5 in.
Go Touch Grass aims to collapse the nature/culture divide, a harmful,
human invention of Western thought and the foundation for the
Anthropocene1, by cultivating companionship with nature and
imagining different ecological relationships through graphic design.
In this thesis, design serves as an apparatus to illuminate the
personhood and agency of the non-human world, rewriting the
narrative of nature as an unwily, untamed entity in opposition to the
developed, modern culture. The ontological hierarchy of the
nature/culture divide is further disrupted by this thesis’ roots in Daoist
and animist belief systems, both examples of the feasibility of an
equitable relationship with the natural world.
Through exploring methods of biomimicry, co-designing with and for
nature, and borrowing natural processes as frameworks for graphic
design making, nature and culture become rearranged into a feedback
loop; where one informs the other. Design creates a symbiotic
relationship between the two, promoting empathy and intentional
consumption of the Earth’s resources. By developing a methodology
that is nurtured by the environment and the life it sustains, Go Touch
Grass positions nature as a collaborator in the making and cultivation
of culture, rather than collateral damage in its development. Ultimately,
it is a display of how design can restore and inspire empathetic
ecological relationships.
1. Proposed geological age that claims to characterize the era when
‘mankind started impacting Earth’. The Anthropocene creates a false
binary out of nature/culture by devaluing nature as a subservient
resource to humans.
Boston University College of Fine Arts
School of Visual Arts