At first, we decided to create our project based around the poverty faced by the elderly in Singapore, and we wanted to create a dark object to show the alienation they experienced from society. We first approached this project by trying to think of objects that people associated with the elderly.

Here are some of our initial sketches:

 

But we quickly came to a realisation that we were unable to truly showcase the emotion we wanted through the objects we picked. After a consultation we realised this was because our project was object-centric.What we really needed to do was to focus on curating an interaction that would create the emotion we wanted to convey.

We decided to focus on the emotion of isolation amongst the elderly, and to remove the context of poverty as that would very easily cause our object to become a provocative one rather than a dark one.

In order to facilitate the emotion of isolation, we had a couple of ideas:

 

First, we wanted to have a participant under the light, which would go off when people walked past, to show the alienation that the elderly faced. We realised though, that the passers-by would intuitively walk towards the person they are meant to ignore, which would defeat the point of our interaction.

Then, we thought of curating a dinner alone.

There were a couple of ideas where we thought we could have two experiences: one of a dinner alone, and one that was a very social situation. The contrast between the two experiences could further heighten the isolation that the participant eating alone felt. However, this interaction does not make use of Arduino, and also lacks a clear link to the elderly.

We also thought of doing a more Ichi-ran style dining experience where the participant ate their dinner alone in a cubicle and a projection of a happy family would play to increase the sense of loneliness. However, we felt that this was still too formal.

To really draw the link to family and the elderly, we then thought of creating a family dinner in which the participant eats alone. When they lift the spoon up, the tilt sensor triggers a recording that plays a phone call between the parent and child. The parent asks if the child is coming back for dinner, and the child will reply with various excuses not to.

After consulting Serena and Lei, they suggested that we could simplify our interaction to just having one bowl. We also thought that we could include another role of the observer, who plays the ‘child’ in the case. So there are two emotions in play: the isolation of the elderly and the guilt from the child.

Here is our final set-up and mechanics for the project that we used for the bodystorming process. 

1. How does your audience experience your project?

Gwen: There are two roles for our project. First, the observer will come in and sit down at the table. There is an empty bowl, and utensils. The space is divided into two with a piece of acrylic that is a one-way mirror. The observer will be able to see the participant on the other side of the table, but the participant will see their own reflection.

Charm: The participant comes in after the observer, and sits down at the table on the other side. There are two bowls, one with rice in it and utensils, and another empty bowl, with utensils on the side. There is a speaker inside the bowl with rice, and the spoon covers a photoresistor that will trigger the start of the whole interaction.

2. Is it for a single person to engage with your project or for multiple participants concurrently?

Gwen: Two people will experience the project concurrently. The first person plays the role of the participant, and is unaware of the other person, the observer, sitting at the other end.

Charm: The observer, on the other end of the table, watches the participant as they eat. In the context of this project, the participant reflects the role of a parent, while the observer plays the role of their child.

3. What is the interaction or situation you are creating for your audience?

Gwen: When the participant picks up the spoon to start eating the rice, the change in the amount of light picked up by the photoresistor will be registered by the Arduino. Through Processing, the speaker will play a track. The track is a series of phone calls. The first person in the conversation has an older voice, and will ask: “Are you coming home for dinner?”. The other person in the conversation will reply with excuses, such as “No, I have to stay in school for a project.”

Charm: The conversation is one between an elderly parent and child. The parent will ask the same question a few times, and the child will give different excuses each time. The excuses reflect the child at different stages of their life, where commitments outside of home such as school, work or other relationships take priority over spending time at home with their parents. The observer will also be able to hear this conversation going on from their end.

4. What is the intention of this interaction?

Gwen: Our project is a “Dark Object” that facilitates emotions of isolation within the elderly community. The topic that we chose is specifically the isolation faced by the elderly community that are neglected by their family members who are unable to spend time with them due to other priorities/commitments. We also want to highlight that this isolation is prolonged, as the elderly are neglected throughout different phases of their child’s life.

Charm: While our topic mainly highlights the isolation faced by the elderly community, we also wanted the participants to acknowledge the roles they play in this very common scenario. Therefore there are two distinct roles in this interaction which allow each participant to feel the two distinct emotions of ISOLATION and GUILT.