Week 6 has thankfully seen us take a solid step forward in the development of our project. On Monday, our group got San as a fourth member, as he wasn’t yet in a group. The timing of this was a gift because neither Antonia nor Jackson could make it to this class. So while initially, I was facing the prospect of not finding a solid idea to later in the week (when our group would be all together again), I instead got another group member to discuss ideas with, who importantly had a fresh perspective.
I spoke to San about our last class, and how Hannah had described the project as making something for the internet from something that is already fragmented (e.g. a diary). More so, it will be a project that deepens and diversifies the perspective on a theme, emotion or sentiment- not a project with a linear narrative.
San and I quickly came up with a vox-pop based idea, with small interview fragments that focus on one question. This is the pitch we wrote to get feedback from other groups:
Our team intends to explore relationships between multiple standalone answers of a simple yet open question; what does travel mean to you? It is a question that is open enough to offer unique and engaging answers, even to those who have not necessarily traveled overseas. Through listening to our participants’ answers we will transcribe, tag and categorise them based on common themes and shared experiences. Using this small sample we can begin to visualise how these stories parallel or contrast, and with more data, we could explore the frequency of certain experiences, for example. To our viewers we intend to present each fragment as an audio interview paired with any pieces of media they captured while on their travels (photos, videos, social media posts etc.). As a common theme comes up in their answer viewers will have the option to view another fragment that shares that theme. Allowing them the agency to explore the themes or elements that they find most intriguing — this both introduces interactivity and non-linearity in a meaningful way in the piece.
On Thursday, when our whole group was together for the first time, our idea evolved to what it is now. Using the same aforementioned form of an audio interview paired with a still image, tagging the interviews with themes, and allowing the user to explore themes in a non-linear, interactive way, we changed the question to “What was the worst thing that has happened to you while travelling” (or along those lines). We felt that this would provide a broader range of responses.
Our project came into shape the most after Hannah spoke to us about Korsakow. It was difficult for me to imagine much beyond the content of our project before this (i.e. I had no idea what it would look like). It seems like Korsakow is a step in the right direction in terms of the interdisciplinary approach (of Engineering and Art- spoke about in this article), in which we must “merge art and science, storytelling and software” to create engaging, technologically-enabled experiences that invoke human culture.
I must admit, I didn’t love the few Korsakow projects I experienced. Talk With Your Hands Like an Ellis Island Mutt contained interesting insights about migration and national identity, but the lack of context confused me and I wasn’t drawn into the experience. While The Whole Picture was more enjoyable, I still felt a lack of connection with the project.
Of course, our project is quite similar to Are You Happy and Cowbird. Different in the fact that in Cowbird you are explicitly searching for a theme (rather than navigating through themes without knowing) and in that there are no tags or themes in Are You Happy. However, like in Are You Happy there is a pre-determined, uniform prompt that people will respond to, ultimately “revealing particularity… but also [gathering] certain universal response”, as discussed in “We’re Happy and We Know it”.
I am interested to see how we will go using Korsakow. I am still somewhat confused with how it all works, but looking forward to learning more and ultimately getting a grasp of new software.