The project was created as part of the masters in digital design program in conjunction with the Wereldmuseum. The objective: to get people involved in the ongoing conversation about colonialism, the past and moving forward.
We created an application that had 2 objectives, in first place to allow visitors to form part of the exhibit in a real time scenario with different levels of interactions, in a second place, the answers are stored as data recollection allowing researchers to see tendencies throughout the exhibit, the years, etc.
the project had two main components. The first and most important was the application that allowed visitors to interact with the different exhibits.
With the use of a phone you could scan and select the artwork. This would ask you for a name to eliminate anonymity an take you to a matrix where you can select how you feel about the certain piece. The matrix was designed given emotions cannot be cualtified and its impossible to put a feeling in a scale of 1 to 10. The double axis allows you to position yourself between comfortable and uncomfortable and personal or distant. After this first interraction the user could decice weather to continue or, if they are not as involved, to exit the interraction. If they decided to continue a trained AI generated a question based on the references provided by the matrix. The question allowed us to get further insight on the visitors that are more invested in the subject. When finishing, the user will be able to see how other people felt about the exhibit and if they wrote about it. The idea for the future implementation was to allow the users to sign in to be able to respond to other peoples interactions generating debates about the subject at hand and possibilities of moving forward.
The second part of the exhibit was a space of reflection at the end of the exhibit. This space allowed visitors to visualize the comments made throughout the exhibit by the last visitors present. The comment behaved at the same time as a dynamic artwork and it responds to sound. Given the objective was to make people debate the subject it only felt appropriate to create an artwork that would only show the text when it hears voices.
App prototype: https://editor.p5js.org/AkhilSukumaran/full/RTkC2-N9d