“How would you visualize lingering? Can you see it? Touch it? Sit on it?”

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communications Design at Pratt Institute May 2025.

the art of lingering

Visual Storytelling & Design Systems

Tools: Adobe CC, Rhino, Blender
Skills: Systems Design, Data Visualization, Visual Storytelling

Abstract:
I’m inspired by the concept of lingering, how experiences extend beyond the moment, existing between presence, absence, and incompleteness. Through autoethnographic research, I translate the intersection of physical and mental into a modular, spatial taxonomy. Lingering becomes both a question and structure: a space where presence is never fixed, but continually re-formed, remembered, and reassembled.

Proposal:
This project began as a way for me to question and challenge the conventional role of graphic design as a fleeting, commercial tool by investigating its potential to represent and manipulate time. How it is measured, commodified, and erased within our daily lives. Design is not just consumed in the moment but lingers, influencing perception, memory, and data permanence. We as viewers are unconscious participants in this cycle, constantly discarding things we consume while their interactions remain permanently archived in our memories.

This project has evolved over the course of 8 months and in its current state, explores the tension between conscious and subconscious lingering, translating behavioral data into a visual-spatial system that invites people to dwell in non-utilitarian ways. I wanted to explore how experiences can extend beyond their immediate presence. As I’ve been thinking and pushing myself to explore this topic, I found myself carrying this erratic energy of my thoughts everywhere I go; whether it be to my classes, restaurants or my dorm room. It’s lingering in my head..

Can these thoughts be turned on and off on command? And I begin to wonder if this energy remains in the place after I leave? How can I visualize this “lingering”? Is it something I can see? Is it something that I can touch? Interact with? Sit on? Does it exist in this physical space? In the same dimension as me?

It is a depiction of a linear sequence exploring time, materiality within the transactionality of design in tangible forms. The past lingers in your mind to make sense of the presence.

The way information is disassembled and reassembled within different materiality, sizes and colors that build on each other to make sense of the whole. The presence of line quality became really important to me. Thick vs thin, continuous vs dashed and how the permanence could be translated through that.

I began my exploration in 2 directions: behavioral lingering and object lingering. But, more than the subjects themselves, I was drawn to the environments that made lingering possible.

My lipstick always ends up lingering in my pockets and the corners of my bags because I forget about it until I need it.

My pockets
Mocke

Inspired by the materiality and shape, I found myself drawn into the dimensionality of the textures. I started to imagine their potential in different scales, colors, and even how a brand might bring them to life.

An Outdoor Shared Space

I decided to track behavioral data of entry and exit patterns within a shared space to then create a spatial intervention where lingering becomes a conscious experience. I documented data for 4 hours not particularly sure how I would use it.

Visual exploration of what stays and leaves.

absence

presence

A linear sequence exploring time and materiality in tangible forms. The past lingers in your mind to make sense of the presence.

Could data be spatial?

How does one’s presence linger after one leaves a space?

How scaleable is information when reassembled within different materiality, sizes and colors that build on each other to understand and make sense of the whole.

The space remains the same, but the presence within it always shifts.

A continous taxonomy that builds upon each other.

The taxonomy forms a structure of existing data that can be extracted from its original context and extended indefinitely.

How does lingering data vary within internal & external spaces?

But this is just confined within a singular space?

What if there were many?

Sed a suscipit tortor. Pellentesque volutpat metus a odio sollicitudin pulvinar. In finibus metus at eros faucibus consequat. Ut posuere interdum leo id pharetra. Vivamus pellentesque, lectus elementum hendrerit convallis, sapien massa porta mauris, ac malesuada quam felis in felis. Fusce id vehicula ipsum. Duis lacinia porttitor justo, ac interdum leo sollicitudin quis.

Simultaneously existing within another? And another?

What if what lingered were no longer visual forms?

But text.

I went lingering!