This video project tries to incorporate the DIWO concept, which I felt that we had done it in our special way. The project was initially very hard to brainstorm as we thought deeply about the technical aspects of making the video look nice with the visuals. As we discussed further, we realized that that may lead us to miss the point. We shifted our focus to a clearer concept and made the video simple to digest for the audience. That said, we did not take shortcuts and coordinated thoroughly to make a ‘good video’.
Guess what. There were a few screw ups here and there. Instead of being angry at our imperfect video, we laughed instead as we really enjoyed the process and watching others panic on video (obviously) // slightly schadenfreude(ic) . Lets dive into the concept.
We are a group of university students at immensely different settings, with similar lighting conditions to represent morning/afternoon timings that we share. Although we are fair apart, we feel easily connected through the 4 tiny split screens on our mobile phones. Our physical distance was minimized by technology. The video shows the transitions and varieties of things we do in our individual settings. We started and ended off our ‘day’ by tapping in our matriculation card to show the consistency of our timings.
First activity that happened was Li Xuan brushing teeth. Daryl, Han yun and I were onlookers, being ‘updated’ on what Li Xuan was doing at that point of time. She passed up her tooth brush, which transformed into a mobile phone for me to place calls.
The rest became the onlookers as I placed my calls. Shortly after, I passed my phone to the left which turned into a pair of scissors for Han yun. By this point, you’d realized a bit of cheesy connection we had tried to make.
For some reason (not for us to judge), Han yun chose to cut her hair with a pair of scissors (which actually happened) and as you watch the video you can tell by her genuinely surprised look. Immediately regretting her decision, she passes on the pair of scissors to Daryl, who transforms it into a pen to draw on his sketchbook.
After drawing on his sketchbook, it was lunchtime and we managed to share a virtual – realistic meal together by having Daryl hand out our lunch to us (eating the same food) and stopping whatever we were doing.
After the meal, we continued our day by connecting our lives together with music, having it played as if we were together and sharing the moment together. We did different things, such as dancing, studying, having a drink and using a laptop. This concluded our journey of our daily lives, which ended off in a ‘unison’.
WALA. Here is the vid:
Overall, I felt that I really enjoyed the process and outcome. The creative freedom given to us made us explore more and I’m glad that we did not just go ahead with some lame idea that we were not passionate about. The stupid grins on our face was mostly from trying to remember our positions on the master screen and where to pass the objects to. There was much coordination and positioning but we did not feel obliged or burnt out from our failures. After a few tries, we managed to come out with the final piece! The wifi was really bad and kept cutting us out of the chat and resetting our positions, so those were some obstacles we faced.
Overall Reflection
I felt that micro-project 3 provided the most creative control. We were not exactly limited by theme or even space, little to no guidance was given meaning to say we could definitely explore more options than normal. The brief was rather hands-free, and other than the duration of the video as a creative control we pretty much had our own space to brainstorm.
For micro project 2, we had to limit our conditioning options as we didn’t want to inflict unnecessary pain and we had trouble in the initial stages to attain our desired number of audience. We could not control the number of participants, nor automatically garner the response we wanted online (thus improvising on posting a Instagram Picture to increase traffic to the Insta Live).
For micro project 1, we were limited in terms of space and posting on a social platform exposed to friends and strangers alike kind of limited and pressured us into taking ‘decent’ photos that were acceptable on the social media site.
Micro project 2 had the most unpredictable outcome in my opinion. Firstly, we have to factor in the traffic that we could do little to control. Secondly, for participants, they weren’t exactly sure that we were doing a project and did not understand the intended purpose. Although we did successfully manage to retrieve the schadenfreude experience from the participants, it was a hard project to control and much improvisation was made.
I felt that if we consider BOTH Open Source concept AND DIWO(do-it-with-others) concept, micro project 1 would win hands down. As you can tell, micro project 1 is technically still on-going. Anyone can edit according to the hashtag and add on their own interpretations onto the hashtag page. Micro project 2 and 3 were rather short lived due to either needing a live audience or limited participants to 4 people(in our case).
We were tasked to produce a 3rd angle projection of a select household object, an isometric drawing of the object and also a 2-pt perspective drawing of the object. I choose a lint roller for the assignment as it was different from the usual household objects that can be easily found, and although it seems like a very simple object, I’ve come to find that it was intricate in design. I took awhile to resize the images into photoshop and editing them from there, but I was happy with the work I produced. I have learnt to see products in a more sophisticated manner and now have a deeper understanding on how products are designed.
