Rubric
1. My hope is to call attention to the okay-ness of beauty in the world in order to show that it is not beauty that should be demonized, but rather our treatment of it. In other words, perhaps the way we navigate beauty as human beings and society could be reconsidered so as to become less harmful.
2. My hope is to reverse utilitarian movements and societal trends and allow spirit to re-enter our realm in order to free people from having to justify things through use value.
3. My hope is to awaken the senses to that which they do not normally detect in order to call people into the consideration of all that is out there that goes unnoticed and in order to acknowledge the truths that have not been “proven”.
4. My hope is to guide people through an experience that disengages them from the way they usually perceive reality in order to entice them towards the “more” reality.
5. My hope is to use beauty and technology to make people aware of their unawareness towards the “crests and troughs” of reality (alluding to destructive interference of waves).
What do your stated goals look like totally fulfilled, somewhat fulfilled, not fulfilled at all..
Totally fulfilled: An installation in a room without corners with digital noise projected everywhere except where the person is facing, so that everything in their field of vision is a static stream of colored light moving from left to right (or right to left). Or perhaps there is holographic sine waves bouncing on an ocean surface of greenish white light throughout the entire room at eye level, but the user can only see greenish white light, as the crests and troughs of waves are all diverging from the eye level of the user. And the user can hear a single tone like a digital Om, but spatially above and below their ear level is a cacophonous din.
Somewhat fulfilled: A website that tracks where on the screen a user is looking and clears that area of the screen, whereas the rest of the page is filled with jittering caustics and textual messaging that flickers rapidly in many directions. The website uses mic detection to broadcast users’ voices to other users as sonic refractions, or my digital interpretations of acoustic caustics, meaning distorted in pitch, volume, reverb, et al. It plays a monotone continuously.
Not at all fulfilled: Too afraid to get my hands dirty in the code and procrastinate until the deadline has come and gone.
How might you measure the success of your fully realized project? What are some “key performance indicators”? Indulge your wildest dreams!
If people find it visually and sonically intriguing and unique-ish.
If in 3 years this project became an installation.
If the people who experienced this project felt spiritually inspired to question what lies beyond their senses so much so that they quit their jobs and grow sugar for their neighbor!
Inputs:
What excites you?
-making something that looks cool
-making the metaphor deeper and clearer
What is your main question or inquiry?
-what can we learn from physics about what we cannot learn from physics?
-what is it about my fascination with caustics that could be helpful or beneficial or pleasing to others?
What systems do your projects touch or reside of inside?
-utilitarianism, capitalism, beauty industrial complex (dunno if i can appropriately mesh these words together), notions of time and space, religion and spirituality
What kinds of change would you like your project to contribute to?
-humbling people through awe and admission of mystery to ease up on their claims to truth and their attempts to control and taxonomize
Outputs:
What are you doing to explore the topic through your outputs?
-create beauty, but withhold it somewhat from people’s experience to represent all that we already are withholding ourselves from in the range of possible experiences or “truths” or realities
Where do you locate it, and how do people find or encounter it?
-on the internet, somewhere public, in Times Square
How will you know how it is received and by whom?
-I can create a forum page for comments and discussions (like Instagram I suppose) on the website
What adjustments would you make going forward?
-I wish I had less confusion, confused about how to accomplish that though
Evaluation and revision:
What is a measure of success for you? (form, context, audience, change-making)
-If frustration leads to contemplation for people
What changes do you need to make to reach your input goals?
-make the textual content more intentional, meaningful, to point towards the systems I am addressing
Description of project idea:
https://www.are.na/block/25018209
Research Trail and Drawing Board:
https://www.are.na/elisabeth-schifrin-ba2vvhubkcs/caustics-ibe3md8hgsy
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