Title: The Earth
Brainstorm and Inspiration
We started by discussing everyone’s ideas, and eventually compared two installations/prototypes that could be made into performances. One was The Earth (based on The Plague) from Jianing Li, which envisioned a group of illuminated figures spinning a globe. When the light of one of the figures dimmed, the rotation of the earth slowed down, and the rotation of the earth would not resume until the dimmed figure was removed. Each person stands in a circle wearing white (or light-colored) clothing and spins a cardboard globe, removing the white clothing to reveal the darker clothing underneath represents the dimming of the light. Another feasible idea (mine) is The Wave from Eric Jiang (based on The Veldt), a device that can simulate natural ocean waves through digitization in the form of LEDs, and its imaging can change with human movements. This could be done by making a silhouette of an ocean wave out of cardboard with a few pieces of cloth or other flexible material attached to it, and moving the cloth with the controller’s gestures. In the end, we chose the first idea, taking into account factors such as time and materials.
Overall, the success lies in the teamwork and step-by-step exploration that led us to our final prototype, despite going through the first imperfections. (see later parts) On the other hand, I think the failure lies in some of the details and performances. The details of our prototype were not well handled; the size of the cardboard and the white paper (rice paper) were not quite suitable in some places, i.e. there would be some gaps, which might affect the audience’s visual perception. In addition, our doodles were completed within limited time, and we should have set aside slightly more time to complete more detailed doodles, such as more detailed colors and outlines. In terms of performance, we were not thoughtful enough to allow each member to interact with the audience, which may have caused some confusion to the audience.
Relation&Interaction&Changes
Based on the research done in the first step and my own identification of interactions, an interaction occurs when there is a two-way exchange of information between a person (or machine) and something (a person, machine, product, service, system, environment, etc.). Interaction is ostensibly the structure and content of an object, and is essentially the behavior of the audience. Interaction is a means and a way, like clear thinking being visualized. For example, the audience achieves certain goals through certain behaviors in certain scenarios and with the help of certain media.
Given our project and performance, I think it fits into the established form of interaction I identified in the research. We used cardboard and paper as our main materials, and interacted with the audience through the Earth. At the same time, the medium of the earth made of cardboard (Emergency Management Institution headquarter in the performance) and ourselves is used to convey to the audience a process by which the plague spreads across the planet. To some extent, we visualized our ideas. The storytellers’ masks represent the crows and the plague, and we didn’t specify their role in advance because we thought that after COVID-19, people may be able to relate to the masks and the plague.
However, given enough time and materials, we will also refine some of the details and the performance process, which should make our artifacts more interactive with the audience, i.e., closer to what Crawford calls “conversation” (p. 5). We’ll refine the way the cardboard is attached, as white tape may make it unsightly, and we can use white latex and newspaper (or more layers of this white paper we’re using). These two materials are perfect for landscaping the cardboard, and we can draw more on the prototype, which are held in place by many layers of white latex and newspaper, to show our “Earth” theme. Alternatively, use more layers of white paper to cover the outer layer of the cardboard and then doodle the colors of the earth. This way, we will be more successful and efficient in getting our ideas across to the audience. In terms of performance, we should add some in-group-member interactions and bring audience interaction through that. Lastly, if all of our entire group members would have all been present at the very beginning and discussed the exact method of cardboard making/prototyping, we may have been able to save the time of making the first imperfect prototype for more rehearsals.
Critical analysis and assessment of a performance from another group
Group H: Barbie AI
The vision of this project is that the machine can automatically match and switch appropriate clothes for the user based on weather, mood, and other factors. For example, the skirt of that student in the performance. A possible application scenario would be spending a lot of time preparing clothes in the morning before school, a problem that this machine avoids to some extent. This project fits well with its corresponding novel narrative setting, both AI-related and very imaginative. (Or at least it never occurred to me until then.) The group was also creative in their performances, and it was really amazing when the girl came out of the back to change her clothes. I was a little bit confused about its function before this scene, I just guessed at its function and their performance confirmed my guess. Also, after the show one of the group members mentioned, “Barbie is for everybody in the future.” So, it is not just a gender AI machine and it is not just for women. I think they could have included another male dress up in the show and it would have been beyond amazing. This project makes me want to try it too, even though I am a male.
