Project 1 blog

The Suit

In the story, The Plague by Yan LeiSheng, there is a highly contagious virus that resulted in majority of mankind to become petrified. Originally, the main crow did have a suit on but it was flimsy and he eventually got infected by another infected person because that person threw a knife at him. The knife ended up cutting open the suit and allowed the virus to infect the crow. 

Our artifact was a suit that is much more sturdy compared to the one that the crows had in the original story. In our performance, we showcased how the knife wouldn’t be able to cut the suit and the crow’s arm as compared to without the suit. To show how durable the suit was, we also made sure that the knife would break in the scene with the suit on. We did however failed to showcase that the suit is automatically put onto the crow because in our explanation we mentioned that it is a prototype thus it doesn’t actually put itself on.  Yet, the performance did indeed showcase what we wished to show.

While it’s worth mentioning that our artifact doesn’t actually match with my definition of interaction, I would still confirm that our artifact is indeed interactive but in a different way. The artifact is interacting with the environment to project the one that is wearing it, in this case it protected the crow from getting cut. To be interactive doesn’t mean that it has to be related to technology, it can be a simple performance that informs people as well.

If we were ever to have a chance to do this performance and project once more, I would suggest different way to connect all the pieces together along with finalizing the overall look more. It is to be noted that not everyone is available at all times so we did have to choose days where everyone is free. In addition to availability issue, we also had to make sure that our model, Evan, is here at all times throughout the project so the suit fits. In hindsight, we should’ve taken his measurements first so it would be possible to work on the suit even if he was out on any days. I should also bring up that the velcro that we originally intended to use for the shoulder pads didn’t work out as it kept falling off, thus we threaded the yarn and used that instead. 

During the making of the suit, I was in charge of threading the pieces for shoulder pads together and adding thread onto the sides of the shoulder pads for assembling afterwards. As for the performance itself, I was the a victim that is held hostage by the other infected person.

A group that caught my eyes during the presentation was Promax Nebulous 3000 Cyber by Group B. It’s the colors that caught my eyes as our presentation’s artifact is purely black. I enjoyed watching them execute the performance and showing us how their artifact worked. Their artifact works by detecting the owner’s emotions and whether or not it would be a harm to Omelas. If there is harm, the artifact would take everyone away from Omelas and thus the kid that was tortured in the deep depths of Omelas would be let out. The kid that suffered in misery was one of my main concerns in the story of Omelas so it was reassuring to see that once the Promax Nebulous 3000 Cyber took everyone away from Omelas, the kid was then let out as Omelas no longer exists. 

Honorable teammate from a different group helping us cut out the knife ^

Our performance  \(•▽•)/