Julia Nishizaki – Looking Outwards – 11

This week, I’m focusing on Tina Frank, an Austrian designer, artist, and professor at the University of Art and Design Linz, where she heads the department of Visual Communication at the Institute for Media. Frank collaborates with musicians to create installations and audio visual performances, though more recently, her design work has shifted more towards data visualization for scientific projects. In addition, Frank is interested in teaching digital publications, and experiments in synesthesia.

The project that I chose to look at is called “What if,” created by Tina Frank and Alexandra Murray-Leslie as a part of the Klanglichtfestival in 2019. “What if” is an immersive image sound installation meant to challenge how we think about and approach society and the world, through the use of color, forms, sounds, and images. This work is made up of three scenes, “Growing,” “Fantasy,” and “Future Dreams,” which, as stated on Frank’s website, address questions such as “What does our environment look like if it were only inhabited by mosses and ferns? How would our everyday life be if detached from patriarchal structures? What if feminists ruled the world?” 

I found this project particularly interesting because it uses critical design in order to question our current ideologies, values, and assumptions, and to provide glimpses into different possible futures or scenarios. Although the installation and the visuals appear very abstract at first, the different layers of overlapping audio, voice, music, images, and flashes of light immerse and draw you into these different worlds, creating a deeper meaning within the work and serving as a critique on society and how we approach topics like the environment, women, and feminism.