Gian Pablo @ ITP

Here is a side view of the piece, showing the three-dimensional arrangement of the parts:

This piece involved a lot more brainstorming and debating time than actual construction. While the idea of using a joke as the narrative was initially appealing and seemed straightforward, it was actually quite complex.

The first thought wast to use a "knock-knock" joke as the narrative. However, these jokes rely for their humor on verbal elements - words that sound the same, puns, etc. It is difficult to represent them in a strictly visual way. Of course, one option is to replace individual words with pictures (a rebus), in which case reading the piece requires translating from pictures back to words.

Another thought was to represent a classic "priest, minister, rabbi go to a bar" joke. However, we somewhat surprised to discover that there are not so many (if any) jokes that start this way - it is something of a meta-joke eg. "A rabbi, a priest and a minister walked into a bar. 'What is this, a joke?' said the bartender". However, we got a key insight out of this - while it might be difficult to represent the entire joke (esp. the punchline), the setup would be immediately recognizable. Having cutout figures of the priest, the minister and the rabbi next to a door that says "Bar" would most likely be recognized as the start of a joke. However, resolution would still be a problem, without resorting to rebus-like constructions.

Another challenge was to use the third dimension effectively. It is very difficult to represent a joke as anything other than a linear progression, in which case it becomes a comic strip.

We ended up with another joke whose setup is immediately recognizable: "Why did the chicken cross the road?", a joke where the humor lies in precisely how unfunny it is. By not having to represent a punchline, it becomes much easier to use the joke as a framing device.

By tapping into existing cultural knowledge of very well-known jokes, the piece can be extremely concise. We found during construction that the setup was recognizable with only one chicken and the road - that was enough to frame the piece as a representation of a joke. The next stage was to add a chicken crossing the road, and then a person wondering why the chicken did that. Finally, the resolution is the same chicken, wondering why someone cares about its reason for crossing the road. There is very little redundancy: I think all the pieces are necessary for it to work.

I am pleased with the result: I think it uses comic tropes in three dimensions in an effective way. The piece can be understood in a matter of seconds and looks visually appealing.

The key problem with the piece is that it is far too shallow - there is not much to it beyond the first few seconds, and it is too over-specified: there is no room for a viewer to discover anything in it beyond what is there. It is too obviously a linear narrative.

During the critiques, two ways of extending the work came up that seemed interesting: the first, to add multiple layers of complexity and meaning by adding multiple punchlines; the second, to strip out complexity and reduce it to its essence, leaving only chicken and road.

I strongly prefer the latter - it is more visually striking, and really gets the message across.