Joana Pestana

The RCA designer tracing the intersection of the physical and digital worlds

As the digital revolution rolls on, the relationship between the physical and virtual worlds is constantly open to revision. Are they two separate worlds, or multiple layers of the same world? Through personal work and workshops with other young designers, Joana Pestana looks to explore this relationship, breaking down the presupposed barriers and embracing this hybrid space. Whether it be through 3D printing, psychological portraits or more typical digital/physical artistic translation, Joana dreams of a posthumanist future containing “the ability to reverse time, erase things permanently or the possibility of having a low-res and a high-res version of the same object in real world … [that] would be truly magical.”

This speaks to a wider question about the role of a designer. For Joana, the designer’s role of solving briefs is distinct to that of the ‘citizen designer’, where self-initiated projects allow for independently researching, thinking and critically engaging with ideas that ultimately have larger goals in mind. As such, Joana suggests that her most important resource is space: “space to get lost, research, question, experiment, try again”. This measured experimentalism is essential when working at the continually fluctuating intersection of print and digital, and the work below evidences the merits of this approach, each piece at once jarring yet familiar.

joanapestana.com