teamthr33

[teamthr33]

Week 9

I wasn't able to make it to the week 9 expo so instead i thought i do my expo review of the week 11 expo for abandoned materials.I felt the expo had a great cohesive floor between the different stools it was interesting to see how each group engaged with topic of abandoned materials in their own unique and authentic way.

My favorite groups were as follows 

“Hit or Miss”

I felt this groups ideas were very concise and effective. Each person had to take a piece of rubbish from the pile and throw it into the correct bin. though this expos idea was simple it was effective as it aimed to get people to engage and understand the process of recycling through challenging our perspective on this process, taking it from a daily chore and turning it  into a fun game. I felt this expo really hit its mark creating awareness of the contemporary socio political issues of sustainability.

Another group I really enjoyed was the “clever team name ” this expo contained a chronology of games we all grew up playing. Such as a playstation 1 an atari and various board games create for young kids/teens. I felt an overwhelming sense of nostalgia with this expo also made me reflect on  the detrimental nature of consumer culture. How we can sit down and gain the same sense of enjoyment and satisfaction with old board games and a playstation 1, though we are told that these technologies are now defunct and to be tossed away to create space for the newest thing . 

tom

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Prototype & production plan

 There was talk of rethinking our idea. the space where using is quite big and don't know if it will be appropriate of available and could be a challenge to black out also we feel the idea was going to be very arduous and costly. The decision was made to go to the less audacious idea of karens. Which is based on a fear factor idea using boxes to explore different tactile experiments to evoke different reactions and feelings.

Tom

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Offerings & facilitation roles

Conceptual sketch of floor plan for phobia room.

The idea is to create a safe space where people can explore and face their phobias in order to create a better understanding and awareness of the phobias. This will be a space where people will walk through and face a different phobia as the move through the rooms.Each room will be curated by a group member creating a Visceral experience exploring aspects of a specific phobia. The entrance into the expo and into the first room will be a claustrophobic kiddy tunnel which people will have to crawl through in the dark . the first room will be  uncanny valley where Duncan was thinking of using manikin heads and a projection. After this you will enter the third room. An asmr room where people can explore misophonia through headphones speakers. The fourth and final room will contain a series of boxes in each will be a different tactile experience.

This way each member can undergo individual research in their selected phobia to create their own room as part of a combined space,.

Tom

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Organisational models

After exploring different organizational models via our group chat we decided on a holacracy group structure we felt this embodied a more fair democaratic structure to undergo the group project. There was mention of  a cult structure  though this seems to be a very  hierarchical structure and we didn't like the idea of a single person having autocratic power of decision making. This could cause a more fractious group relationship  , also this could potentially lead to one person carrying the weight of the rest of the group. where as the holacracy  seems to retain the agency of each individual member within their area of the project. In terms of practicality , a more fair manner of sharing the workload also a structure where everyone is valued equally in terms of the creative process giving a chance for each members input to be significant if they choose it to be.

Research as follows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJxfJGo-vkI

https://creately.com/blog/diagrams/types-of-organizational-charts/

tom

[teamthr33]

Expo of Abandoned Materials

One groups offering to the expo that I thoroughly enjoyed was memory lane. It was easy to get through and made me feel comfortable as it triggered happy memories from my childhood. I thought by having the expo a bit more spread out as this one was it allowed each offering a time to shine, whereas at the other expos it was more cramped making it unclear when one offering started and when it finished. 

Erika 

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Uncomforted Zone Expo recap

When i got some free time i was able to look around at the other expos and see what they were doing. Over all i felt the uncomfortable tension around in the air but all light hearted. 

Particular ones that i liked...

My favourite one was probably the married at first sight expo. it was all light hearted and over all uncomfortably funny to watch - i couldn't image participating ! it serviced the goal that was set for our expo and very well executed. it was well organised and decorated wonderfully. really enjoyed watching randoms get together and get married. Over all a really good idea from that group.

Another stall that i really liked was the lollie shop - this was where we were asked to oder from a menu of lollies but we were not able to say the words nor talk. It was again funny, challenging and more importantly uncomfortable ! i thought this was a simple expo that was executed well and well thought out.

