Week 3 | Re-scope the topic and explore the idea
Updated conceptual direction
My original project direction was to explore the invisible part of the city and bring it to those who are curious about it.
During my exploration this week, I went to two different areas to try to uncover what I thought was important to express. One of them is the community located inside of the old city wall of Shanghai (the residential community I planned to observe had been recently moved out due to demolition, so I had to move to another less scale community), and the other one is the modern CBD in the center of the city.
It was a rainy week, there was fewer people activity. I felt embarrassed and frustrated because I didn’t have as many “words” to say in the Old Town as I thought I would. I only noticed the extension of a lot of living spaces in public areas, where most people put chairs along the sides of the street in order to interact and chat with their neighbors. In smaller neighborhoods with narrower streets, where people are closer and more intimate. I’ve also noticed that the speed of time is different from the street a few blocks away, where time is slower and the actions and interactions of the people around it affect the pace of the whole community. This reminds me of the shooting experience in CBD, a completely different time rhythm. In this situation, I plan to adjust my direction. I still wanted to make some interactive experiences for the city, but my topic was to present time perception.
In reading a science fiction novel, I came across something very relevant to the topic I was thinking about. In the future, there will be technology to adjust time perception, so that companies are able to require employees to work long hours without rest, and then provide time-regulating therapy to help employees recover when they suffer an emotional breakdown. Based on this novel, I want to explore this topic through my design, and through an interactive experience, let people who live in a fast way, relax and aware of themselves, as a kind of resistance against time compression.
Mood Board:
Case Study:
Project name: Plus of the city, an interactive installation that turns pedestrians’ heartbeats into music.
tag: Self-awareness.
Project name: Breath with me
tag: Collective awareness, rhythm
Dream Review V2.0
Everyone is running, you can’t be left behind.
The burst of information flow and high production efficiency in the digital age makes the individual’s time in work and life compressed and accelerated.
As described by Chinese science fiction writer Chen Qiufan in his book Fish of Lijiang, companies manipulate employees’ productivity by the technology of adjusting their perception of time, while offering bogus time-adjusting healing services when employees are on the verge of breaking down.
As a response, the project Recovery aims to create a new space in urban life that modulates the perception of time, giving people breathing at their own pace, aware of urban rhythem and rethink the relationship between the system and the individual.
Located in front of the square of Jing An Park, Shanghai, the art project Recovery is an interactive installation that welcomes one person or multiple people to experience breathing simultaneously. This project underscores the humor of everyday life, inviting us to experience the stage-like quality of a Shanghai street with a new sense of wonder and possibility.
Breathing as a rhythm of life is the internal time regulation mechanism of the human body, and symbolizes the choice of self-control. This interactive project aims to uncover an unseen part of life and bring it back to experience. It shows how our neglected breath can help stressful people in big cities relax and how social support from others could bring a joyful experience and the possibility of reconstruction of collective rhythm.
“I find that it is a very relaxing and meditative place to be and that many people seem to be in good spirits and enjoying themselves when I am there.” One of the visitors said.
Desktop Research, supported by IMA LowRes Family
I rarely have the opportunity to visit interactive public art in Shanghai. In order to better understand the experience of public interactive art under different cultural backgrounds and urban forms, I designed a simple questionnaire. Thank you all for helping me and giving me a perspective on this topic.
In the experiential interactive art, the main feedback of the public interactive art in this survey is to enjoy the space and works with different senses, to get calm and enjoy the present moment, and to enjoy the fun of taking photos.
– Emotional or sensory interactions lead to more return explorations.
Academic Paper Reading review,
In the Journal of Interactive Experience in the digital age, I have read two articles about frameworks of interactive art. (Chapter 2: Human-Computer Interaction, Art and Experience, 2.5 Frameworks for interactive art). The first framework is about Pleasure Framework, and the second one is Engagement Framework.
The reason why I choose to read is that I hope to understand the experience process of public art projects and how to create a better engagement system.
Although my project is not all about pleasure experiences, it is a way to bring joyful memory and connection.
-Pleasure Framework (Costello and Edmonds),
Based on the direction of my project, I’ve categorized these criteria as generic requirements, higher relevance, and lower relevance.
