Thesis Proposal Draft

My Research Question is twofold:

  • What are the things that make up who someone is? Do our memories make up who we are? Do objects embody those memories? Therefore, is exploring the objects of others a way to discover someone’s essence? 
  • Do we underestimate the role of feelings and emotion in learning about someone? Are the best biographies void of data and facts? How can I harness feelings and use it as a mechanism to teach who someone is?

What I plan on Making.

I plan to make one or two small-scale experiences with the overall vision that this will be a series of 5-or-so experiences that will make up one bigger exhibition. In a way, I am redefining the traditional museum experience. Instead of a passive museum exhibit that recounts someone’s life through biographical details and facts, I am creating a multi-media exhibit that you can touch, play with, and most of all, feel. The form of my project will have 5 pieces:

  1. The first step is deep research into someone’s life and feelings. This will hopefully be a Humans-of-New-York-esque portrait of an Everyman or Everywomen. Depending on my comfort level, I could profile someone closer to me for representation purposes.
  2. Create a diorama full of these individual’s Greatest Hits objects that mean the most to them, as well as the things that are less important, but still provide valuable insight.
  3. Allow the guest to play with the diorama. Create an input system (motion detection, object detection, so on) that allows the guest to trigger a projection.
  4. An audio-visual projection that goes along with the person and their memory projects on a wall.
  5. Something mechanical within the diorama alters, revealing something bigger about this person’s life.

Why is this important to me?

My primary interest is in connecting with others. I love probing and learning who people truly are. Communication makes it difficult. Technology, at times, does, too but it doesn’t have to.

I’m passionate about physical interactions as a means for learning. It’s the best way to grasp someone’s feelings. I think feelings are a strong mechanism for learning; stronger than learning through facts and reason. 

I’m interested in the objects that make up our memories. Objects are what they are, objective. Objects are more than this. Objects can elicit strong feelings.

How about the mediocre moments in people’s lives that we don’t latch on to? We tend to fixate on the big moments in our lives, the memories at opposite ends of the spectrum. How about the ones in the middle? If we recall the smaller moments, then this would create a more complete picture of someone. 

What are my goals?

First I have technical goals of learning projection mapping and physical interactions with Arduino.

I want to merge the digital and physical seamlessly to communicate something meaningful.  I want to eventually work on location-based experiences.

I want to make people wonder and suspend imaginations.

I want to learn about others and myself in the process. I want others to think about the memories and objects that make up who they are. 

I hope for the outcome to be a fully immersive experience, with hardware and projection map that allows the guest to step in the shoes of someone else. Though I will make one or two exhibits, by the end, I hope to have a comprehensive plan for what the full experience could look like. 

Influences and Inspiration.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Momento

  • Lacuna, a fictional company, takes the objects you associate with a person you want to forget and creates a map of that person in your head. This was another reminder that objects are a representation of someone’s essence. In my thesis, I hope to create a map of someone through objects
  • The difference between Eternal Sunshine and Momento also can inform my thesis. While Momento is built on the model that memories are pure information, Eternal Sunshine defines memories as feelings. Emotion is more important than raw data. In my project, I want to bypass the raw data about my someone and focus on what it’s like to feel someone.
  • Eternal Sunshine made me reflect on my memories that I wish to erase. Joel regrets going through a procedure to erase Clemintine. He realizes he would rather keep the pain she caused than pretend Clementine never existed. There are many times when I, as with many of us, feel Joel’s initial impulse— to erase someone— but in the long term, you realize that moment helped you become the best version of yourself. In my thesis, I want to capture the negative memories of someone that they may want to erase. These elicit the strongest feelings and are what best defines someone.

In and of Itself (Mostly the live version)

  • So much here. Derek does some cool things, but his greatest magic trick is the feeling he instills in his audience. He uses objects to explore how people define themself and creates a share experience with those objects (the collaborative book, the notes from loved ones).
  • I want to apply Derek’s magic and create a more active experience centered around individuals holding objects, learning about the memories of someone, then somehow granting the ability for guests to layer their own memories onto these objects to create a composite object

Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience and many other projects by Gallagher & Associates

  • An experience where guests walk through ordinary scenes with ordinary objects that tell a story of a Mississippi creative person. There’s a moment that brings a typewriter to life with a projection map that spills a story of that person’s experience on the desk.
  • I want to build a projection map that communicates someone’s memory/ feelings of memory more abstractly, then I want to add on by implementing a physical response.