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Reflection on our expo - immaterial Labours

Before going into our expo I was nervous to see how it would turn out when setting up. At the end of the day i was glad we changed our mind half way through to making it a smaller event so that we were able to focus more on a space and make it the best as possible, 

It didn’t take too long to set everything up as it was a smaller space and most of the things that needed to be set up would be the day of in the morning. 

once everything was set up we were ready to have people around. 

We decided that we only needed 1-2 people supervising at a time. one inside and one outside as we didn’t want it to be to cluttered.

Over all after our expo we got some pretty good comments back from our expo. It did exactly what our expo explained ‘uncomforted zone’ it was definitely uncomfortable and also there were a lot people mentioning that they discovered new phobias they didn’t even know they had.

At the end of the day i thought it was a success, We aimed to create an expo based on different phobias and make the user uncomfortable when experiencing our expo.

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Reflecting on impossible things expo

Reflecting on impossible things expo week 9.

Before going into this expo I was quite excited because I didn't know what to expect since there are so many ways you could go about the topic.

I felt there were a few groups that stood out from the rest one being the first one which explores the impossible thing of time travel where they targeted people who are born in the late 1900s and early 2000s. They created a scene from childhood by showing TV shows that were well known on nickelodeon and Disney when that age group would have been in between 7-12. Also, a nice touch was they had kids party food. I thought this was smart since that was the majority of the people going through the expo would be born.

When looking back at the overall experience I thought something that didn't work well was the flow of the expo where I could kinda just walk anywhere making a bit messy. This is something we should consider for ours next week.

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For the expo the contribution our group is going to give to serve with the help of another group are warning signs for all the group and their specific things they need to know before entering. We thought by using an already known warning sign this would allow individuals to easier sight it before entering.

-Erika

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Things to take note for Expo

After experiencing the first expo i think it is really important to reflect on what they did well and what didn’t work. This will help us hopefully do the best to our abilities when it comes to our expo.

Things to take into consideration for our expo: - be friendly with the people, encourage them to come into the room.

- since we are in a room that is sort of hidden away, it will be good to have someone at the door to let people who are passing by know that there in an expo there to try out. 

- timing : making sure that the expo is not to crowed, that there is a timer on how long the group people are in the room so that we can get groups in and out safely and efficiently

- have a waiting room out for the people who are watching.  - make sure you are communicating to the people, let them know how your expo runs so that there is not confusion or miscommunication 

- have at least 2 people in the room supervising the people going through the expo this makes sure the audio and things don’t cut off or nothing goes wrong.

- clean up as you go, this saves you a lot of time at the end when we have to pack up

-Have Fun!

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Week 9 Expo experience

For the week 9 expo ‘Persectivelle ‘ they had explored ‘impossible things’

I really enjoyed going through the expo and seeing the different thing that the other students had made. 

I especially enjoyed a group that did a challenge where we were to make a bowl of cereal, easy right? but to that you were also put in a dark room and you were attached to a VR set that showed you the room but upside down - as if you were watching yourself. They made a simple mundane task impossible and i had lots of fun doing it. 

I also really enjoyed a group that created a globe where we were able to add things to it such as trees or buildings or people etc but there was a consequence to everything you did. For example if you were to add a school of fish you had add 3 more sea creatures etc. It made you think about the balance of whats on earth and how it is impossible to get that perfect balance. 

It was good to have a see of what the expo may look like and how it may run. I will definitely take into consideration the things that i thought worked well in the expo and what I thought didn’t work well.

(photo below) This part of the expo was a hoarders hallway

(photo below) is of Erika trying out one of the stalls where she was blindfolded and listened to music as she painted the emotions that she was listening to.

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Room Layout

This is the layout we have come up with in the room that we were given. 

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Eye rig test for the uncanny valley expo

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Uncanny Valley

As my own personal phobia topic to explore within the group, I have undertaken research into the uncanny valley - what it is, why we fear it, and how to achieve it. It’s one of those phobias in which we all seem to instinctively have, yet don’t inherently know why we’re repulsed by it.

What is the Uncanny Valley?:

In it’s truest sense the uncanny valley is a stage in the gradient from stylization towards realism. As a character goes from cartoony towards a more realistic rendition of a person. Around the point that a character is almost at it’s highest fidelity, but not quite, we reach the uncanny valley, where the character looks real, but something’s just not quite right. 

