Visit to the Design museum- designer, maker, user
This week was after the two weeks of collaboration and we had to get started with the Culture mile project again. We visited the Design Museum which was holding the Designer maker and user. We saw plenty of prototypes and how products had evolved around the centuries. It gave a dive into the history of how products were made and the cultural value it bought to the present.
Getting back to Culture Mile
We started researching our stories and ideating as to how we could make them into a transmedia story. We wanted to include physical aspects to it. We broke the stories down into important events and then conceptualized how to tell the story.
We decided to make different artifacts that posed as diegetic prototypes and would give us an insight into a possible historical story. These artifacts purposely leave narrative spaces for the viewer's imagination to fill in.
Diegetic prototypes
A key term used by David A Kirby and used extensively by Julian Bleeker in his essay, ‘Design Fiction’. Diegetic prototypes are objects from a different world, but they are fully functioning in that world. These artifacts are created to make us better understand the possible world through materials, usage, and conversations.
Making — Telephone
We had already decided to make missing posters and a fake newspaper for a part in the young maiden’s story. We decided to make a telephone which would be installed in a lane leading to the Smithfield Rotunda. This phone would ring when a person is passing by making them curious to answer the phone. When a person would answer, he would hear gossips about a possible war against the monarchy (Peasant’s Revolt, 1381).
Listen to it here —
I decided to make an old candlestick phone to show this idea. I made some parts of wood, and some of card sheet.
Making — Pig and the Fire
Part of the pigs' story included him running away from the great fire of London till the golden boy of Pye corner, where the fire eventually died down. For this, we thought of making a ‘Rectoscope’. I made this out of cardboard by first, photoshopping a pig on the streets of London, and on the other side; fire.
We planned to put this on the street from the water fountain to the golden boy.
All these artifacts needed a map to be followed. So, Lili and Hannah had n idea of making a popup map containing each of the three stories and their locations. Our idea was that a person can experience any part of any story and not necessarily follow it according to the time period hierarchy. This map would help them understand the various locations of the concept.
Feedback
All the cohorts appreciated the map and thought that it really got the artifacts gelled together. Sarah mentioned that it might be a little immoral to pose fabricated stories as facts, but we assured that was not the case. A lot of people thought it was clever to have some facts and some fiction so that people are curious to know which one is a fact. Students also appreciated that as the stories were so site-specific, people would be more interested in knowing the history.
The critique we got that we had not presented the artifacts properly, and it took time for people to understand the whole story.
Takeaways
We should have designed a way for students in the class to have the experience which a person would have, walking through Smithfield. We should have also thought of a way to present clearly the three stories and how they overlap.
References
Kirby, D., 2010. The future is now: Diegetic prototypes and the role of popular films in generating real-world technological development. Social Studies of Science, 40(1), pp.41–70.
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