Mediated Intimacy Final Project: The Vulcan Mind Meld
If you have been reading my blog regularly (besides Mr. Whey Protein and Mrs. Ringtones, my two loyal spamming followers) you may have noticed or not, the heavy tendency to post on two of my four classes, Physical Computation and Computational Media. My reticence about one of my other classes, Mediated Intimacy, is due in part because that blogging was not required protocol for the class and because it is primarily a seminar class with little physical output. The subjects we cover are so incisive and omni-relevant that the pressure to blog them was/is incredibly difficult. I am ruing that choice to not blog about them because we covered some amazing artists’, authors’, and scientists’ work associated with, well, mediating intimacy. I promise to write more about it later! But for now, let me focus on our final project in three parts:
1. Dream up a future technology of intimacy and connection over distance. Write a User’s Manual to accompany it including a drawing with parts labeled, a detailed description of how it is used, warnings, etc.
2. Write a story about a person or people who are using your technology. You will need to express the invented ‘physics’ of the world in which your invention exists. In other words, where you rely on new general capacities available in the future world, you will need to describe those things, in order to situate your invention. The point here is to think through and express what the technology might do from an emotional and social perspective, based on what you know about existing technologies and ideas about intimacy, as well as your ability to imagine consequences of not-yet-possible devices.
3. Present your invention, its context, its function, and its potential or known emotional and social effects on users.
This final was a pure joy to execute. In conceiving of ideas, I cheated myself out of dreaming up a whole new world for this product and focused really on something that I new and that I could construct easily, but still was humorous and cohesive. I came up with, borrowing from Star Trek, the Vulcan Mind Meld.
I had worked on a presentation a week prior and used the mask that you see in the photos for this project; a decent example of cross-curricular projects. I spent most of the time working on the MANUAL and designing the packaging. I actually searched everywhere for some cheap plastic encasing besides the stupid plastic I ended up using. No big deal as prototyping was not required for this assignment. The project went over well! I often tell people that since I hate to present, my main objective is not necessarily to inform or engage but to make people laugh. I could be in the wrong business!