Why do we find this uncomfortable?

Humans are social creatures, and our need to empathize and read another's thoughts and intentions are of utmost importance. So when features and realness of a person is missing, we find it harder to read them, thus causing a response of repulsion, as in a survival setting, a person hard to read could be a threat. This is especially true for the eyes, humans have an outstanding ability to sense when someone’s looking at them or making eye-contact, as well telling what their emotions are; as they say, eyes are the window to the soul. So when we take away from the fidelity of the eyes, one finds it immediately unsettling as we can immediately tell something is not right.

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Basic survival instincts

An important precedent to achieving convincing phobias in our expo is to acknowledge hard-wired functions in our brain driving them. When speaking of phobias one usually associates irrational thoughts, but this is far from the truth. In actual fact, phobias can most often be found to stem from our most primal survival instincts, merely manifesting as often inconsequential things such as a fear of slimy objects. These seemingly unrelated fears are often the brain responding to similar primal instincts needed for survival, this can range from the apparently obvious, such as fear of snakes (So that we don’t get bitten and die) to fear of slimy objects, which could stem from our repulsion to sights of disease, in order to avoid getting sick. 

Tracing our phobias under the guise of them relating to real-world threats they could be misconstrued as will help us to better understand and hone our expo of phobias. 

http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/Thoc/HumanInstincts.html

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Phobias Relating to Box content

Box 1 and 2 - ASMR or better known as Misophonia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia

Select sound sensitivity syndrome, sound-rage. People who are sensitive to certain sounds sometimes cope by blocking them out. Misophonia, literally "hatred of sound", was proposed in 2000 as a condition in which negative emotions, thoughts, and physical reactions are triggered by specific sounds.

This may include - chewing, eating, slime etc etc...

Box 3 and 4 - Phobia of uncomfortable textures 

The feeling of a surface that makes you feel uncomfortable, this is usually related to trypophobia

Box 5 - Fear of the unknown or Xenophobia https://www.fearof.net/fear-of-the-unknown-phobia-xenophobia/

Xenophobia is derived from the Greek word ‘Xenos’ meaning “foreigner or stranger” and Phobos which means ‘morbid fear’.Xenophobia is the irrational sensation of fear experienced about a person or a group of persons as well as situations that are perceived as strange or foreign. It is the fear of anything that is beyond one’s comfort zone.

TV screen - Uncanny Valley Anthropomorphobia

https://www.nextnature.net/themes/anthropomorphobia/

Forcing more on the uncanny valley

Anthropomorphobia is the fear of recognizing human characteristics in non-human objects. The term is a hybrid of two Greek-derived words: ‘anthropomorphic’ means ‘of human form’ and ‘phobia’ means ‘fear’. Its symptoms are irrational panic attacks, disdain, revulsion, and confusion over things that change what it means to be human: plastic surgery, robots, and intelligent animals. Will anthropomorphobia eventually become public disease number one?

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Room Set up

Layout Ideas

It was a pretty easy task to figure out what our set out would be for our expo considering our room size and amount of content. We were sketching out a couple ideas but only some of them worked. 

Layout 1 (left)-  We were thinking to do more of a zigzag layout where there were tables on either side of the room, though this would work we soon realised that there would be minimal space on each side for the person to walk through and this could be a health and safely hazard 

Layout 2 (right) - We would have one table on the side near the window. We soon realised again that we would be limited to the space to put the boxes on the table as it might not be long enough, we also ended up with a weird empty space in the middle that was out to really no use.

Final Layout decision (Layout 3)

This is the sort of layout we are wanting to do for our room, We were given a small room so there was not much space we can work with, but this adds to the whole claustrophobia feel. we will have the tables in an L shape with the devices on the corner and the rest of the boxes on the tables - this will be a lot easily accessible for the person to participate.

In the back we will black sheets where one or two people will be able to stick their head into and there will be a TV playing creepy music and playing a video - this relating to uncanny valley

Having the middle free to walk will be good to get around and for health and safety it would be a lot easier to get in and out. 

As for the decorations around the room we were not thinking of doing much, we were just wanting to black out the room - not completely but make it dark. This adds to the mysterious feel and adds to when the person is to put their hand in the boxes, make sure they are definitely not able to see anything