Junyi Yan

The intestine witnesses an atrocity towards women. Women with digestive problems often feel ashamed about their excretory needs due to socially constructed notions that women are more susceptible to visiting the bathroom, or vulnerable to experiencing abdominal pain.  

Based on my research, some women will use different sounds to disguise their visit to the toilet, such as making a phone call, running the shower or playing music. I have built an index of sounds those women who have digestive problems use to disguise their toilet behaviours. This index is floating and continuous, it records the stigmatised and misunderstood excretory needs of women.

Generations are like “a series of interlaced trails.”, the world is composed of tentacles. The tentacular are not disembodied figures; they are fluid workings of blood, roots, breath, flesh and tissue.... However they are often essentialized as the mere mechanics and passive containers which acted as a shell to the active mind. I argue that it is essential to consider the tentacles as actants, the source of action. (Jane Bennett, 2010)

By hoding this view under the framework of visual rhetoric, we would look at the fonts from a more experimental and broader perspective. The lingusitic function of letterforms is often deemed the most important, while the nonverbal function of a font is usually considered secondary. However, emphasizing the communication of letter form through the physical properties and sensory perception of a font can make a more inclusive view of the concept of "font".

10K is a display variable typeface that adapts to environmental sounds and growth from the very thin vessel into pieces of flesh based on JavaScript. 

"The New River isn't just a stream, it flows through this society, with all its divisions based on class, gender, race, power, wealth, work, bigotry." (John Tyre, 2013) The New River is an artificial waterway in England, opened in 1613 to supply London with fresh drinking water. If we call this river the heart of society, plumbing is the blood vessels and large intestine.

According to Nadir Lahiji, plumbing mediates between pure and abject. It orders everyday fluids, manage flow, straighten things out and keep things clean. Sounding depths, righting columns, fixing pipes: plumbing leads to the bottom of things, reaching the unknown.

It is hard to imagine our century without plumbing. However, plumbing and plumbers are always located within the boundaries of the whole system, only being noticed until something goes wrong. They witness our lives quietly in this kind of in-between space. Pipes are not only the utilitarian, unseen infrastructure, it is the machinic mediator of New River's social, cultural, political, and economic issues.

The project began with the pipe itself. New River had a system of pipes made from hollowed-out elm trees in the 17th Century. I then 3d printed elm tree pipes and buried them in the soil. I used interactive sounds and Augmented Reality as the main narrative methods to develop the stories dynamically with different people, time and environments, along with photography to emphasize the “In-Between” space of the concealed, suppressed underside of the city and its human community.

We bother to produce limitless "trash" (not only limited to convenient commodities) to deny our our mortal essence. Garbage gives us a chance to examine ourselves, we must to become modest, careful, mindful, and meditatively compassionate. Meanwhile, we have to refine our senses and body, return to our vibrant innate power.