[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSmvZKU2P58]

This project reflects my own thoughts and emotions regarding the relationships in my life. It basically asks the audience to judge other people based on whatever they may know about them. It brings to mind the idea of dating sites and apps such as Tinder and even the whole process of people ‘liking’ things on Facebook and other social media. One big issue that I address in this project, however, is the feeling of rejection when a person is NOT chosen. I use the sound of a gunshot as well as counting the number of times a person is chosen to emphasize this.

Ideally, I would try to include people whom the audience is connected to personally. Due to the unfeasibility, however, I chose to put images of well-known people and characters so that the audience is at least aware of who they are and what they may represent. I also added in images of schoolmates which may be familiar to some people but complete strangers to others.

The following video documents my process of creating this project:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvFD6guoabA]

The main challenges in building this patch were:

– Getting the photos from the file to appear in MAX

– Ensuring that the photos changed when they needed to change

– Keeping count of how many times each person was chosen

– Syncing the counts from all 3 matrices and updating the coll object accurately

I initially aimed to take photos of the audience to include in the list of images, and also to create a ‘leaderboard’ of the top few chosen people. I came close to solving these issues but in the end did not have enough time and know-how to do so.

However, I feel that the project was nevertheless very successful; it certainly attracted a lot of attention and I could really see people actively making decisions and choosing between the options. Even after they thought they’d made their final decision, some people would glance back and see someone else whom they would prefer. I think that to improve this project, I perhaps could have further emphasized the rejection of the un-chosen people.

‘CHOSEN: A project about friendships’ by Esmond Heng