During class this week we wrote down 20 ways to explore a single idea that we are inspired by, within a given time constraint. The 17 different ways I came up with are as follows:
Idea I picked: GENERATIONAL GAP as discussed in Chapter 11 of Critical Craft (edited by Clare M. Wilkinson-Weber & Alicia Ory DeNicola): Conflicting Ideologies of the Digital Hand: Locating the Material in a Digital Age authored by Daniela Rosner.
Tech to bridge the generational gap
Craft to bridge the generational gap
An old person engaging with high tech craft
Augmenting craft with high tech for an older person
Augmented hand-making
Everyday objects become craft opportunities
A water bottle becomes a digital interface, or a digital hand, or a knitting needle
An old rug becomes a digital interface
A clock becomes a way to quantify ho much crafting one has done
A knitting needle becomes a portal to another world
A knitting yarn becomes the bridge between the here and the virtual
A surveillance system based on craft signature; craft signature?
Knitting in outer space
A knitting buddy in the form of a sentient machine
An AI-ified grandparent teaching craft
A virtual world where virtual making is valuable; virtual sweatshops
A collective making in VR
This was followed by a group brainstorming activity where everybody contributed words that they could think of based on the domains I presented the class with.
My domains were: CRAFT and GENERATIONAL GAP
Keywords we then wrote down on the board that relate to the above two domains were:
From this list of keywords, 6 really stood out for me in terms of how they often relate to craft and how they are also often not considered in relation to craft (an example being war). These 6 were: TACTILE, SKILLS, VALUE, LABOR, WAR and INTIMACY.
Using these 6 words, I tried to then construct a sentence. The first attempt at constructing a sentence and extracting meaning from it without introducing any significant new words was:
A TACTILE WAR SKILLED IN INTIMACY AND VALUES LABOUR.
Then, a second attempt was made to refine an idea that emerged from the first sentence:
A TACTILE WAR GAME REQUIRING SKILLS IN INTIMACY AND PROMOTES THE VALUE OF LABOR.
Here, 'promotes' is a slightly strange word to use, nevertheless the sentence was able to define a direction for a prototype.
WAR GAME PROTOTYPE
Mainly created as an ideation tool, the prototype attempts to allude to the concepts of war and intimacy and how they might merge into a single project.
The prototype in the above images show a cylindrical structure that requires the player to weave through it. The structure is partitioned into two parts and each player is in control of their side. At each step of the game, the player would get the chance to add a weft (left to right yarn in a woven structure) to their side, in the process adding weight to their side of the cylinder. The more wefts are added, the more the structure will tilt towards that player’s side. To further complicate the player’s mission, an object (in this case a stick) is placed on the cylinder, which forces the players to somehow work together, despite being at war with each other, to balance the object and prevent it from falling.
Such a game would inevitably need an engaging storyline that perhaps also references real history. The final output could then be envisaged as a tactile embodied game experience that reveals historical facts (gathering of knowledge) through the materiality of the game.