For my EROFT Final Project I’m working with Nok Jangkamolkulchai, (full transparency, this is also my final for Experiments in AR as well as for Video Sculpture) I am creating a collective Quarantine Journal that will live in a physical installation. This installation will make use of the Pepper’s Ghost effect which simulates a hologram floating in space with the use of a projector, a pane of glass and some tricky reflections.

(Sidenote: The final version of the project relies on me being able to access some equipment that was left on campus at NYU, so this is just a working prototype)

In my first meditation, I made use of Copper board to trigger a “Stress Management” solution. Now, because of COVID-19, the thought of touching surfaces in public is daunting. Since the only time people will be able to see this piece will be after quarantine is over, I would like to play with that concern. Copper boards would be placed on the sides of this installation and the user will be required to touch them to experience the piece. Touch has been taken for granted, it means more than it used to so this experience embraces that.

When both boards are touched, a random (*more on this later) entry from the Quarantine Journal will appear in the box. Entries are 10 second videos that are looped to the length of audio clips that range from 20-60 seconds. The entry that comes up is the “spirit” that is assigned to them for the day. Entries will show up as either red or blue, and will be right-side-up or upside-down.

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[Guide for Interpreting Spirits]

Blue: Go with what the Spirit Says

Red: Go against what the Spirit Says

Right-Side-Up: Take the words literally

Upside-Down: Look for the figurative meaning

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After having their Spirit assigned and interpreted, the user is then encouraged to think about what it would be like to be that spirit for a day/10 days/a month/3 months/a year. How is that Spirit different from the user? How are they the same? What do they think actually happened to that Spirit?

This period of time is going to be a weird thing to explain to people who aren’t here living through it with us. I want this to be a tool to understand at least a bit of what it was like and to go through it by assigning them a role in it.

For this prototype, I’m running everything in a Max/Jitter patch. As a placeholder for the copper boards being touched, I instead just run things from a single button press on my keyboard. Programming the patch to respond to the copper will be simple once I have access to the equipment. The prototype is made from cardboard, but I would like to have it made out wood for the actual piece.

*For the randomization of the assets, I wanted to play with the number 19, but I was unable to get it working. This is something that I am still exploring and will be working on after I present this in class. For now I am just using the random function within Max, but figuring out my own system is a priority.

(Note: I misunderstood the prompt for Meditation 2, and actually designed an experience more suited for Meditation 3, so for Meditation 3 I just fine-tuned what I did for the previous assignment. This post reflects the most updated experience)

Hiring is tough. Continuing the the world from my last mediation, the hiring manager has decided that they want to remove all bias from hiring decisions. They recently had a Turkish Coffee fortune telling and they loved it so much that they wanted to replicate the experience in the office. While disposing of receipts that were questionably submitted for reimbursement, the idea of using the paper shredder presented itself.

The process:

1. Take a resume and look over it. Based on what you see, think about which section of the resume is the most noteworthy to you (Is it the work experience? Is it the education?) Remember that thought.

2. Run the resume through Photomosh (a photo glitcher) until most of the text is illegible. Print this modified resume

3. On the back of the resume, create columns for each month of the year. Imagine the trajectory of the employee during these months. Keep this as a mental picture or take notes elsewhere.

4. Keeping note of the orientation of the glitched resume (is it facing the person shredding it? is it going in top first?) run it through the shredder but stop it at some point and run the shredder in reverse to keep the shape of the shreds.

   [Notes for Orientation of Shred]

   Facing Person Shredding - The applicant will lean toward working with others

   Facing Away from Person Shredding - The applicant will lean toward working alone

   Top of Paper goes in first - The applicant will dive straight into work

   Bottom of Paper goes in first - The applicant will be cautious when starting the job

5. Lay the glitched, shredded resume over the original resume, where the shred lines reveal the original resume indicates that this is the noteworthy area of the resume. Does it line up with what you thought? If not, does this change your mind? Why or why not?

6. Turn the shredded resume over. Fold the shred line back so that the peaks line up with the columns for the months that were written on the back. The lines formed by the shred indicate the predicted trajectory of the applicant in their first year on the job. Does this line up with what you thought? If not, does this change your mind? Why or why not?
   
