Our project essentially boiled down to an interactive art exhibition, derived from the second story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin. The short story included an anecdote about a child locked in a basement, to which the happiness of the town depended on. One of our members, Ricci, thought up a project to emulate that dependency. Her original idea was a child made of ice, place in the center of circle with an outer ring. The sum of the temperature of the plates would be constant but the comfort of the person standing on the outer ring would depend on the speed of which the child would melt. As a group, we modified the original idea due to practicality reasons and came to our prototype. The artifact consists of four pillars and a center circle. The four pillars have hand shaped buttons, that work as a lever. Rather than temperature, the buttons would cause the users to feel a current. To emulate the story, the people standing around the sides at the pillar will feel a slight shock when touching the button around the edge, but the pain fades as the current transfers instead to the person in the middle. When there is no one standing in the middle, the buttons are essentially worthless. The shock that the people at the pillars feel is less than that which the person in the middle would feel if all four people pressed the buttons at once. The idea changed from Ricci’s original in a variety of ways, but we tried to keep the original message intact. Rather than a foot print for people to stand on, we changed the design to instead use hands and buttons, to better show how one controls the current and as hands are more accessible. The child is difficult to build, and we also came to realize having a person in the middle would also serve to be more interactive. The use of current instead of temperature came about because of concerns regarding the performance, but I would also say that the pain is more obvious and works with the change from the child made of ice to people. We chose not to make a sign with instructions because we wanted the piece to be as interactive as possible, as in one of the reading they stated that the piece should be left for interpretation. We were slightly concerned as our piece was more of an art instillation with a message rather than a usable piece of tech in the fictional societies and we feared that this might be slightly confusing to the audience.
Another group in our recitation created a robot that would be capable of assisting people in their final moments as they turn to stone. This is based off the third reading we did. They performed a variety of tasked based off the movement of the infected individual, who was identified by a scanner. I would argue that the prototype is fairly relevant and in line with the story. I think it would work well, but am still not sure as to what the device is capable of. I found the performance to be slightly confusing at the beginning. I thought that they were trying to find infected, only later coming to realize the robot was intended to assist them. Maybe instead should have performed by following around one person and seeing their day to day, to also show interaction of robot with multiple persons. Also the boundaries of the robot unclear as to how the robot would function in other circumstances.
I would say that overall, we worked fairly well with one another. Shelly was the one to add all of us to a group chat and to plan our first meeting. Steve and myself contributed to most of the modifications made from the first version to the end result. As previously stated, Ricci thought of our original idea. Isa came to lead our first discussion, but was not as involved in the making of the prototype due to technical and scheduling issues. Shelly, Steve, Ricci, and myself built and planned the prototype one evening. Later, Isa wrote the script for the performance as the rest of verbally expressed our ideas. But, I think the work could have been more balanced and involved everyone in other aspects. One person in our group seemed to have difficulty meshing well with the rest of us on the idea. I believe this to be because she preferred to go in route of usable technology rather than the direction of the interactive feature we ended up with. The rest of our group could have taken her concerns more seriously. But regardless, we still managed to collaborate and develop the prototype. The communication also felt a bit one-sided at times and we had difficulty conveying our ideas to members who were not able to be present at certain meetings.
Script:
Setting: Art museum
We enter an art museum and discover that there is a new art installation from a famous artist featured at the MET.
The artist is known for creating art that the viewer is allowed to touch and play with (one of the viewers knows this) and guides the rest to play with the art.
One notices buttons shaped as hands and decides to press it.
There are 4 buttons so everyone starts pressing the buttons all at once but nothing happens.
Someone notices a light up necklace in the middle of the machine and decides to pick it up and put it on.
Whilst the others play with the buttons the person in the middle notices the necklace lights up when the buttons are pressed.
That person suggested that everyone press the buttons all at once so the necklace lights up brighter.
When they first press all together they feel an electric shock.
The person in the middle teases the people pressing the buttons because “how could pressing a button be painful”
One person pushes through the pain despite the other’s comment and realizes once the button is fully pressed there is no longer an electric shock.
The person in the middle starts feeling an electric shock but the lights are brighter.
Everyone presses the button at the same time and realizes that the person in the middle is getting shocked.
Meanwhile the person in the middle is getting shocked, they joke that it can’t be too painful so they take turns going in the middle.
They notice another cool machine featured in the museum and walk away to go play without thinking much about the meaning of the machine.”