Play Mobile has been all about discovering and breaking through design related and personal boundaries. Social interaction has been the main topic of the module, in particular social interaction in and around the MDA building. During my research I developed several prototypes which tried to instigate and explore the social cohesion inside the school.
First I developed a concept in which people are connected through plants: their personal plant acts as an interface for social interaction with other people. I then narrowed my designs down to the specific scope of the MDA.
Through several interviews with people from various disciplines I found out a lot about the differences between the educations, and perhaps more importantly discovered where the educations have common ground. For instance, I learned that all the students at the MDA learn about Marcel Duchamp and his ‘Fountain’ artwork at some point in their education. The contradiction in this work, posing the mundane as a form of art, interests me on a personal level. With this in mind I developed a readymade installation shaped like a toilet and placed it inside the cantina. The toiletbowl contained a webcam which recorded the reactions of passing onlookers. To add an incentive for interaction and to stoke up a discours I wrote the text ‘DIT IS KUNST’ (this is art) on the toilet cistern, accompanied by ‘YOU OUTPUT MIJN INPUT (your output, my input) in the toiletbowl. I then asked them through a written message on the toiletseat to share their views on social interactions and creativity in relation to the MDA building. You can see some of the responses here.
From observing the video material I found out that what people think the MDA lacks is the expessive media through which the different educations can show their unique creative talents. Since I was designing something to stimulate interaction between the people of my target group I could only develop a feasible solution by involving the people I was designing for in the development process. I made 30 A3 posters with the text DESIGN YOUR ACADEMY and handed them out to people at the MDA and gave them an explanation of the project. I then asked them to attach the poster to a surface inside the school, anywhere they feeled fit. From the reactions I learned that a lot of people actually liked to have a big chalk board or medium for writing messages on. This inspired me to make build a big 2,5m x 2m chalkboard which I placed inside the MDA hallway.
I also figured that in a project that is focussed on social interaction, the social interaction should be start from the instigators themselves. This is why prepared a puzzle which depicted my classmates, teachers and me outside of the MDA building cooking pancakes, talking and having fun. After the presentation we all went outside and actually ate pancakes. I had taken with me a small cooking stove, a table and all the ingredients needed for making the pancakes. It’s funny to see what a little initiative and some good food can do to fire up the social interaction. Yeah we sure had a great time.
Feel free to read my research paper below.
