Group Research Project: Performance

Group Research Project: Performance

      Our team members are Wendy, Ken, Jennifer, Alubet and Amanda. We all enjoy a good time working together.

Idea

In our group discussion, I shared my idea and my teammates all believe it was a creative and excellent one for a live performance. Some of us aroused more detailed thoughts and we worked together as one to adjust it into a wonderful one. Our story is inspired by Newton’s sleep by Ursula K. Le Guin, which is a science fiction novel taking place in a high-tech environment. At that time, advanced technology such as Artificial Intelligence is widely used and Humanoid robots are quite common. So we decided to build an interactive helmet that can transfer a human’s mind into a robot’s body to keep himself external in another form. We would like to focus on the profound difference between humans and machines like robots. Even if the technology is advanced enough to transfer mind, and even if the robots can have the exactly same memory as human beings, they still fail to feel the world as humans, for example they can’t enjoy the yogurt and cry to express their emotions as we demonstrated in the performance. There will be a lack of human experience in the robot body in ways such as but not limited to taste, pain, emotion, and etc. Through the performance as well as our purposeful design, we hope that our product was able to create such thoughts to the audience.

Progress

To realize our innovation, we decide to use cardboard to make the props and costumes and spray paint to make them more in line with our settings. We built a suit for the robots, a coffin for the human being and a interactive hat.

This our interactive artifact! It is an interactive equipment which can transform humans’ thoughts into a robot’s body so as to be eternal. We use Arduino cables to symbolize that this contains high technology. With this hat, the human is able to transfer his mind into a robot’s body.

Rehearsal

 We practiced our performance for several times. Since we want to demonstrate that the environment in space is different and the boundary between humans and robots is significant, we decided to take the form of shady comedy.

Successes

  • Our performance is easy to understand and we received several rounds of applauses during the performance.
  • Our performance is thought-provoking and arouse the audience’s thinking about what’s the difference and boundary between humans and machines.
  • The props and costumes are well-prepared and well-designed, which fits to our story.
  • The plot is a zig-zag rather than something linear, which manage to keep the audience engaged throughout the performance.

Failures

Our idea is simply based on the background environment of the second science fiction story. It has a relatively weak relation with fictional story.

Critical Analysis and Assessment of a Performance From Another Group

Description:

Their interactive artifact is several cubes making up the world. The cubes are smart with AI technology in it. They can change into different scenes for the first, second and third world in Folding Beijing, which I think is creative. It reflects the classes system in the fiction.

How relevant/not relevant is the interactive artifact to the fictional story?

I think their artifact is highly related to the assigned fictional story and it’s based on Folding Beijing.

How well/not well does it meet the criteria of the assignment?

I can see little interaction in their performance of the artifacts. The cubes are all under the control of a master who is in charge of the whole universe. And the common people have nothing to do with their world.

What is your opinion of the design of the device?

I think it is more a performance demonstrating the social classes in Folding Beijing than a performance of an interactive artifact.

How creatively does the performance help you understand the artifact?

They use small boxes with colorful paintings on it and change them according to he changes of social classes. I think it’s very creative.

Do you have any suggestions for improvements?

  • They can make their artifact more interactive.
  • They can make their story more appealing and interesting.

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