Ambrose Li’s face2face postcard – Artist’s statement

I come from a math background, computer science in fact and I often blame it as the source of my pessimism. But what I want to do is design, and what I am interested in are languages. And speaking of languages, not being born here in Canada, English is not my first language, yet I prefer writing in English to writing in my own mother tongue; linguistically it feels like I belong nowhere.

For first-year Inclusive Design students like me, Fall 2012 will already be our second semester so what have been taught have already coloured our ideas: If a blind person receives our face2face postcard, will it mean anything to them? How can we make it mean something to them? Perhaps we could describe the self portrait on a website, and braille the website address on the card. Then at least those who can read Braille and have access to the web can interact with the card in some way.

(Actually, what does it even mean for 2D print artefacts to be “inclusive”? That is a question we probably should at least ponder.)

Now if we provide a description on a website, shouldn’t the description also be accessible to sighted people as well? One option is to use a QR code, but I don’t want the QR code to be too prominent. Perhaps I can make it look like something else—maybe a signature stamp, which suggests that perhaps the design should look like a Chinese painting.

So I think this design speaks of my identity in multiple ways: the impression of a Chinese painting speaks of my ethnicity; the confused and unconvinced look mirrors my feelings; the poem reflects my interest in languages; the second line of the poem communicates my mathematical background; and of course the Braille is something which would never have crossed my mind were I not in Inclusive Design.