Callum Johnson

Hybrid Selves: A Moment signals the reductionism inherent within current digital modes of communication.

Details of participants and transcripts of their physical gestures are unmoored from the original contexts, projected into empty rooms. Far removed from these original inputs,
the projection installations become nothing more than superficial fragments of physical moments. It is imperative to note the totality of this fragmentation through this very documentation, where even the projection installations themselves become dissolved into mere pictorial representation.

Hybrid Selves: A Conversation argues that a critical weakness of digital interactions is their over-reliance on textual information and inability to match the multi-modal nuance of physical experiences.

Set across four columns, fragments of a discussion are combined to indicate the experiential gap between physical interactions and their digital counterparts. While now accessible to a much larger online audience, the conversation becomes bastardised through its translation. Abstracted close-ups, unnamed speakers and the recounting of gestures are sterilised through the tightly ordered starkness of the white webpage.

Hybrid Selves: An Artefact pushes the concern about a loss of meaning through digital expression to the logical extreme.

Using the transparency of the substrate as a metaphor for the “weightlessness” of digital experiences, An Artefact is a booklet that attempts to physically simulate the experience of online browsing. The transcript of A Conversation, a discussion with Chat-GPT on love, an excerpt from Albert Mehrabian’s "Nonverbal Communication" and images from A Moment are reduced to a vague cloud through the hypersaturation of information. As an extension, all included text is limited to two pages each, mimicking the prevalence of short-form, superficial digital content.

Hybrid Selves: Research, was an investigation into transhumanism, laying the foundation for the later work within the Hybrid Selves project.

Participants were initially provided with design research kits, which asked them to analyse their use of technology and its impacts on their consciousness. The responses provided then informed the design and content of a hybrid-format infographic poster. I particularly enjoyed screenprinting the envelopes personally, after being told commercial printers couldn't print white ink on them due to size constraints.

Based at Monash University Caulfield, Esperanto is a quarterly free magazine made for students, by students.

Providing the overall creative direction and design for the magazines and contributors themselves, care was taken to amplify the disparate voices of those contributing, while still maintaining a cohesive identity across multiple issues. Hinging on exaggerated typography, full-page images and a careful use of colour, Esperanto remains playful without being childish; sophisticated without being dry.

A proposed identity for the succinct beauty of simple foods.

Taken from Japanese, the word ‘shibui’ refers to the aesthetic of subtle, unobtrusive beauty. Incorporating this approach to elegance, the identity adopts a minimalist aesthetic to emphasise the primacy of the ingredients and the experience.

Such an approach is distilled into all deliverables; from the direct utilisation of olive oil and balsamic vinegar to create the fluid logo to the restrained palette and use of type. By stepping beyond the confines of the computer and letting the ingredients speak for themselves, the proposed identity allows the viewer to sink their teeth into the gastronomic experience itself.