Group project: Reading

Group project: Reading

1: The veldt

The Interactive artifact that came to my mind after reading the story is something like the nursery, but won’t be so powerful that can read people’s mind. I call it Slingring–a ring from the movie ‘Doctor Strange’ that can help people travel from a place to another in a second. But it’s not space travel, it’s deceiving one’s senses. The artifact was a set of wearable devices covering the whole human body, and ‘controlling’ all of the five senses, so that it can make the user believe he is in another space, since every sense organ of his or her body is telling him this ‘truth’. But actually, the user is still in his home.

The Slinging can help people experience everything– from a place of interest to a famous scene in a movie without stepping out of his room. The device should be interactive, for example, in a scene of a veldt, one can see, hear and feel the grass he step on when he is moving forward, if he touches a zebra, it will reply, etc. Then it need hundreds of thousands of creators , since it involves tons of details to reappear a certain scene.  

Now there are VR technology that can do this, but only by deceiving eyes and ears. For the noses and skins, it has nothing to do with them.

The invention will cause some problems, one of them is that people will be addicted to virtual world and ignore real life. Nowadays this problem has already occurred, but the appearance of the invention will make things worth.

The following is from the movie ‘Ready Player One’, my imagination really resembles the device in this movie.

 

2The ones who walk away from Omelas

I call the Interactive artifact I came up with after reading this novel ‘Angra Mainyu’. It could be an interactive art masterpiece. Angra Mainyu is the Avestan-language name of Zoroastrianism’s hypostasis of the “destructive/evil spirit”(see Wikipedia: Angra Mainyu), which is like the composition of all of the injustice things in the world.

The aim of this artifact is to show people the terror of the crimes, and encourage people to be kind and prevent evil behaviors. I’m not sure about how it works, one of the ideas of interaction is like this: People cry out the name of crimes, then, Angra Mainyu, which is a vague figure, will act these crimes, and will interact with audiences according to their responses.  

I don’t know whether there were art masterpieces showing this theme, but the idea I raised in the last paragraph came from Neilmandoza’s Robotic voice activated word kicking machine(see here) In the video, the machine will interact with the user according to the words he shouted, the idea that came to my mind is more complicated, which may involve artificial intelligence

The following is the print screen of the illustration video of the Robotic voice activated word kicking machine

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One of the problem of the artifact is that it is too negative, which may cause some negative psychologic influences on the audience

 

3.The Plague

This one is also interactive art. I call it ‘reincarnation’. In traditional Chinese myths, when creatures die, they will start a new life according to what he had done before he passed away. And only the ones who had done really good deeds can be human for the next life. 

The story told us how life was like when human are turned into stone statue. So how about using technology to let people experience the life of a tree, a bird, or a lion. Using wearable devices, people can try on a different life, just like a reincarnation. I believe this a meaningful project, it can remind us of how amazing lives are and how lucky we are to be chosen to be a human being.

In 2007, Xi’an Zoo had organized a reality show that 6 human being experienced the life of monkeys in the zoo. They lived with monkeys and were visited by tourists as well. The show aimed to let people know the feeling of losing freedom as a monkey in the zoo. But this project is quite unacceptable for most people and is hard to promote, so a more efficient and acceptable way is needed

. (6 people living with monkeys and visited by tourists)

Since life as a plant is rather boring, it may be unable to attract people’s attention, and it’s hard to let people fully experience the life of wild animals, for example, it’s hard to let people experience having row meat as a lion.