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Reflection:

I actually really like this experience. When I first showed it, Allison pointed out that it wasn’t really all that toxic, and the more that I talked to people about it, that seemed to be the general consensus. I think that working in the space to interact with the “reading” and either galvanize or change initial impressions formed on the original resume. I think that the process of glitching the resume is a really engaging step in the process. It literally gets the viewer to look at the resume in a different way, probably in multiple ways since it takes a few passes through PhotoMosh to get something illegible enough to proceed. In the end, there’s space to completely throw out all of the reads made by the Shreddermancy, but in doing that, your own thoughts have been more fully developed.

For this assignment, I’d like to propose it from the perspective of a sort-of dystopian world that I’ve been imagining as a theme for my projects. Imagine a corporation that has suddenly become obsessed with self-help articles that can be found in abundance on social media outlets like Facebook. Articles that make broad claims such as Hugging for 20 Seconds a day can release oxytocin and instead of citing any scientific studies, they link to other blogs or even back to other articles on their own site. Imagine that this corporation decides that having their employees engage in these activities will increase profits (because they found an article that linked happy workers to more efficient workers.). Now imagine that this corporation mandates that these self-care measures be implemented into the work routine, but in the most corporate way possible. Here is an entry from this universe, it’s a tool meant to be used at the work desk called “The Stress Manager”.

Mockup sketch of the “Stress Manager”. There is a computer, keyboard and a mouse. On the monitor is the word “Stress” and on each side of the keyboard, there are copper boards. It is indicated that there would be an Arduino behind the monitor.

In the sketch above, there are two copper boards placed next to a computer keyboard and they are connected to an Arudino behind the monitor. The idea of the “Stress Manager” would come from an article that suggests that taking time to do nothing can help you get more done. In this scenario, the corporation decides that they can spare a minute every hour, but instead of giving a whole minute at once, and risking a break in productivity, they decide that 10 seconds every 10 minutes would be ideal for their bottom line. With “The Stress Manager”, an employee in the middle of work, would have their screen filled with the word “STRESS” with a bright red background. Their keyboard and mouse would also deactivate while the word is on the screen. The only way to remove the word is to place both hands on the copper plates and hold them there as the red fades to white and the word disappears.

The inspiration for the visualization of this piece came from an episode of Radio Lab called “Sex-Ed”. The following snippet explains a woman dealing with pain from cramps.

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MOLLY: In that moment, Sindha became 11 years old again. It was her first period, and the pain was terrible.

SINDHA AGHA: I was laying in bed. My mom couldn't be there. And she was, you know, almost always there but she had to be at work and I was having really bad cramps. So it was my dad and my uncle leaning over me trying to help me, and I was just, like, mortified but I was in too much pain to, like, really worry about it. And my dad turned on Gregorian chants and he burned some incense and he started waving it over my head and he was saying, like, "Just track the smoke with your eyes and just follow it. Follow it. Okay. Imagine you are the smoke and you're just floating." And I was really committing to this. I was like, "Okay, I'm the smoke!" And then he was like, "Okay, close your eyes. Imagine a color. What color you seeing?" I was like, "Red." Obviously, because I was on my period.

MOLLY: Sindha realized in that moment she could actually see the pain. It was a thing that had a shape to it that she could identify.

SINDHA AGHA: And then he's like, "Okay, and now try to change it into a different color with your brain." And I was like, "I guess blue."

MOLLY: Sindha found herself thinking back to that moment, and once again talking to her dad and trying to transform the color of the pain.

SINDHA AGHA: I remember standing on the little staircase that leads up to the plane, and I was, like, gripping onto the bar trying not to fall over and, like, gritting my teeth, just like clenching my jaw. And I was just like, "Okay, the color red. Okay, I see it. Yeah, I see it. All right. Okay, come on. Turn into something else. Pink maybe. Okay. All right, whew!"

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Reflection:

It’s strange how I’ve designed this assignment from a pretty toxic point of view, where the base is an exploitation of self-care techniques. Even knowing all of that and going into the experience with that knowledge, there was still some peace and enjoyment to be found in the experience. I could actually picture myself enjoying this in a workspace, even with the micromanaged time schedule of it. I still think it’s a gross abuse of power, but maybe that’s the point; These corporations could serve give you seconds of peace, and even though you deserve hours of it, you’ll take the seconds because you still enjoy peace. The corporation gets to look like they care and somehow you feel indebted to them.

Link to p5 sketch (only works with “The Stress Manager” attached)