The Artifact: The more you suffer, the less I suffer.

Inspiration

The book The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas written by Ursula K. Le Guin is about the Utopian city of Omelas, where the narrator portrays a seemingly perfect society where all of its citizens are happy and advanced futuristic technology exists. The interesting aspect about this city, is that in order for prosperity to exist within the society, a single child must suffer in order to take away the sadness from the people in the city. Our group based our project off of the philosophy found in this book of utilitarianism where one person must suffer in order for the rest of society to be benefitted. 

Our Idea

Ricci’s idea

Taking the philosophical inspiration of the book The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, one of our group members Ricci had originally come up with an artifact in the individual research phase of the project that we were all interested in. Her original idea was an ice artifact and the way it functioned is that there where two circular containers (one within the other) where the inner one had ice and the outer one would obtain the kinetic energy of melting ice to heat things. So essentially how Ricci’s original artifact worked is that for example if people are living in a cold place, one would put ice in the middle container (till it melts) and once it melts that energy heats the surrounding room so people can be warm. Now Ricci’s idea was a big inspiration for our project but there were some logistical difficulties to make this project not to mention scientifically this would be illogical to perform.

What we came up with

So what we came up with was an art installation that is set up with four buttons on stands connected to a metal plate on the floor. The way it works is that if someone is standing on the plate and four people press the buttons at the same time that person standing on the plate will feel a slight electric shock. 

But why would someone want to stand on the center plate and feel an electric shock? Well its like a game. When we win games we feel a dopamine rush so we would go through the pain if it means that in the end we all have a fun time and everyone benefits from it.

The way I like to think about this project is a lot like an upscaled version of a popular electric shock board game.

The way the board game works:

• is that everyone must hold a handle connected to a power base to play.
• a timer is pressed with a red light that blinks.
• when the light turns green everyone must press the buttons on the handles.
• the last person to press the button (with the slowest reaction time) gets shocked. 

Lighting Reaction Reloaded – Shocking Game

Tinker Cad Model

Building The Artifact

Materials: 

• Cardboard
• Ruler
• Hot Glue
• Paint
• Recycled ribbons
• Paper
• Water Bottles

Steps:

1. Constructed the circular base/platform out of cardboard.
2. Cut out the connectors (rectangular pieces of cardboard) for the buttons.
3. Filled 4 water bottles with water and used each one as the first water bottle to build the four small towers to place the buttons on top of. 
4. Glued the water bottles on top of each other.
5. Build the “buttons” for each tower. 
   1. Cut out a hand shaped piece of cardboard and attach a folded piece of cardboard to the hand.
   2. Attach that piece of cardboard to the water bottle tower. 
6. Place the buttons and the plate according to the model/sketch we had in mind. 

 

Practicing for the Presentation

The Script: 

Setting: Art museum

• We enter an art museum and discover that there is a new art installation from a famous artist featured at the MET. 
• The artist is known for creating art that the viewer is allowed to touch and play with (one of the viewers knows this) and guides the rest to play with the art.
• One notices buttons shaped as hands and decides to press it. 
• There are 4 buttons so everyone starts pressing the buttons all at once but nothing happens. 
• Someone notices a light up necklace in the middle of the machine and decides to pick it up and put it on. 
• Whilst the others play with the buttons the person in the middle notices the necklace lights up when the buttons are pressed.
• That person suggested that everyone press the buttons all at once so the necklace lights up brighter. 
• When they first press all together they feel an electric shock. 
• The person in the middle teases the people pressing the buttons because “how could pressing a button be painful” 
• One person pushes through the pain despite the other’s comment and realizes once the button is fully pressed there is no longer an electric shock. 
• The person in the middle starts feeling an electric shock but the lights are brighter. 
• Everyone presses the button at the same time and realizes that the person in the middle is getting shocked. 
• Meanwhile the person in the middle is getting shocked, they joke that it can’t be too painful so they take turns going in the middle. 
• They notice another cool machine featured in the museum and walk away to go play without thinking much about the meaning of the machine. 

Rehearsal: 

We got together in room 826 to practice the script and we timed ourselves and we usually ranged between 4-5 minutes in presenting our artifact and performing our skit. 

The Performance

Our performance lasted around 4 minutes and it all went according to script except that the audience didn’t react to how we thought they would. Most people didn’t understand the concept since we were the only group that made something non-functional in neither the dystopian or real world but rather an art installation.

Reflection

What could have been improved? 

Well I think that we needed to improve our communication skills within the team as a whole. Meanwhile some members where shy and others were more extroverted, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we couldn’t make a good team but in this case we definitely lacked communication. Also, I definitely think we misunderstood the instructions and relied to much on Ricci’s original idea rather than coming up with our own as a team. I definitely regret not speaking up more about different ideas because I feel like we could’ve communicated our message more clearly through a different artifact. 

What did this artifact mean to me? 

Even though the artifact didn’t make much sense and wasn’t perfect, personally it has a lot of meaning to me. To me, it represents our societal construct of feeling the need to constantly put others needs above others. Having been a people pleaser my whole life until recently, I feel like often times we are standing on the center plate getting small maybe harmlessly shocked and are ok with it meanwhile others are thriving. We forget about how each one of us should feel a little harmless shock sometimes and we shouldn’t be the ones bending over backwards for everyone. This artifact demonstrates my personal conflict of deciding wether or not I want to play the shock game and stand in the center plate. Would I much rather be used or use others? Unfortunately the world is like this and it would be nice if the game never existed, but even if we run from it we often find ourselves back at the museum playing the game of the more you suffer the less I suffer.