Crossing the line

Project Type: School Winter 2017 (group)

Role: Designer, Videographer

Assignment: This is by far the most challenging project I have yet to be a part of. It was also the most rewarding group experience I've had as a student. The assignment was to choose a social issue and create a solution for it. This could take the form of an advertisement, a high-fidelity prototype or in our case, an art installation. We were not required to create the actual product or experience, but it was important to demonstrate the feeling a user would have if we were to implement it.

This project relied heavily on Ideation, Inspiration, Concept, and Implementation.

Ideation

We toyed with ideas like sustainable smart buildings, biodegradable phones, a public 'trash can' for disposing of old electronics that would sort the materials and send to companies to recycle, but the most discussion and passion seemed to surface when we talked about police brutality and racial profiling.

Inspiration

We figured out quickly that we could make the strongest impact by making an art installation. We drew the most inspiration from two existing installations; "Hands Up" by Atif Ateeq and Roopa Vasudevan and "The Blue Wall of Violence" by Dread Scott.

Concept

We decided not to build the actual exhibit, and instead build a miniature construction of it. We used this structure for our Concept Presentation (video below).

Story Board

Building the Structure

Filming the concept phase

Concept video

Filming

We filmed at a number of locations. It was important to us for the surroundings to look authentic and for the person experiencing the installation to feel fully immersed. This sometimes meant refilming even after we had edited. We learned to embrace obstacles and push through mistakes.

The Final Video

Take Away

Ultimately, I'm proud of what we accomplished. I felt that with pitching ideas, story boarding, editing film, filming and filming again, gathering materials, building structures until 3am, producing, organizing almost every aspect and probably more- I personally took on a great deal of responsibility and gave a lot of myself to this endeavor. Our group didn't feel like an obligation, it felt like a true team. In the end, our final implementation would have been much stronger if we hadn't spent time building another structure and just simply built the actual installation. It would have been incredibly rewarding to make something more substantial and concrete. We had the skills to actually build it, and perhaps we will in the future.

Waiting for the camera to recharge outside of a 7-Eleven (we learned to remember to bring a spare battery for all equipment).