The Lens

 A lens is a medium that focuses or disperses a light beam. Design then offers various types of refraction, creating different effects through the lens. Design is like a multi-perspective lens that transforms all elements in our daily lives in the past, present, and future into multiple possibilities. At the same time, it reflects our hopes, fears, desires, anxieties, beliefs and values that entangled in our mind.

Ursula K. Le Guin, and American author of speculative fiction and science fiction, remarked in her book, The Left Hand of Darkness, “The story is not all mine, nor told by me alone.” Like the rebirth of light after refracted, design continuously records, interprets, and transforms everything into materialized narratives and carriers such as products, architecture, media, and clothing. In this way, design attempts to bring the world together. Moreover, it doesn’t merely focus on human beings but also on nature, time and space, species, and even other time zones of the world.

“Focusing and dispersing, transformation, diffraction, dimension”

In the time of uncertainty, how does a designer become a lens maker? We seek to respond to urgent issues including climate change, religious conflict, racial discrimination, gender equality, wealth gap, aging society and the impact of the Anthropocene, trying to compose new objects, systems and structures. The year of 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of Department of Industrial Design,  Shih Chien University. We will continue to experiment, explore, and speculate the possible future and realize the light of our common anticipation.