On October 3, our group had our first group meeting in the common space of the residence hall. We listened to every artifact the group members came up with and discussed which can be chosen as our performing project. Inspired by Duoaa’s idea, we finally formed the idea of Criminal Detecting Glasses, which was related to the scenes from the Veldt . The glasses were designed to detect criminal behaviors. When the micro camera on the glasses detects illegal acts, the color of the glasses turns red and it starts warning. The working theory seems like a combination of current monitoring technology and a warning device. But we thought it was more convenient to use the glasses to get solid evidence in an urgent senario.
To perform how the artifact works, we came up with a short play. It was set in a recitation session where some students stole cables, and the professor used the crime detecting glasses provided by the authority to find the thieves.
Later in group meeting, we divided task allocation as follows:
The following is our script:
My work was to make cardboard to show scenes transitions during the performance, help the “professor” change glasses, make warning noise, and make the REC cardboard frame.
The transition cardboard part was the most difficult .We all agreed that a SpongeBob style one would be fun. I searched for and chose some screenshot materials on Google. Since we needed texts of “later that day” and “one recitation later”, we could not directly use the screenshots but had to change the text. However, I actually knew nothing about how to set this specific kind of font by using the computer. All I could think of is removing the text first and drawing the text we needed myself. I used Photoshop to remove the text part of these two screenshots.( In fact, I didn’t know how to do that as well so I watched some videos to learn about it and asked my roommate who was taking animation class for help.) After that I used Procreate on Ipad to draw the words and tried my best to imitate the SpongeBob style. Thankfully it didn’t look so bad.
The REC cardboard was an idea to show how the glasses work more clearly. To make this frame, I worked together with Ricky and Anya. We cut the cardboard into strips and used the hot melt glue to stick them into a rectangle shape. But the cardboard we used seemed not hard enough to support the whole frame so we cut more stripes to make it more solid. After that me and Ricky almost got a same idea at the same time that when the “authority ” pauses the record video, we could show the audience a pause icon of a triangle like the case when we pause the video in reality, using a piece of cardboard. Ricky then improved the idea that we could use a cable to hang the triangle symbol. We tried that but the cardboard kept rotating when hanging by a single cable. So we added another cable to make it more stable.
I was also in charge of making warning noises but found it too embarrassing to say “Beep Beep! Cable stolen!” myself… So I asked the duck for help. Then the warning changed into “Quack quack! Cable stolen!”(Thank you!!!)
Other 5 members of my group were in charge of making the glasses. We needed 2 pairs of glasses, one silver, one red to show the color change. In fact, they made 5 pairs of glasses in total and 2 failed, 3 succeeded ,1 spare. To make the color more obvious, they twined the red cable and metal wire on the frame and used glue to reinforce it.
this is a sketch made by my group mate Luciana.
I think our group gave a satisfying performance to let the audience know about the function of the glasses. But there is also space for improvement. For example, we could better our props by adding more detailed components.
Performances given by other groups were great and innovative. Here I want to make some comments on the group who made a fully automatic disinfection and drying machine for the plague. The idea was inspired by the novel” The Plague ” and also the current situation of COVID19. I think their idea of helping the patient to be physically clean and sterilized is related to our real life and meaningful. I especially like their creative performance that showed how the machine worked, and their great props as well. The potential problem or something difficult to achieve may be that the process and the medical requirement of the disinfection can be very complicated. For instance, there might need different and complex settings for the machine to deal with different bacterias or viruses. In addition, many diseases cannot be cured simply through these three processes, so more treating techniques and steps might be needed.