Set-up
To follow up the timeline of the group project and start it early, I took several days to reach out to my teammates through slack and later via email. Finally we built up a WeChat Group three days before the national holiday and decided to have a meeting on ideas and plan just before the national holiday. Such a nice starting stage. We started not too late and made a brief timeline:
- ideas: before the holiday;
- prototype: start on Oct.4, finish before the end of the holiday;
- performance: start with prototyping and finish rehearsal the day before the recitation
Mingxuan, Ruiqi, Wenbo, Mesilla, and Isa. Here is the Legendary Group 3 for 2022 Fall IX Lab!
Ideas
Our idea is an artifact, on which users can share suffering with each other. There is a center stage where a necklace was put on while there are four(or can be more) standing columns with handprint buttons on them. There are basic features of the artifact:
1. When someone put the button, the necklace will light up; the hard the one presses down, the lighter the necklace will be. Similarly, the more people push the button at the same time, the lighter the necklace will be.
2. Only when there is people put on the necklace(closed) is the artifact actived to generate feelings of electronic current to users.
3. When there is only one person pushing the button: if the one push slightly, electrical sensation is sharp with no hurt to the person standing on the center stage; when pushing harder, the sharp feeling will fade and the middle person will only feel a bit suffering, probably like a tickle.
4. When there are more people pushing the button: the electrical sensation will be mild when pushing mildly, and will totally fade away when together pushing harder; at the same time, the feelings of the middle person will transiform from a bit tickle to a sharp hurt–he/she carries all the suffering from the people around.
After sharing and discussion, most of us voted for one of Ruiqi’s idea among ours as the most interesting and operational for the following work. It responds to the second story–The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, written by Ursula K. Le Guin. In the original design Ruiqi use temperature distribution between a boy in the inner circle of concentric rings and the user standing/stepping in the outer ring.
In discussions the idea has been changed for times:
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I raised some problems. For example, the instructions for users might be wired to follow, when I read the original describe the interacting process and imagined I were the user.
Besides, what’s the inner force to push the user to try this artifact? Are there any ways to impress the user and make an influence on the world? We kept these questions through the following work.
For one of cases I reseached, I commanded “outside of programming, it’s more obvious to say it is an interation between sense of tough and vision. Shapes and forms of bubbles are varied depending on how the viewer blows, reflection how the wind respond to our breath.” Here in our project, the artificial also make an interaction between feelings or suffering from touching and body language of the one standing on the center stage. It is a tactile and visual interaction.
Prototype
From foodprints to handprints:
I considered the performance part carefully and found if we use foodprints, it will be hard to show the audience the movement, no less degree of pressure.
Later, when we started making the center stage, I suggest to put the the handprints button much higher than the center stage on the ground–it will be easier for the person standing in the middle to both try the artifact or perform in class; and for users standing around, it will be more comfortable for them to push the button at a standing point; also, it’s more friendly to the audience to observe our movements.
Based on this our teammates suggested to make some stand columns more away from the center stage–then we started to build an art space!
To make the colume, first we considered ordering more larger cardboards on E`Leme(饿了么). Luckily, there was a plastic bottle of water under the desk we sat around, inspiring me to suggest collecting empty bottles.
I built the button part. The structure magnifies the range of motion–so we and our audience can see the degree of pressure more clear.
Finishing the main parts(columns, buttons, center stages), we found some discarded plastic pipes in 826. Inspired by the shape and curves, we decided to use them as wires to imply current.
Performance
Script:
Discussed: the whole Group 3
Recorded: Isa
Characters:
- Mingxuan: a museum fan with a guidline, excited to explore every room in the exhibition.
- Wenbo: a curious boy with a mischievous heart, willing to try something new.
- Ruiqi: a creative artist in the visiting group, sometimes feeling boring to others work
- Isa: an active Internet involver, knowing many thing online, especially about art.
- Masilla: a wise observer to everything around, with quick and good understanding on new things.
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.
Link to the google doc we created for script: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EuA2oHymWN_0ZeCAPNfsQSxojLbb95W_mKMxEUhrXno/edit?usp=sharing (Only for reference)
Final performance:
Good job!
Next, provide a critical analysis and assessment of a performance from another group. Start with the description of the project. How relevant/not relevant is the interactive artifact to the fictional story? How well/not well does it meet the criteria of the assignment? What is your opinion of the design of the device? How creatively does the performance help you understand the artifact? Do you have any suggestions for improvements?
Among all the projects performed that day, I want to talk more about the intelligent information box in front of house gate. The box can deliver a designated message to a designated person whose identity can be recognized by special identity card he/she takes to swip.
When most of projects obviously related to certain story, it is the only one that failed to remind me of any stories. Maybe it is about secrets between people–in the first story, the parents just rushed into the nersery room and lacked communications with their children; two children behaved differently to parents and psychologist. Or maybe it can help avoid physical and real-time communication especially during a plague as the third story describe.
Although it is a simple device, it did inspire me a lot. I came up with many details that might be better to add on it. For example, in terms of the card swipping, why can not the identity of the receiver be automatically recognized by the machine? It would be super cool for the device to sort the receiver’s identity or certain type of work(certain friends, or simply a random deliverman). Besides, the senario can be changed the front gate of an apartments’ unit, since the device can automatically match the messages’ owner and receiver. Additional, for security reasons, it would be better to cancel the function of tell a ‘friend’ how many people are there at home.