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Ilaria Castelli
Simulacra

Personal Archivio
Category: Editorial / Research Thesis
Year: 2020
Client: Politecnico di Milano
Work: Individual
Tools: Adobe Indesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator
Technical: 210 x 296 mm, 330 pp, paperback binding​​​​​

Simulacra is a research of speculative design between ethnographic research, case studies and a phenomenological approach, that starting from the socio-cultural shift of our contemporary age, investigates the role that emerging technologies, such as synthetic media, play on a social, ethical and aesthetic level. Furthermore, it analyses what correlation there is between these, man and other organisms, showing the need to abandon an anthropocentric point of view, in order to embrace new perspectives of decentralized action, in a new post-human ecology. The world of today is the world of simulacra, where media are autonomously created, distributed and spread without having a visual respondence in tangible references, acting and existing only in the digital realm, but still creating consequences on the material one. What can now be considered real, or fake? It will be investigated how, consequently, the role of design has to change and adapt: design, acting as a cultural mediator and enhancer, could become the coordinator of a collective strength and intellect. In particular, the definition and search for a future of meaning and growth, avoiding dystopian futures governed by inhuman technologies and useless hierarchical constructs.

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