Project title: Hear Frida Kahlo/ Letters from __
Project statement of purpose:
My targeted audience probably include everyone who’s curious about and willing to explore their own identities. When researching about interactive proejcts, I was inspired by the project “Ordinary Places” created by Anouk Zibaut. (link shown in reference, more content in my preparatory research)
(Picture of “Ordinary Places”)
The project’s nature doesn’t trigger many physical interaction. Rather it invites the viewers to watch the experimental film like they watch ordinary films. However, its research subject “daily surveillance” matters a lot to its targeted audience and therefore, naturally triggers further inner interactivity and lets the contemplation leave with the viewers. This is the effect that I want to achieve by having a substantial concept with the help of adequate physical interaction.
Basically, Hear Frida Kahlo will invite the users to trigger audio files to be played. These will be audio files pre-stored in processing and recorded by different people with different genders and of course identities. By doing this, the usual experience of seeing Frida Kahlo’s image will be translated into another sense: hearing.
Project Plan
My project Hear Frida Kahlo, as the name implies, invites people to listen to the artist. And by hearing her inspiring quotes and touching the heart, the audience will be left with a sense of contemplation about this figure, imagination about her life story and more importantly their own living experiences.
(1) Fabrication
I want to experiment on different materials such as wood and rubber for laser cut anatomical heart. The other option is to do a 3d-printing heart that allows a great extent of flexibility. The choice of wood or rubber aims at a sense of temperature for the former material is associated with nature and the latter’s texture is softer.
(2)Voice input
For this part, I will need to communicate with different people and invite them to put in their voices reading Frida Kahlo’s quotes. I found quotes from the article “30 Frida Kahlo Quotes to Inspire you to turn pain into beauty”.
(3)Coding
This will be the most complicated part and requires a lot of experiments and help. I aim at an interactive experience that will react to the detected distance first and then will invite the users to touch the heart which will trigger different quotes.
Context and Significance
We are now living in a time when more and more people are gaining awareness about their own identities. These diverse identities are built on everyone’s own living experiences and personalities. In exploring our own possibilities, sometimes we need to borrow our predecessors’ experience, to stand on the shoulder of the giant and move forward. I believe Frida Kahlo is one of those giants. However, most of our contemporaries didn’t get an opportunity to know more about her works, her spirits and more importantly, listen to her voices. One thing is that I’m afraid the pronoun “her” is not adequate to describe Frida Kahlo. She’s somebody who set off the challenging inner journey, relentlessly asked questions about being a human and overcome obstacles. During my research, I didn’t see a lot of digital tributes to Frida Kahlo. However, Google Art does offer a rich digital library tributing to Frida Kahlo in which audience can thoroughly go through her life stories and understand her works from multiple aspects. (Link shown in the reference) This also adds to my confidence and determination about the significance of this project. If successful, I believe it can offer a short yet meditative experience to the audience. The voices will stay and grow into reflection over pain and beauty.
Reference:
“30 Frida Kahlo Quotes to Inspire you to turn pain into beauty” https://www.goalcast.com/2017/11/28/17-frida-kahlo-quotes/
the digital retrospective of Frida Kahlo launched by Google
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/frida-kahlo/m015k04?hl=en
Lieux Ordinaires (Ordinary Places) – Surveillance as a storytelling medium
Lieux Ordinaires (Ordinary Places) – Surveillance as a storytelling medium