Viral networking is a powerful tool in today’s society. The “Will You B Here” hepatitis B awareness event at UC Davis wouldn’t have gotten my attention if it wasn’t for viral networking. One of the guests, David Choi, posted on his youtube account about the event and from that I followed and was interested, and spread the word to my friends. In my design class, the professor mentioned a comedian, “happyslip”, who would make an appearance at UC Davis, at the same event as David Choi. In this way, not only myself, but also the 180+ students of the design class were informed of this event. On Tuesday, there was a display in Freeborn hall, featuring the above video, and also showcasing hepatitis B awareness-related artworks. Featured artists were Eric Ok whom works in the special effects industry and created a realistic “progressive” liver that at various stages of hepatitis B infection. He also created a realistic baby in mother’s arm (I assume out of resin cast) and written on the arm of the baby and continuing onto the arm of the mother was “Hepatitis B can be transferred from mother… to child”. This sculpture conveyed a message in the sentence used as well as it is noteworthy to mention that only the arm of the mother was made, but our mind completed the body in search for closure, seeking the whole from just the arm. Another artist showcased was Ly Nguyen’s predominantly typographic works. In his works, Ly used many different ways of grouping various symbols, text, and iconography to form the stencil art-like (these reminded me of the OBEY GIANT stencil art >
) silhouette of various Asians. In the first artwork shown, a female Asian’s face is shown to be composed of an electron microscope picture of the hepatitis B virus. In the 2nd artwork shown. A male Asian’s face is formed but the clustering of “B”’s. In the 3rd artwork, an Asian male’s portrait is formed from typographic questions about hepatitis B. In the 4th artwork, an Asian mother and child is formed from symbols of pills. These simplified faces fall back on McCloud’s statement of how simplified (cartoon) faces become more universally recognizable and easier to relate to, and also because of the stencil-art like method, our minds are forced to fill in the gaps- closure to complete the face. The artwork of this display conveys hepatitis B as a “silent killer” by the subtle use of the messages of “be aware” embedded within all the artwork to impact the viewer in an efficient manner. In this manner, did the design of the works convey a strong message effectively to the audience.
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