The artifact we prototyped consists of an artifact that records and replays your dreams. The idea of my group’s project focused on the idea I presented for Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”. The project is consistent with the established form of interaction. I had previously defined interaction as “different objects, which influence and modify each other, taking into account the situation and the surrounding circumstances, making interaction a subjective experience.” The two objects, in this case, the human and the artifact can be seen to influence and modify each other, since at the end of the day what the artifact is broadcasting is that individual’s dreams. This mutual interaction makes the experience subjective since the experiences that a person will have with the artifact will change depending on many factors since dreams are not the same. It also customizes the experience as everyone dreams differently.
In my opinion, the artifact accomplishes the function as determined by the group. From an aesthetical point of view, you can’t see much that characterizes it and you can’t demonstrate what it does since it is a fictitious invention. We decided to make the artifact based on my idea because after presenting all our ideas we determined that my concept would be the most feasible and interesting to plan within the time we had available. The chosen idea also gave us a chance to make an interesting and easy-to-understand performance for the viewer.
In terms of group work my contribution to the project has been immense as I was in charge of bringing the whole group together and the final idea came from my Read phase.
The group work process started when I sent an email and we organized a WeChat group so we could discuss ideas. We met twice: the first time was to discuss the project itself and plan what artifact we were going to make while the second time was to build the artifact and plan the performance we were going to give. Certain members of the group were in charge of building the artifact while the other half of us wrote and planned the performance.
For this part, I will analyze the performance given by Group 6. Their artifact consisted of a helmet that when placed on an individual’s head, would remove the feelings of that person wearing the helmet. This clearly comes out of the story of “The Plague”. The function of the idea is to remove the person’s emotions. I think it fits the guidelines of the project as it is an idea that does not exist and is derived from the stories we had to read during the “Read” phase of this project. The artifact seems to be well-designed.
The performance helped a great deal in understanding the purpose of this artifact, they were able to demonstrate the function of the artifact and the context very easily. Something that I would say that they should improve is that physically the appearance of the helmet does not correspond with their description of the idea as it gave the impression that it had more uses than it really had.
Script (click here): Our group did go improvised a bit and went off script as originally the plan had been for only two people to put on the helmet but during the performance, it ended up being too short.
