Prototyping
While all of this researching and reading was happening, I needed to get a leg on realising the project. The entire issue with the process was that I simply could not decide what the realisation would be. My tutors suggested I make prototypes of prospective final outputs so that I could see the prototypes for myself and decide which avenues I wanted to pursue.
I had no experience in physical prototyping, while I already knew the finer points of digital prototypes. Since I wanted my FMP to be a learning experience as well as a creative process, I decided to make physical prototypes of the project.
I had previously used plaster of Paris models for a project in MA UX, and I decided to try to replicate that earlier success. However, this project required a lot more fine art skill than the earlier project, and making a sculpture proved to be a lot more tougher than previously imagined.
This was where a lack of a group was holding me back — a few other teammates might have had the knowledge or skill to engage in a fine arts exhibition, but I could not hope to do with the resources at hand.
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I also toyed with the idea of a chess set being used to showcase how anger permeates, but that idea was unpopular with all of the people I talked to, and I dismissed it out of hand.
I realised a project on anger permeation needed some participation from the victims themselves. To not include their participation for a project of emotional importance was unrealistic and unfair. So I decided to create an artefact, something that would house materialised emotions within it. There were reasons for this: I felt that “materialising” emotions would make them visible, and since anger lived in the physical body, it would be good to have material codesigned products rather than two dimensional graphic images. I also wanted the artefact to act as a catalyst for reflective thinking, something that acted like an altar for the victims of anger. I wanted people to meditate on what anger meant to them, and on instances where they felt angry.
However, conveying the sense of significance was easier said than done. I knew I needed to create a sense of gravitas in the artefact, and I researched into various ways that it could be done, such as staging, lighting, etc. I thought about physics and the literal meaning of gravity, rather than the metaphorical meaning, and that’s when I realised — gravity creates a sense of importance. Tall buildings, huge trees, they all create an impression of importance. After inquiring with friends, I stumbled upon Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia model.
The idea of weighted strings seemed perfect for my model, and I decided to build a prototype to soft test the model.
It looked pretty good, and I decided to proceed with the practical idea to realise the project.
