Group Research Project Documentation
After plenty of discussions, our group eventually came up with an idea: a creative anti-virus machine that can not only test the positivity of the virus on a certain patient, but can also eliminate the virus by the process of washing, raying and drying. It, in our concept, can also talk with the doctor that is in charge of it about the state of pandemic.
I think the device that we conceived of possesses interactivity in line of my definition, which is “a cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak”. When the doctor is asking the machine about the status quo of the pandemic, the machine receives doctor’s words, and processes the database, and outputs the message to the doctor. Then the doctor receives the message, which completes a circulation. It is interactive alike when it comes to the buttons used for different steps of remedy.
So the idea sketch of our design is like this:
From my perspective, the design is quite successful. It includes the idea of both my virus positivity detecting machine, and Wendy’s virus killing machine.
Then we turned to make our artifact. I think the biggest shortcoming of our making is the limited time spent on the fabrication. We only worked for one day, on the cupboards, to make the artifacts. Though I think it turned out to be a success that our artifacts look very like the existing technology like light, shower head and the dryer, which makes the devised machine less futuristic, we didn’t decorate them with colored paper and all the artifacts seem simple and crudely made.
Our making of the artifacts can be divided into four parts:
- The shower head: made by Danial. He cut the cutboard and prototyped it. It’s basically constituted of a long cylindar as the handle, and a circle with holes together with an erect circlular ring as the shower head.
- The light: made by Wendy and Jim. We used silver paper as the light and cupboard as the shell. The process of making it is actually quite difficult. It requires huge amount of team work, because the making of the lampshade requires four pieces of precisely-measured isosceles trapezoid cupboard and gluing it together requires collaboration of two people.
3. The dryer: made by Nomun. Seems cool, isn’t it? It is basically modified from a cupboard box and put three cupboard rings on three surfaces on it. Two of them act as handles, and the other act as the wind outlet.
4. The positivity detecting machine. It’s made by Leon. We thought of this idea on the rehearsal before the act in the recitation class. We used a hoop of cupboard and drew the buttons on it in order to save time.
And I think our performance is great as well. It creatively showed how the machine works and what interactivity it has. I was acting the narrator and the patient in the drama. Below is the video of our drama:
Next, I want to talk something about the project of Group 3. Their invention is a camera that can predict what a certain thing will be like in the future. I think it conforms to my definition of interactivity, and the reason is analogous to what I have mentioned before. And also, it really fits with the context of the plague: it will be much easier to perceive the slight movement of the petrified if the technology is applied. Additionally, their performance, from my perspective, was pretty good. It vividly depicted the interactivity of the design and gave us food for thought about the moral and ethical problem using the camera. Last but not least, their camara artifact was actually really well-decorated: it was colourful and seemed high-tech.
Here is the video of their performance:
But I think their project has room for improvement. Though the idea is innovative and creative, I think there are some logical problems in it. If the future of a certain person is predicted by the camera while the person knew it and decided to counter the destiny, does that mean the camera’s prediction is wrong? And also, the example shown in their performance was an apple. I’m curious that if I think of putting the apple into the fridge but actually don’t, what result will the camera show? I think it’s actually a paradox. It’s illogical predicting the future ITSELF.
So this is all what I want to say about the group research project. I think I’ve learned a lot from it.