My research question is:

How might we communicate the relationship between the ego(individual) and the world(collective) to artists designers through photography?

Under the motivation of this outbreak, I want to explore the relationship between art and politics through the connection between individuals and collective. What can we as artists and designers do for society? I used to think we artists and designers should pay attention to art and design, but now I think we should also talk about politics, history, and everything we have to do with each other, Which is to know the social structure clearly, Not to be vague. Then we can get a new level of cognition out of these things that would otherwise be just doing understanding art and design on a vague base. So my audience is artists and designers, and my medium is photography.

 I need to get a lot of theoretical support in the preliminary research.

1.First, I researched historical context,

The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical production/Banjamin

Fascism: Aestheticisation of politic

The first article supports my point very well. The second article also illustrates the fusion of art and politics and the deep relationship between the individual and the collective.

2.Then I researched artists who had done the similar works

Lexie Liu and Luc Besson

The first work, the ego，means to be self-consciousness is the eternal theme in her works. The Ego seems to take her through different time and space.

In the second work, the director magnified Lucy's self-consciousness through the film, and finally connected with the real world.

3.And an important theory related the project is Speculative and Critical Design (SCD)

It suggests that we should think critically about Why we design

Design should be a medium for finding problems, not for solving them in the traditional sense.

This great theory is helpful to develop and evaluate my project. So I read some relevant articles and did some in-depth study.

Through the research, I think my work may develop into a paper publication. Therefore, in the visual research, I mainly researched some related publications and some photographic works. These works bring me different design inspirations, which I wrote some reflection in workflow. Among them was the photographer kefeng du who had a great influence on me. He can find beauty in the dirty, messy, lousy scenes, which may be called ruin aesthetics. This has deeply affected me since I was a teenager.

My aim and objective are as shown and my objective will add some direct discussion with the audiences.

I have finished the Discover and define phase. Now I am working on the development phase.