In the Group Project 1, our group’s idea has been through a lot of transformations. Initially, we all agreed that we would like to do something beyond these three fiction novels because we would like to deign something completely new. Among the researches we did in advance, Zitta’s research contributed to our final plan most. (https://www.creativeapplications.net/objects/dynamic-structure-29117-c-objects/) We all saw this dynamic structure and was amazed at its ability to transform its shape. We decided to create something that might has the same feature, say, changing its structure automatically, but we were at first struggling at what we ought to apply this feature to. At this point, we decided that maybe we could still gain inspirations from the general, abstract ideas instead of the details of these three fictions and the problem was soon addressed after we reflected more on Folding Beijing. What attracted us was the concept of a new type of city. It just appeared naturally to us that it would be cool if we could design a city in which the structure is changeable, but this idea is somehow hard for us to display. We changed our initial thoughts and went down to discover more about this idea. Eventually, we came up with the idea of the moving city. Instead of a city which can really move, we intended to create a city where nearly everything in it is almost automatically movable.
In order to offer a better delivery at the performance, we decided that the roads and streets should be designed into maze-like shapes so that a little ball representing buildings wouldn’t just roll all its way down to the bottom of the prototype. When we really started to craft the prototype of the city, we actually had two different opinions on. Whether we should make a round city or a square city. Since we couldn’t reach a clear conclusion, we decided to do them both.
We drew inspirations fro the novel Newton’s sleep that we should place our moving city into space in order to make the whole story fancier. To achieve this goal, we even sprayed our city into silver to fit the context. The most interactive part of our artifact, I think, is that the city would responds to what it has detected in the way of moving houses.
About the performance…Well, I think we didn’t described this concept in a best and clearest way, but neither did we fail. We intended to design a scenario where a traveller comes the city, encountering novel things from his hometown. Everything was unfolded by his vision. (Of course, I’m that traveller!) We made the epidemic plot due to the current situation and we would like to show the ability of the city to move buildings in a desired way. We succeeded in create a new type of city in a new context, and cooperate together as a team. We might even created something that is actually too big for us to handle, and this is exactly the part which we should work on next time. The most important intention of this creation is not to praise the triumph of the technology, but that we also wanted to be parts of an artifact which can raise a serious question for the audience to reflect more on. We wanted to think about what it means to live in a city where everything can move, are automatic, and what it means to the concept of life itself when human subjective actions are reduced greatly, but we still need to add more details to our artifact to make it easier to understand and interact with. In general, I would still regard my first group project as a success since the crafting and thinking process matter most. It’s really fun working with Lee, Annie and Zitta.
I would like to commented on Folding life, the performance by the third group. In the performance, the heroine lives in a house where robots take over everything. As a result, when where were some errors in the robots’ system, everything just went wrong. This performance did a great job in the delivery and also reminded us something important at the same time that sometimes it’s still important to live on our own without complete independence on the robots. Smart household appliances may only be the supplements of the human power. I think they perfectly satisfy the criteria of the Group Project 1. Also, their performance also reminded me of a famous cartoon El Empleo. Though they were actually talking about the same thing, I think Folding life and El Empleo still have some inner connections.
At last, here is the performance script:
(The spaceship landing)
A.I.: Welcome to the moving city, travelers. I’m your A.I. Guide. Today is 2100.10.9. The temperature today is 200 degree Celsius and its autumn now according to the earth calendar! May all of you enjoy your day!
B: Well, it really have been a long journey for me to travel from the Orion galaxy to the lunar orbit—all because of the SAA, the Space Affairs Administration, I have to start a new post at this newly built space city, whose name is the moving city. Quite weird, right? Wait, what’s the name of my new company? Ah, MASA. Today ought to be my first day at MASA.
(Touching the invisible door bell)
B: lunar technology is really weird! Why do they design the doorbell in that way?
B’s co: Hey, you must be Bruce!
(Exchange greetings—live long and prosper)
I’m your new colleague here. Feel free to call me Lee, and……since today is your first day in the moving city, I’m sure that you may have some questions or doubts. Things here must have been pretty different from your hometown. You came from the Orion galaxy, right?
B: Exactly. By the way, speaking of the questions…….. Well, I do have some, say, why the buildings here are designed into round shapes? And why the city is called the moving city? I didn’t see anything moving here.
B’s co: Haha, just get used to it. You may say that the round houses are lunar style. And about the name of the moving city————
A.I.: (Alarming) we have detected some flu-like diseases in the whole city. Citizens, please stay where you are until the hospital arrives.
B: HOSPITAL? Ah, I know, it must be the ambulance, right? Strange habits for you to call an ambulance a hospital.
B’s co: What? What do you mean by the ambulance? A hospital is a hospital. Things like this are quite natural here. Just two days ago, the hospital came around because one of our cafeteria had some sanitization problems and some people were food-poisoned.
B: Holy sh—! The hospital is really approaching!
B’s co: Told you ~
A.I. The hospital has arrived. Please stay where you are ,we will be running some tests. Citizens, please line up and put your hands above the machine.
(Lee: That test is a pain in the ass!)
Lee, negative.
Bruce, POSITIVE.
A.I.(Alarming): Attention, attention! The city has declared a state of emergency. A new epidemic originating in the Orion galaxy has been detected. Citizens, don’t worry. This kind of epidemic isn’t fatal, but it’s strong infectious. Therefore this MASA building would be transferred to the quarantine zone. No need to worry, you are in good hands.
(Two weeks later)
A.I.: Welcome to the moving city, travelers. Today is 2100.10.9. The temperature today is 200 degree Celsius and its autumn now according to the earth calendar! Just be careful of the flu~May all of you enjoy your day!
B: Ah terrible first two weeks here.
Thank you for watching our performance.
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