In preparation for an industrial design conference held this past weekend at Syracuse University, Ben Weber and Yadin Dickstein spent an entire week constructing compositions out of more than 100 white rings, only to find some of them damaged within a day of their installation.

Dickstein and Weber, both seniors in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, had assembled the rings into 13 compositions to help direct conference visitors around the SU campus.

The students installed the ‘way-finding’ devices Thursday afternoon, but discovered four of the compositions had already been damaged by Friday morning.

Dickstein said he ‘knew something was going to happen to them’ Thursday, either by the weather or other circumstances.

However, by Saturday most of the compositions were completely gone or destroyed, which Dickstein called ‘disappointing.’

‘Some of them were in the street,’ Dickstein said. ‘You could tell they had been kicked. It was not something the weather would just do.’

Dickstein and Weber created the ‘way-finding’ devices as part of a group project in their industrial design class for the Industrial Designers Society of America Northeast Regional Conference. The two-day conference brought together Northeast division professionals and students from schools as far south as Maryland and as far north as Massachusetts, Dickstein said.

The devices were constructed to help the visitors make their way from the Schine Student Center to Smith Hall and from Smith Hall to Schaffer Hall, the buildings where conference events were being held, Dickstein said.

‘They were not in anyone’s way and were obviously put there for a purpose,’ Dickstein said. ‘We could tell a lot of them got kicked. We were doing it not to make a statement, just to help people find their way around.’

Weber said he is not looking to ‘hunt people down’ for the vandalism, but rather to express the disappointment he said he feels.

‘We put a lot of work into them, we hope that was apparent in their appearance,’ Weber said. ‘That people in the SU community would so callously disregard that, as designers, it influences the way we perceive the people we are trying to help benefit.’

Some VPA students, such as painters or sculptors, create art for their own enjoyment, Weber said. However, being an industrial designer, his work is made for a different purpose.

‘For us, we’re not designing for ourselves, we’re designing for the community,’ Weber said. ‘It’s sort of disheartening in a professional point of view.’

As for the conference, Dickstein called its atmosphere ‘laid-back’ and said it was good to get to know some industrial design people and to make some new connections.

‘There were a lot of Syracuse graduates who are now professionals, so it was good to see people who graduated from the program in the working world,’ Dickstein said.

Out of a total of 13 compositions, Dickstein said he was able to salvage only one or two. The rest of the installations were either partially damaged or completely gone or destroyed.

Representatives with the Department of Public Safety declined to comment.

According to the SU Student Handbook, any vandalism to university property on the SU campus violates the Code of Student Conduct.

If a student ever finds vandalized university property, the front desk attendant said the student should dial 443-2224 for a report to be filed.

Published on April 9, 2006 at 12:00 pm