Week 4!
I feel this week I had a clearer idea about my project. Starting the week, we had to present the area of focus for our research project. This presentation pushed me to think more about my problem and what I want to do. My initial project idea was to create a virtual reality of the war. VR would show some of the negative impact of war; It's kind of awareness platform.
Once I was done with the presentation, I was so happy to see many of my classmates asking me about the war and giving me suggestions and inspirations. Later I had feedback from my professor saying that my research should engage different means of narrowing it down my problem which makes sense as my problem is huge. Also, I should start working with VR as It's still new to me!
On Wednesday, I started looking for inspirations that might help with my project. It was too hard to check and see many of the heartbreaking videos and news about the war. This made me depressed and stressed. I felt that I'm weak and I can't help it. I don't know where I am going with this project, but I will try my best to do it. I had a conversation with my professor about this and his suggestion was I need to be strong and at the same time take a rest. Then I asked him to guide me what should I do (at that time I was really depressed and I did not know what else to do next).
From what I got from my professor is that I need to start looking for footages for my project. Also, considering ways to make my project chaotic and at the same time have empathy
Next day, I downloaded Unity and looked at some tutorial about VR. This made me overwhelmed and frustrated as it seems hard to do. While doing this, one of my computer science teammate was asking me why I am learning Unity. Then I explained my project and she was so excited. She is one of "Eastside VR" group in Seattle and she knows a lot about VR. She offered her help and suggests some of the VR tutorials. I was so happy to hear this as it made me more confident that I can do it. Although I am a beginner in VR, I want to learn about it and I have a passionate to learn about new technology.
Some of the projects I looked at:
"Your phone is now a refugee’s phone"
This project film, designed to watch on a mobile phone that will help the viewer to experience with immediacy the confusion and fear facing refugees making a perilous journey by boat.
“Clouds Over Sidra”
This project “Clouds Over Sidra” is a virtual reality experience that you can watch on your smartphone. And it's already having an emotional impact on viewers. Now people can travel to a Syrian refugee camp without leaving their home.
"Project Syria" and "Liyla and the Shadows of War"
These two inspirations, shows an empathy and awareness about war. I am still researching about them!
Readings
This week's reading was really helpful! Most of the readings were about Artifacts.
" Affording Meaning","Artifacts Matters" and " Do Artifacts Have Politics?"
It shows how Artifacts have an essential role in RTD. As the Artifacts shows the knowledge and value of the designer. I feel reading this made me think about how to show my design knowledge/idea in the process of designing the project(Artifact).On the other hand, the reading about "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" was really interesting. It helped me understand the power of each design and if the design has power. At first when I read the topic, I was thinking how can Politics and Artifacts be together. Once I finished the reading, I started thinking about my project and the power I have. In my project the power I will try to show is Empathy,I wanted to achieve this particular social effect through my artifact.
What I learned from this week:
- I need to be strong and search for things that people haven't done!
- Learning new things is hard but will help me understand what I like to do.