Steven Ma, this year’s recipient of the best graduate thesis at SCI-Arc, deals specifically with affect. His thesis, titled Exuberant- ­Liminal Form & Calligraphical Aesthetics and advised by Hernan Diaz Alonso, is according to Steven:

..about style. Stylistic individuation is the contemporary meaning of style. Style emerges in practice at the highest articulation of a coherent combination of forms and aesthetics. This thesis investigates how form and aesthetics can create affects. It is also the intention of this thesis to evolve new speciation, new style and new aesthetics through the production of liminality.

Liminality is an in-between state characterized by ambiguity, openness and indeterminacy. Liminal is associated with the ephemeral and transitional passage between alternative states. It is a transitional threshold involves the interrelationship between two phenomena rather than their opposition.

This thesis introduces Liminal Form- constantly evolving the relationship between systems to create forms that are held in maximal tension in relation to one another, suspended in a permanent state of incomplete transition. This incomplete transition allows one to recognize originality. One’s sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing some disorientation. It is an “in-between state” of open-ended mutating that allows for infinite growth.

Calligraphical Aesthetics is a stylistic formal language that will be integrated to balance the legibility in the progression of combining and mixing these complex formal systems. The formal qualities of calligraphy allow complex spatial arrangement to be handled with ffortless fluidity.

The conception of Liminal Form with the integration of Calligraphical Aesthetics can create affect.

via SuckerPunch