Ollivanders Wand Experience at Universal Studios

  • This is one of my favorite experiences that made me fall in love with theme parks and interactive moments. First, there’s the wand fitting ceremony, then you can roam around Diagon Alley casting spells, waving your wand, and watch your magic come to life as objects respond to your spell
  • The playfulness, light-heartedness of this experience captures what I want to create. It’s a moment that suspends your imagination. I want to have a worry-free, fun touch but also add an element of seriousness and discovery.

Objects in a Mirror Appear AR Closer Than They Appear

  • An AR playground of objects with a portal attached to it revealing a memory. The experience explores the relationship between memories and objects. A guest can walk up to an object, hold VR goggles up to it, and this would expose a portal to the associate memory of that object. 
  • I want to continue to explore the concept of how to best visualize a memory and use objects as a portal into memories. Similar to this project, I will use objects and a projection to paint a complete portrait of someone’s essence. 

“S” by Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrahms

  • A book covered in annotated notes in the margins of two individuals talking about the inner story, The Book of Theseus. The conversation in the margins between the two sparks a special relationship. The book includes napkin cut-outs, letters, tools, was a sandbox of notes, clues, and artifacts that were passed between the two. Together they solve the mystery of the story. 
  • Sharing objects, passing notes between margins, and layering your own meaning on top of objects is something I’m fascinated by. The level of detail of the artifacts is incredible. The artifacts are all artificially manufactured but beautiful. I want to encourage a shared memory experience and construct objects that have the same whimsy.

Technology-Mediated Memory: Is Technology Altering Our Memories And Interfering With Well-Being? By Artie Konrad

  • Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how this will tie into my thesis but the academic paper struck me. It explores organic memory vs technology-mediated memory Organic memories are inaccurate, we filter things out, promote biases, while TMM provides rich records of what people did and felt and could disrupt adaptive edits. 
  • I think this project could explore the concept of technology not necessarily recounting the precise memories of someone, rather the feelings associated with memory. My thesis may complement organic memory, rather than disrupt it.

A Museum of Collective Memory and many other projects by Local Projects 

  • I love how this museum is constructed, as a collection of memories, instead of one dominating narrative. Visitors have the chance to record their reflections on 9/11 and write a note of remembrance at the end. Both of these accounts are incorporated into the museum.
  • The shared contribution of memory is something that appeals to me. I want my guest to contribute their memories somehow and that will shape the future of the exhibit.

James Turell’s The Minamidera Project

  • Turell’s cathartic and meditative experiences with light. Using light to step into a painting, foster a feeling. I especially enjoyed his Minamidera Project, an experience that takes you through a pitch-black room and has you sit on a bench looking at nothingness for 20 minutes. It’s quite relaxing to be alone with your thoughts. Over time, your eyes adjust, and things appear in the distance. 
  • I think I’m interested in a thesis that alters perspectives with minimalism? Objects and visuals. It’s how they are combined that creates something special. You also have to be physically there to experience my exhibit. I want my project to be thought-provoking, and also meditative. 

The Cabinet of Curiousness

  • This project is a portion of what I’d like to capture with my project. It includes a piece of antique furniture and objects and sounds within each drawer. Opening each drawer activates a sound or voiceover that tells someone’s story
  • The project has that simple motion trigger with a sound response that I want to incorporate. This comes together to tell someone’s story. I’d like to build on someone’s story by adding a visual, as well as a physical manipulation.

How do you envision realizing this project?

So first, I need to know if this project is within my scope. I need to know if I should take a slice of this concept or retrofit it into something more doable.

I need to decide on the subject of my exhibit. Who will I profile? Can I truly learn about someone on the street and create an exhibit of them? Part of me loves the idea of developing a deep connection with someone new during this process. Another part of me questions my open-ness to meeting new people at this level. Deciding on the subject and spending time with the subject is important. It would require interviewing, sharing stories, constant communication and consulting, and so on. 

I would need to compile all my information on my subject and decide how I will lay out my diorama. What objects do include? What scene will it depict? This involves sourcing materials, manipulating them, and staging them.

I will, of course, need to learn about how to create visuals on Touch Designer and need a projector (I know someone). I think I will need to explore the possibilities of using a Kinect for motion detection (I may know someone). Then finally physical computing and fabrication. This is what I need to explore further. 

TECHNOLOGIES YOU WANT TO EXPLORE IN MORE DEPTH?

I want to explore projection mapping, physical computing, and interactions, as well as motion/objection detection and machine learning. I wanted to explore AR/VR but that feels out of the scope of this project.

TAGS

“Exhibit”, “multi-media”, “projection mapping”, “memory”, “identity”