I think this is the third straight year in which I was not de facto banned (“shadowbanned” in an early sense) from the OCA(D) graduation exhibit. Certainly nobody gave me a hard time, which was as it should be, if typically it has not been.
I met one lad who could actually draw and render. I made no bones about walking briskly past every “gender” and/or “Islamophobia” installation, all overrepresented, never actually welcome in the first place, and now quite useful as cudgels with employers-to-be. (Don’t want to hire a blue-haired and/or fat genderqueer, or a girl in a hijab, based on abilities and experience? She and her Twitter mobs will make you pay for that.)
Now one turns to the good news, summed up in two short syllables: Jess Tat. (I asked – that’s the actual surname, and yes, it’s unusual, as is the underlying Chinese hanzi.) She had a pretty good installation of mock consumer goods under the brand name Karōshi, so I had her walk me through it and them. This suite of affordable luxury products includes smelling salts to keep you awake through your 80-plus-hour workweeks, and space-age food in a pill to solve that 21st-century dilemma of finding enough time to eat.
I was asking her about obvious references (I didn’t mention poppers, but I did mention powerlifters snarfing ammonia before lifting; science fiction), and Jessica was halfway through acknowledging those references when it finally dawned on me, many minutes in, that this was a con!
“Wait. Five minutes in, I just realized this is a con,” I dutifully said.
“It’s satire,” Jess replied drily. Boy, is it ever.
I was totally duped by this whole thing and Jessica played me for a chump, which impressed the shit out of me. The proxy Web site (in deep black) was too believable. The products even came in squarish versions for males and rose gold for females. Every goddamned thing was dialled in just right. And you could sell these products.
I told Jess she’s got the rarest thing in design, or anywhere: ideas. In the olden days we used to call something like this “talent.”