Idea 1: “You can score-it too!”
This idea is an assistive technology driven project, that connects Arduino and Processing in order to create a more inclusive way of developing video games. The project consists of creating a soccer penalty scoring game in Processing, and connecting it to a distance sensor in an Arduino. The Arduino, will be attached to a vest, which will be worn by the game user. Therefore, any subject with physical disabilities that doesn’t enable him or her to physically kick the ball, will be able to play the game by just putting the vest on. So, depending on the speed and distance of the player towards the sensor and display, the soccer ball within the Processing game animation will be impulsed to score a goal on the screen. This project is idealized to redefine video game creation, by making it inclusive to all members of society who want to feel the adrenaline of a real or virtual game, however, they have difficulties either holding a game controller, or physically kicking the ball.
Idea 2: Music World Map
As I came to NYU Shanghai, I have been immersed into a complex student body of very diverse nationalities and cultures. From this immersion, I have also noticed the lack of knowledge between people in general about some smaller countries as they are overlooked by the bigger, powerful nation. Hence, inspired by the lack of knowledge of each others’ cultures, I developed the idea of creating an interactive world map. The map would either be 3D printed, or coded within Processing in such way that once the figure of one country on the map is pressed, then Arduino will output one of the songs from the top-10 list of songs of that country that will be extracted from worldwide music databases such as Spotify and Apple Music. This project will have the purpose of not only educating the viewers in regards to where certain smaller countries are located, but also show them a small part of their culture through their most popular up-to-date music.
Idea 3: “A Race through Race”
As a cross cultural latinamerican, through this project I want to address the challenges faced by mixed races when society’s prejudice and stereotypes want to determine “who we are” based on our physical appearance. Throughout my whole life I have observed how most people have a certain standard regarding how latinos, asians, americans, africans, and even europeans “should look”, and by this they are blindsided to the idea of culture intersectionality, and how people’s geographic nationality does not determine their race. They ignore or are unaware of the fact that africans can ‘look white’, latinos can ‘look asian and white’, asians can ‘look latino’, etc. Therefore, in order to generate awareness amongst the public of how there is no such thing as a set of standards regarding how a person should “look” based on their ethnicity, I want to create a gamification of a stereotype pop-quiz. The gamification will be called “A race through race”, and it consists of two participants being exposed to a series of images of individuals with different physical appearances. While looking at each image, they will have 10 seconds to select which continent (or geographical area), they believe the person from the image is from, and whoever gets the most answers right is the winner. The idea behind allocating a time constraint is to truly get people’s first impression and see how that influences their tendency to choose the incorrect answers. This form of interaction is intended to, in the end, demonstrate the users how despite nationalities and geographical locations, we are all truly just one race, the human race; and specially in modern day society, there is no such thing as a standard or stereotypical “ethnicity”, as each culture has its own salad bowl of colors and appearances as a product of globalization and cross cultural relationships.
Idea 4: Identity Distortion
My final idea, similar to the third one, is also related to race and stereotypes; but rather than addressing then through the ethnical and cultural lens, I want to address race through the color lens. For this reason, the main question I want to solve is “How would we see each other in Black and White?”.
I came upon this question as I noticed the labelling and beauty standard stereotypes that exist regarding skin tones. In my personal experience, I have faced situations in which I am either not “white enough” to be beautiful, or not “dark enough” to be Latina. Therefore, thanking this into consideration, I want to create a vintage Photo Booth experience, that inverses the user into “editing” their own pixelated image, and being able to change their skin tone under an inverse or negative filter. However, once the picture has been processed, they will receive an image that is completely different than what they expected. Hence, conveying the message of how the outdated idea of beauty being attached to a certain race, still exists but is unexpectedly erroneous.