Faculty of Design

Graphic Design

Jon Owen

Age of Loss

Discover a place for loss and grieving in a world of virtual spaces. Age of Loss is the 2021 thesis work of Jon Owen for Graphic Design. The past few years have plunged us in to a myriad of new virtual spaces. Social media, streaming sites, online work platforms, video conferencing—our lives are mediated by virtual reality. In a pandemic where staying isolated saves lives, physical space becomes a place we visit, while cyberspace becomes where we fulfill our existence. The global pandemic has only highlighted the fragility of our world. Climate change threatens to alter our existence irreversibly, and global political destabilization and confusion are the signposts of the times. We are living in an age of loss, but loss is something we're advised not to acknowledge, and even less encouraged to openly incorporate into our lived experience.In a time of decline, we need to discover a place for loss in our lives, embrace its reality, and learn to find value in its insistence. Age of Loss explores the absurd inevitability of our increasingly virtualized world, and a renewed appreciation of loss, to try and find some grounding in the shifting moment.

“Age of Loss represents my thesis Workshop work I've endeavored to create over the past year. A web-based work in three parts, viewers are welcomed to consider the alienation of virtual space through Public from Nothing, discover how valuing your physicality through its cast offs can help situate you in a landscape of virtual space, and finally New Terrain, an series of immersive VR landscapes that act as spaces of meditation on virtual space. ”