Variation Over Rupture is a response to an urgent set of questions: What’s next — for us, for the world? Conceived for the UP NEXT open call, the poster asks viewers to pause amid global tensions and consider how different types of social interaction shape collective life. The piece maps five modes of interaction— Cooperation, Conflict, Competition, Exchange, and Accommodation — through colour, pattern, and repeated dots representing individuals.
Concept and interpretation
Variation > Rupture offers a quietly persuasive argument: difference does not need to become division. The work proposes that social interactions exist on a spectrum where variety contributes to a richer shared existence, and that escalation into rupture — especially violence — is the failure to hold those differences in tension. This is a timely and necessary stance, particularly in a public art context where messages must cut through noise without flattening complexity.
Materiality and process
The poster’s backstory is integral to its reading. Created by hand by me with real stitching, then scanned and digitised, the work retains traces of human labour within a final form meant for mass display. That hand-crafted origin reinforces the poster’s humanist argument: its textures and irregularities are evidence of care, not simply visual affect. The choice to digitise the stitched surface makes the work legible at scale while preserving an analogue lineage that resists purely slick, commercial aesthetics.
Visual language and the limits of metaphor
The visual system is economy itself: five colours and five distinct patterns stand in for five types of interaction, while a field of uniform dots underscores a deliberate conceit — we are all, fundamentally, similar. This dual strategy is effective; the patterns give each mode of interaction a recognisable identity, and the dots offer an ethical claim about shared humanity, we are all, fundamentally, similar. However, the very clarity that makes the poster legible also risks simplifying the messy reality of social dynamics. Where nuance is required, the binary reading — difference versus rupture — can feel reductive, even if that reduction is a deliberate rhetorical strategy to prompt reflection.
The work was selected for the UP NEXT open call, meaning it was displayed on outdoor poster sites across the UK. In public display, the poster’s bold colour fields and consistent dot matrix translate well: from a distance the design reads quickly; up close its stitched origin invites a second look. The choice to place the piece across cities such as London, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, Bristol and Sheffield ensures the conversation it poses reaches diverse audiences.
DUO PROJECT
Social Impact Design, Interactive Collaborative Display, Campaign Billboard Design, Speculative Design, Textile Art.
C: HERMIT Studio