Art is defined as a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artefacts, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power, whereas I perceive it as everything and anything you want it to be. I am an aspiring Product Designer who went from a CBSE based Indian school where art was barely given any importance to one of the world’s leading art and design schools.
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Fake, as I have come to learn, is a very broad term. We took a closer look at two different aspects of this term in bridge project 4 for Integrative Studio and Seminar 1. For studio we focused on counterfeiting of designer bags, specifically Louis Vuitton, whereas in seminar the topic in question was how the public image of big companies such as Apple is very different from what is happening in reality.
Both projects have the underlying theme of fake but in the case of the counterfeits the degree of fake is very apparent and is in fact the main selling factor of the product. People buy these bags because they are fake and give the wearer the illusion of the real product. On the other hand people buy Apple products because of the brand name and added value that comes along with the phone. In reality the iPhones are made halfway across the world by poorly treated, underpaid workers in terrible conditions and are advertised as these beautiful pieces of machinery.
The counterfeit project was based on our firsthand experience with the sellers at Canal Street and Chinatown. Like the iPhone factories in China, these sellers behaved rather secretively. They were willing to negotiate and had a wide variety of bags and accessories to choose from. They only showed us pictures of the products in a catalog and brought out the “real” bag once they were sure that we were willing to make a purchase. After seeing the counterfeit my team and I went to the real Louis Vuitton store in Soho and pointed out the many differences in the real and fake bags.
The research paper on Chinese iPhone factories was from the perspective of a factory worker. As perspectives of the worker and consumer vary greatly, the new point of view helped humanize the production process greatly and helped us realize the flaws in this outsourcing system followed by Apple for the sole purpose of saving some money.
This course has changed my understanding of “fake” and has widened my perspective immensely.
