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Show a Thing was a really good experience for me. It was interesting to get multiple different perspectives on my project and the way it could pan out, and the resources/ideas presented to me were awesome. I steered the conversation with most of the guests towards the digital tool aspect of my proposal, some of the ideas or resources presented to me were:

• https://www.blasttheory.co.uk/projects/ivy4evr/
• https://theaterofwar.com/about
• Streaming a live Theatre of the Oppressed workshop in VR using tools available at NYU Shanghai
• Streaming Forum Theatre exercises to Twitch using trained actors who take suggestion from the chat
• Using Zoom as a facilitation tool to do this digitally

And several others. At the moment I’m trying to process all of this information and how it could affect the development of my project, and finishing up the first version of the workshop I’m going to run tomorrow (April 10) at Utah State University.

• https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1w7vzgVX9byusTtyzThG5j4i37EKW1-z1LAf5hiUzKSE/edit#slide=id.g2146677c621_0_53 (This is the completed version of the workshop. I edited it to include a section on Image Theatre in case I’m short on time, where my prototype only focused on Forum Theatre. I wrote scenes/scenarios for each, and included a bibliography.

From here I plan to edit the workshop based on my findings there, and hopefully adapt it to a semi-digital format to attempt in New York sometime between April 18-25th.

(4.6)I had a meeting with my group and a meeting with my mentor in one night. In the group meeting, Sarah Hakani encouraged me to do what I want to do instead of considering everyone’s feedback.

The chat I had with my mentor Max was just great! He steered the project direction back to my original feeling, which I’m excited to continue!

As it was the first time we met, I shared my previous works and the current prototype. Regarding the pen plotter prototype I was making, he offered some meaningful suggestions and keenly pointed out potential issues with it. Ideas included creating images as a time-series stack, which emphasized cooperation, and offering users credits to attract participants. Having too many interaction steps to show the git flow was one possible issue that needed attention.

I really appreciate the following discussion because Max shared the feeling with me. He encouraged me to continue with my personal feelings. To address the issue of feelings being too abstract, he suggested that I could list emotions to express feelings. This idea opened up my mind! So this was like an “implement” for conveying the feeling. It is difficult to express the exact same feelings, but we can find derivatives or the context that generates sensations! Another idea he gave me was that I could even create a video of a drama that happened in GitHub issues without using high-tech. Both of these ideas liberated my thinking about ideas and forms. Compared to them, the prototype I was making was more like a “downgrade” instead of an “implement”!

So the tasks I can do now are listing emotions and finding stories. I feel like new ideas will come to me soon as new inspirations!

Friday, April 7

(1-hour session)

I’m so grateful to have David’s expertise and willingness to support our projects. David and I discussed the technical options for the specific sensory responses. David also introduced me to a fellow ITP student who was working on the floor with physical computing/haptics to replicate the feeling of thermal reaction in their project, which is a component of the vest I am looking to explore.

David was one of my participants for Show A Thing, so we used the first part of our meeting to connect on any hangover feedback from our session, which was helpful to frame up the feasibility and overall thoughts on the project from the technical aspect.

Given the number of senses I’m looking to replicate within the vest, we created a prioritized list for technical production:

1. heartbeat haptics on a breadboard
2. stomach pulse/flutter haptics on a breadboard
3. mock up the placement of where in the vest/reaction in the vest the pulses need to react to make a realistic reaction
4. create pockets in the vest to sew in these two haptic sensors

I am working toward these steps for a proof of concept by end of the spring semester and will create a wired prototype rather than a networked one based on our discussion.

From there, I will work on the thermal and constriction reactions. Focusing summer on lining up the audio with the reactions using the p5 Sound Library.

Additionally, David gave me some additional folks to set up a meeting time with:

Kari Love, ITP faculty

Daniel Johnston, Wearables Resident

Monday, April 3

Nun, Dora, Ai, and I were able to meet on Monday, 4/3 ahead of Show A Thing.

I was grateful to have the time to walk through ideas and bounce our approaches for the big day off of each other. It was helpful to have time to practice and actualize things with a new audience.

Thank you ladies, as always!

April 7, 2023

(30-minute session)

I was so excited to be paired with Cy X. I find their work so interesting and am a fan of their approach to exploring embodiment and somatic responses. Our call was mainly introductory, but we established the areas of focus where they could be of support (which I am super grateful for!)

I will be working with Cy on the following areas:

Conversation/Interview Protocol

Somatic Experience

Trauma-informed approach

Before/During/After Care to ensure the experience is managed carefully

I’m looking forward to our next session!

March 31, 2023

(1-hour session)

In this session, Sarah and I really narrowed in on the plan of attack for Show A Thing and what would be most impactful for receiving feedback and the type of feedback that I was looking for.

Here is the Miro board that guided the conversation and corresponding notes!

March 30, 2023

(30-minute session)

Since the proposal process, Sarah has brought up Marianne Petit’s work in relation to my thesis project and her specialty in Narrative Medicine. I was so happy to get time with Marianne to introduce myself and discuss her work.

Marianne was so, so lovely and helpful, with a wealth of knowledge and resources. The one that really stood out to me was the work of Resmaa Menakem, whose embodiment and somatic practice focuses on racialized trauma. Specifically, her work My Grandmother’s Hands.  I look forward to diving further into her practice through this project. I am currently reading The Body Keeps the Score, which Marianne and I also had a brief discussion about in our session.

https://www.resmaa.com/merch

March 22, 2023

(30-minute session)

Before kicking off our second electives, I wanted to meet with Carrie to discuss the possibility of tying in our assignments from Live! to support my thesis production. While I’ve ultimately decided not to incorporate visual elements in my installation, it was very helpful to chat with Carrie about the resources available on The Floor that I wasn’t as familiar with, specifically the Black Box/Media area on the third floor. As this project continues to build, I’d love to explore it more in the summer session.

March 28, 2023

(30-minute session)

After our “breakthrough session” from the previous week (yay!), I shared my draft of the work-in-progress slides, and we continued to narrow in on scope, knowing we had Show A Thing on the horizon in the next week and our larger peer session. Some of the questions/topics we tackled were:

• narrowed in on my “verb” for the project: “exploring”
• leading toward a critical lens: an awareness that experiences might reside in your body that carries trauma
• discussed the necessity of the IRB process and if that was something I needed to: no, understanding consent in the process
• User testing for Show A Thing: physical/manual prompts voiced over a story to simulate the experience

We also discussed my decision to cut out the visual aspects and zero in on the haptics with the audio.

My next steps were to meet with Marianne Petit and prepare my user testing for Show A Thing sessions!

March 20th, 2023

(45-minute session)

For this session, Sarah and I discussed the critical lenses that I was struggling to zero in on when working through the user journey. Some of the ideas I circled around were a critique of the pain scale or a focus on the storytelling of invisible illness. I was admittedly a bit all over the place in trying to find an impactful message to come from my project (See linked Miro Board). So, Sarah pulled me back and asked me to share what I was trying to describe in my initial idea in the simplest form possible.

After further conversation, we came to an ah-ha moment around the storytelling of mind/body connection and the goal I hoped to achieve in my initial thought process by leveraging the haptic vest and using the vest to simulate internal reactions to memories. We came to the next steps of thinking of the haptic reactions as a “score” to the story, similar to a soundtrack to a movie.  In addition, Sarah asked me to narrow down the “verb” of what my project will do. With a clearer vision out of this session, we also had some folks in mind to connect with within the ITP community and potential folks for mentorship. We also began considering and looking into their work. It was a breakthrough meeting!