Nesli Hazal Oktay’s Third Peer Review Event

On 31 August at 14.00 (EEST) 4th-year Art and Design PhD student Nesli Hazal Oktay will present her third design experiment study titled “Dissolving Distances”. Public peer-review event will take place in the Zoom, please find the link to participate HERE.

Reviewers:
Dr. Oscar Tomico, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Dr. Verena Fuchsberger, University of Salzburg, Austria

Supervisors:
Dr. Kristi Kuusk, Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonia
Prof. Danielle Wilde, Umeå University, Sweden and University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Nesli Hazal Oktay aims to offer embodied intimacy for people who are close by heart but physically apart. Specifically, she explores designing close-to-body experiences at a distance through remote bio-rings, rings made of natural ingredients. Remote bio-rings are highly customizable, can be biodegraded, and start dissolving when exposed to humidity e.g.: water, or sweat. The idea of creating a non-lasting object to be worn on the body—that required care, that was ambiguous and tangible—was a result of her prior user study of cultural probing and embodied design ideation. She further experimented with remote bio-rings by making the ring and wearing it in everyday life together with her father at a distance.

In her third and last peer review event, she showcases a user study with 3 pairs (6 participants) that made remote bio-rings at their homes while self-reported and self-documented their personal experiences. They then further shared their meaning-makings with Nesli through a semi-structured interview. Overall, participants found remote bio-rings to be supporting new understandings about intimacy at a distance. As a result, their perception of “distance” alters slightly or changes completely by i) embarking on a journey, ii) creating time and space to be together, and iii) carrying each other through a tangible object.