Group Research Project: The Suit

In our performance, titled “The Suit,” we demonstrated our invention that we felt would have changed the course of the short story “The Plague.” Our idea was a self-assembling suit, inspired by that of Marvel’s The Black Panther, and adapted from Tammy’s idea during part 2 of the Research Project.

At the beginning of this assignment, I had defined “interaction” not only as “mutual or reciprocal action or influence,” as the Merriam Webster Dictionary puts it, but also as something that helps deepen one’s understanding of the world. I feel that our artifact met that definition, but only to an extent. The key mechanism of the artifact is that when the user presses a button the suit assembles itself on their body. In this case, the mutual/reciprocal action is the user pushing the button and the suit putting itself on. One could make the argument that it helps deepen one’s understand of the world by allowing the wearer to freely explore the outside world without worrying about the plague. However, I personally feel that the suit itself does not do much with regards to actually deepening understanding, as once the suit is on, the wearer can more or less ignore its existence.

Overall, I think our performance was pretty good. However, as some of the professors mentioned, there was room for improvement. For instance, rather than me saying “the suit is supposed to put itself on, but because it is a prototype, it does not do that,” I should have let the performance speak for itself (as Professor Haider said). In addition, as Professor Garcia mentioned, it would have been interesting to think about the negative impact our invention could have had, rather than just the positives. Finally, I was very scattered at the time of the performance, as an hour or so beforehand, I fell and really messed up my knee. Other than that, I feel that our group was well-prepared and I love how our prototype turned out. I also think that we did manage to display the positive impacts our suit would have had on the story’s universe in our performance.

Rehearsal Video Link

Performance Video Link

SCRIPT:

Narrators retell the part where the Crow gets slashed, infected, and dies. 

Tammy: “Our group chose to reenact the scene in “The Plague” where the Crow gets slashed — 

Eva: One of the infected throws a knife and the Crow shoots, however the knife strikes him in the arm and he gets infected.

• • • • Person throws knife, crow shoots
      • Insert wind (Henry) Knife cuts Crow
      • Crow “dies” from being infected

Tammy: Now, how would the story have changed had the Crow been wearing a stronger suit?

• • • • Crow press button
        • Takes out sunglasses from pocket
      • Everyone rushes to dress Crow (stand like iron man preparing for surgery)
        • Eva and Tammy: body, front and back
        • Nina and Zora: tummy
        • Zora and Henry: legs 
        • Eva and Tammy: arms
        • Nina and Tammy: shoulders
        • Eva and Henry: gloves
        • Henry: helmet and mask first
      • **Eva narrates different uses of armor: shoulders, chest plates front and back, stomach, shin guards, arms, helmet, materials used to create

Eva: Now that he’s ready, let’s watch the scene again. 

Zora kidnaps Nina.. Nina resists and screams…

Evan: Let her go!

Zora: No, why should I? You kill people everyday. 

Evan: It’s the right thing to do.

Zora: I don’t care.

• • • • Person throws knife, Crow shoots
      • Insert wind> Henry> Knife breaks!
      • Crow does not die
        • “Thank god I was wearing this suit! It protected me from the dangerous knife, I love this suit!”

I honestly loved my team and could not have asked for a better one. I feel like we all worked very well together and never had issues with people not pulling their own weight. Generally, Tammy and I were the ones assigning jobs to people and ensuring everyone was communicating. We also scheduled most of the meetings. When building the suit, I designed the shoulders and wrapped a few of the pieces. I also made one of the shin guards and attached the yarn to the chest and back pieces. I also wrote a good chunk of our script and worked with Tammy to choreograph the performance. I may have made other contributions, but it really was a team effort and we did not exactly keep track of who did what. The final result was an accumulation of all of our hard work.

 

I thought that all of the performances were really interesting and I loved seeing everyone’s ideas and watching how they chose to present it. I especially liked the performance “Drooz Visualized.” I thought the concept was really interesting and I loved the idea that the product only worked if you really believed in it. I feel they met the criteria in that they presented both the pros and cons of their product in an interesting way, and they made the interactive elements of the artifact very obvious. In addition, I felt that their presentation was one of the most “performance-like,” rather than “infomercial-esque,” as some other performances were.