Our Process
- Our script (by Astroyd): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eBurQ2JiU-CEqk1tNWQ4o3-uK0l59O_4/view?usp=sharing
- Our prototyping:
In the cardboard workshop I completed a preliminary prototype with two other members of the group. We started by using a box cutter to cut a large piece of cardboard into strips of the same width and length along a long ruler, and each of us cut two pieces.
A total of six such long strips were cut, of which four were needed to make the shape of a ball. In the beginning we planned to make them flat, but later realized that if we put two cut strips of cardboard together, it would be feasible to make a spherical cardboard.
We cut the cardboard using the less sharp side of the cutter, which would make it more flexible and bendable. Once cut, each of the two pieces of cardboard were joined together with a hot glue gun and tape. Interestingly enough, we kept using the hot glue gun to join the two cardboards at first out of curiosity, but then realized that the gun didn’t work as well as the tape. (Probably because we weren’t familiar with it.) So we switched to using tape to connect the cardboards, including installing the pillar in the center of the spherical cardboard in the later steps.
After connecting the two sets of cardboard, one group member and I put it together to look like a ball, while the other group member used tape to secure the center pillar.
This does not seem to look like a ball because of the difference in how much the cardboard is bent, but it looks more like it when we added another circle of cardboard and put turn it upside down.
Semi-finished prototype.
Very funny and very unfortunate ！！！！ The few of us who made this prototype decided it was not aesthetically pleasing and functional enough, so we discarded it. We were pondering hard when other members joined us. Someone proposed to create a new prototype using different flat circular cardboard. The details are as follows.
We used 3 flat (2D) cardboards to form a sphere by cross-piecing the cardboards together. That is, 3 circular cardboards of the same size were cut out, and slits/gaps were cut in the center of each circular cardboard, with the length of the slits being half of the diameter.
In order to make this sphere stronger, we used a very large amount of white tape to adhere every two adjacent pieces of cardboard. In this way, each cardboard will create a tension on each other that can be fixed.
It can be seen that we attached an extra small piece of cardboard on some of the overly soft cardboard to make it firmer.
The next step was to cut out pieces of paper to match the size of the cardboard gap, which required a total of 6 pieces. We glued them to the outer layer of tape holding the sphere in place, and this prototype was more successful than the first one we made. (Or at least it seemed to be.)
Finished cardboard work. After pasting the cardboard pieces we did simple doodles.
3. Our rehearse:
4. Our performance video:
5. Other individual contributions:
I created Slack Group and WeChat Group for our group, the first step of the group that started. In addition, I contributed two of my own ideas during the idea sharing and brainstorming phases, and a total of four members contributed about seven ideas. I participated in the creation of two prototypes (the first abandoned prototype and the second applied prototype), and for the final show I was responsible for turning the Earth prototype.
As a group, we met in Slack and then used the more familiar WeChat Group to communicate, and the day before the Cardboard workshop, four of us had a brainstorm and idea-sharing session in the dorm’s common space, where Astroyd Kang was in charge of posting our finalized ideas on WeChat. Then we agreed on a time to make prototype. When it came to the cardboard production, it was interesting to see how we worked together. Because we actually made two prototypes and ended up utilizing the second one. Especially when another group member and I fretted about the first prototype not being aesthetically pleasing enough, Jianing Li came up with the amazing idea documented in previous content in this blog. The division of labor for the performance was that two people (Bella and Astroyd) did the simple storytelling while the other four rotate the prototype and acted accordingly to the storytelling scenarios. Astroyd was very good at script writing and played the most important role in our rehearsals.