(General)Basic feature :
- Creation – personal expressing power and opportunity. Having the power to create something while interacting with a work.
- My question: How much power I would like to offer to the participator?
- Exploration – Understand the intention and the context in which it occurs.
- My question: How could I deliver the message of my design intention before the interaction?
- Discovery – is the pleasure participants get from making a discovery or working something out.
- My question: How the interaction mechanism and the interactive interface would imply and guide the participator?
-Higher relevance feature:
- Sensation – physical action the work evokes, touch, body movement, hearing, vocalizing, etc.
- My question: What sensation will the participator get?
- Camaraderie – developing a sense of friendship or intimacy with someone.
- My question: How do I design the behavior to create camaraderie?
- Sympathy – sharing emotional or physical feelings with something.
- My question: Joyful and relief, self and collective awareness.
- Subversion – breaking rules or seeing others break them, or twisting the meaning of something.
- My question: What’s the rule I want to break?
In my project, Could I provide an experience of irony and reflection in the midst of a relaxing and pleasurable experience? Should this feature(Captivation?) be considered?
- Captivation（Confusion）- the feeling of mesmerize or spellbound and being controlled Over (Berlin Patriot)
- My question: What type of incentive could I leverage to increase the feeling of spellbound and control over to increase the tension.
-Lower relevance feature:
- Simulation – perceiving a copy or representation of something from real life.
- The personification of objects giving the emotional response.
- Fantasy – perceiving a fantastical creation of the imagination
- How to create a sense of time travel or inner peace?
- Difficulty – intellectual level in work that requires a certain amount of skill to understand the works or content.
- Do I want to design the content to challenge the intelligence of the participator? Or will this lead to lost confidence an awkward feeling in the public space?
- Competition – is the pleasure participants get from trying to achieve a defined goal.
- Danger – feel scared or taking a risk.
How do I balance the emotion between surprise and fear?
The second framework tries to understand the behavioral and psychological characteristics of participants at different stages, it is called Engagement Framework (Zafer Bilda). There are 4 phases: adaptation, learning, anticipation and deeper understanding in the whole journey of artwork engagement.
- Stage 1 Adaption: unintended action mode to deliberate action mode.
- Participators adapt to changes in the environment, learning how to behave and how to set expectations. When participants see new objects and environments to interact with, they first make judgments about what is likely to happen, try to define objects, look for associations and objects that can be changed. Therefore, when designing a first impression, one needs to consider how to improve the symbols that can be guessed while creating a curiosity attraction.
- Stage 2, Learning: in-control mode
- Understand interaction mechanisms, adjust actions and expectations for behavior, and work based on feedback.
- Stage 3, Anticipation:
- Start to predict the interaction. In-control mode.
- Stage 4, Deeper understanding:
- Understanding and generating the relationship with the artworks, judging and evaluating at a higher, conceptual level. From intended/control model to intended/uncertain mode.
When they move from the stage of controlling the behavior to the stage of interpreting the meaning of the work, they develop stronger memory points and emotional identification. When will my work begin to extend people’s thinking about it in what way?
This article, it mentions a very important issue which is “the attraction power vs sustain power”.
In this article, it is pointed out that, works that attract visual and auditory attention are more likely to stand out in public places where distractions are common.
The attributes that encourage sustained engagement are not the same as those that attract.
Sustain power is related to the Deeper understanding phase
A long-term form of engagement is not associated with a strong initial attraction.
Novelty experiences alone can only attract temporary attention, but it is difficult to maintain sustained interaction and bring people back.
How do I avoid the work to be a “one-shot experience”? How do I bring in sustained interactions?
In my research, I found that “emotional or sensory interactions lead to more return explorations.” I am still thinking about what kind of emotional interaction, sensory experience, or conceptual thinking my work will bring to people.
In my case study, differences in the process or outcome of each experience can also increase the appeal of sustainability.
My next step would be to think about what experiences engage passers-by in the first place, what experiences enhance sustained interaction, and what experiences lead to renewed curiosity or emotional/physical connection?
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