"Serious Play: Midcentury Musings is an interactive art show curated in collaboration with the Denver Art Museum. The show highlights how post-WWII designers were exploring and creating new ways of living. Inspired by the excitement of a booming economy, population, and scientific innovations, designers stretched the imagination of how we interact with and define our living spaces. After the austerity of the war, returning soldiers and Americans at home experienced a time of blossoming. It was an era of new breath and DIY, looking at the world through a different lens. The ideas orbiting this bold era of 1945 to the late 1960s continue to serve as a muse to us today."

Serious Play was an opportunity for CU Denver students and faculty to create educational interpretations of post-war innovations through interactive displays and animations. Working with the talented multidisciplinary designer, Marisela Guillen, we created a short motion piece that explores the form and function of Charles and Ray Eames' iconic lounge armchair rod (LAR).

The armchair was the first one-piece plastic chair whose surface was left uncovered and not upholstered. The glistening smooth surface evoked a new idea of childlike simplicity. As the light rolls across the shell body of the LAR, the unique angles and contours are revealed. The minimal body is beautifully contrasted by the complex geometric appearance of the cat’s cradle legs. The thin rods are deceiving as the viewer attempts to understand where the path of the legs begins and ends. This motion piece video uses environment to set the mood and exaggerated shadows/highlights to bring visual attention to the form of the beautiful LAR.