http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~tj1059/projects/final_project/page5/index.html
Looking back, we really really went through a struggling period of time to reach our current project. But at the same time, we both felt a sense of satisfaction about what we achieved right now.
We initially changed the whole idea for several times. In the first place we were inspired by the project about Alzheimer (http://i-remember.fr/en), thus deciding to do something similar and serve as a call for attention and care for people with depression. However, due to its sensibility, we had no choice but to give it up. Later we came up with the idea about showing one person’s life track through the windows he would see during the process of falling down from the building – he decided to kill himself because of the bad things happening one after another. Then we were questioned by the fellows about the deeper meaning, who meanwhile suggesting that we should at least express something through the project, whether about our own interests or reflecting on the current social issues. We then started thinking about the third idea for the final project. We first decided to present the evolution of fonts through the form of newspaper. Taking various suggestions into consideration, we then decided to make an archive of newspapers, presenting the change of both formats and fonts of newspapers through the times. Even this time we were still questioned about the difference between directly showing one sample newspaper in history and making up our own project – still, what we needed was a story for our own newspaper, a story to make our project unique. The last thing that cost us much time during the process of thinking about the project concept – the first stage of making the project – was to make up our own story. Considering the property of time changing through newspapers, we came up with the idea about time machine after hours of brainstorming. Basically, the story was about people in 2222 trying to send messages back to 1886, but sending it to 1945 and 2019 by mistake. Therefore, we’ll actually show two versions of these four newspapers, 8 in all. Also, with time passes by, we gradually give up the form of newspaper, instead we use online subscribed newspaper in 2019 and probably in the future we have no medium any longer but instant message boxes. And since the time machine changed the past, probably the latest message about time machine in 2222 would itself be changed and even disappeared in the end. So far, we finished the idea part. We had 2 more days left to finish the whole project at that time.
Despite the complicated idea, the imaginable heavy workload and the limited time, we finally had a clear direction which we were both satisfied with to step forward in. We searched and referred to the historic format of New York Times newspapers to design ours. Various problems occurred when I located different divs, which really cost me a huge amount of time. What’s more, Kevin spent plenty of time organizing and writing down the content of newspapers, which I appreciated a lot. He even put forward the form of message boxes in the future and realized it in coding. Through the whole process we encountered with numerous problems that we hadn’t ever imagined before. Thanks for all the fellows in IMA studio, we successfully solved all we had in hand and finished the project anyway.
I myself am quite proud of our final project. I sincerely appreciate all the help I received, especially Leon who gave suggestion about what the newspapers should look like, and my partner Kevin, who dedicated a lot to together finish the whole project. I personally like the third page very much, which is the online subscribed newspaper including the incognito mode. I think we did the best with what we had before, especially we had thought and did really a lot for our project. One thing I feel really sorry about is that the finalized version of our project was actually finished by the IMA show, which was already past the deadline. As for later improvement, since the story is about time machine, I think we still have much space to further think about the concept, which can even touch upon the topic of multiverse. Therefore, we may have more to speak out, to express through our project, to make it into a PROJECT in its true sense. In all, I indeed achieve a sense of gratification through the whole process of making this project, which enables me to learn more about cooperation, about the true meaning of making projects rather than assignments and inspires my deeper interest in IMA. I’m glad to have it as my final project and I sincerely appreciate what I’ve learned through the whole semester.
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