Interaction Lab Performance Blog
Idea Generation and Sketching
Our group designed a helmet capable of erasing human emotions, the helmet can sense the fluctuations of the human brain and suppress feelings, allowing the wearer to become a completely rational individual.
Prototype Draft (sketch):
Build upon the exampled story of “The Plague”, we’ve created this interesting background as every group member have equal contributions to the performance.
“In a world overrun by zombies, a team of four survivors including Angel, a former scientist, Angela the leader, Bruce the survivalist and Riley, Angela’s brother, have banded together to increase their chances of survival. Their unique skill sets have proven essential in navigating the dangerous and unpredictable world they live in.”
This project is a creation of Angel: A creation enabling the squad to make wise choices under difficult circumstances(Although people might also challenge whether this choice is wise or not). By eliminating human’s emotions, the team is able to make difficult decisions for the so-called justice.
Definition and compliance of “interaction”
- Personal Definition & Connection
In the research phase, I defined interaction as “Interaction is like a story that the creator built, but to every individual, such a story can have different interpretations through the audience’s emotional, physical, verbal, or digital reactions. Based on the mindset, emotions and background of different participants, such interactive stories might differ from time to time.” Indeed, this project also presented us a emotional-eliminating story where technologies interact with human emotions and have direct functions. This project fits quite well with what I defined at the beginning. It is also closely related to the scenario depicted in the book, which is a concrete demonstration of interactive technology.
Performance Video
Building Process & Personal Contribution
Step 1:
Collect a lot of cardboard and cut it to the right size. Use Angela and Riley’s head shape as a template to determine the size of the helmet to be made; use the cardboard to determine the size of the helmet.
Step 2:
We cut out narrower pieces of cardboard and fixed them to the model to form the shape of a helmet. (The head of the cardboard should be cut narrow because the top is the top of the helmet)
Step 3:
Make the buttons on the helmet.
Step 4:
Decompose the helmet and wrap every single piece with aluminum. Wrap each part in tinfoil to give the helmet a sense of technology. Wrap the painted buttons in tinfoil and paint them in different colors. Also, glue the parts together through super glues.
Step 5:
I glued all the final product and fix it with glue and determine the size, then dry it.
*While me and my teammates were building up the helmet, Shane built a rough draft of the script (Google Doc)and we took turns to polish the storyline.
Analysis of other group
Here is the personal analysis of the 4th group of Friday’s performance. It should be Kevin’s group elaborating a story of two friends celebrating a birthday and asking their robot to help purchasing the birthday cake. Such story is a very interesting move, indicating that in future interactive robots may be able to follow people’s command and cooperate with each other in order to fulfill the needs of their master. However, I believe the performance can be a bit more intuitive in elaborating the “interactive” side of the robot, showcasing the interaction between machines and human beings, rather than storytelling. Also, such performance and the interactive robots were vaguely connected to the three fictional stories, maybe the second one?
Critical Analysis and Reflections
- Critiques and Reflections
- There is no way to mass produce this product, it should be more practical.
- We can use real electric buttons and plastic sensor to make the helmet more vivid
- More hot melt glue should be used in the production process to fix tinfoil wires, etc.
- Emphasize more on how the heart beat sensor pad works in this project.
- A complete success will be the idea of removing a piece of tin paper of the built knife to show the red-colored inside. Very intuitive and showed that the character was killed.
- We are an excellent team with high working efficiency. We communicate well and proceeded the thoughts efficiently. Every team member done their part well.
Such a story scene and technology not only reflects the lustful destruction of human emotions by technology, but also warns of the balance between human moral bottom line and technology. Such a story also warns people of the potential risks associated with the discovery of technology and interactive technology.
It also gives a different meaning to technology: How to interact in order to maximize the benefits of technology without touching the moral bottom line?