Aveen:

The Highway to Haven is a tunnel system for squirrels and chipmunks to keep safe in the dash from bush to bush and burrow to burrow. In the wild, chipmunks and squirrels' main predators are hawks and eagles. Highway to Haven protects them in the journey from point A to point B while also allowing for humans to interact with them on the way. Chipmunks and squirrels normally have a system of running from one pile of leaves to another to cross large fields without being spotted by hawks and eagles, but this doesn’t always work.

The solution; construction of multiple tunnels made out of plywood that stretch between multiple landings, feeding banks, and planted landings that allow humans to view and interact with whatever passes through them. Highway to Haven is a modular system that can be installed on the siding, along gutters, and under window sills of a residential or commercial building. When installed, the system mimics the natural way in which a chipmunk constructs its burrow, this helps them feel safe and more relaxed around the bustling city. In the seed bank unit, humans can dispense seeds into a feeding tray that squirrels and chipmunks can eat out of. With the planted landing, humans can plant various flora such as berry bushes where chipmunks and squirrels can feed. With the landing, squirrels can make their nests.

EcoSim is a customizable ecosystem simulation meant to allow users to explore the effects of various actions on the environment, such as removing species, changing the landscape, or changing the climate. As climate awareness and knowledge of environmental impacts become more important than ever, EcoSim is intended as an educational resource for people to gain a basic understanding of how ecology works and how ecosystems change.

Each turn that progresses, every being checks their environment to make the next move. Creatures move, eat, reproduce, and die to reflect a real system. The ecology of the current project is intentionally simple, but full of possibilities. In EcoSim, the player makes a map using the temperature and altitude functions, and places wildlife on said map with the species function. The player then progresses turns, and can either watch how their built ecosystem plays out, or can change factors between turns, like removing a creature, adding land, or changing the climate.

Meme Chess combines the present day meme culture with the timeless game of chess. The design philosophy of this project is to embody the chaos and the current generation's mentality of turning everything into a meme and to make the role or significance of the chess pieces match the current day and age. Each of the pieces has been replaced with a popular meme that matches the personality or vibe of that piece. The king has been changed to “Gigachad” because it is used to represent the absolute pinnacle of something, the pawn is the face from the “panik” meme due to its simple, poorly modeled look, and the knight is “surprise pikachu” because of the erratic movement of the knight often leading to unforeseen results. These changes have been made so that the pieces feel the same but have a new, more modern look. Additionally, the rules have been altered to further reflect the personality of the pieces.  These changes range from how a piece moves to adding completely new mechanics like taking one of your own pieces to remove one of the opponent’s pieces.

This project, made by Jere Nierenberg, aimed to preserve current cultural practices relating to the economy, through satirical ceramic pieces. More specifically, the goal was to highlight some of the less sensical ways in which people choose to use their money, and shine light on the glorification of making irresponsible financial decisions, focusing on NFTs.

The first piece is a piggy bank in the shape of a meme called “stonks”, the meme is used to (proudly) talk about making high risk financial decisions, with the hopes of huge profit. This piece encourages the evaluation of, and contextualizes, these decisions by contrasting the idea of a piggy bank, a long time symbol of financial responsibility, with a modern symbol of high risk investment culture. 

The second part is a set of coins, portraying an nft on one side, specifically a bored ape, and something symbolic of different economic bubbles on the other side. The bored apes attire is changed to be relevant to the image/pattern on the other side of the coin. The bubbles that are represented are the 1634-1637 tulip mania bubble, the first major economic bubble, the 1840s British railway bubble, and the 1990s Japanese asset bubble. The form(coins) is also a reference to how cryptocurrency is traditionally represented as some sort of coin.