Exercise 3.3 Speculations – Gary De La Cruz
Collapse | Governance | Logo | Outrage
In 2018 Santa Ana implemented the MemoryBoard project. It was a permanent interactive art installation designed to preserve the memories of places and the time one spent in them. 3 MemoryBoards were installed in the Downtown area at the major gathering sites. People contributed photos and video to the MemoryBoard System through the large scale touch screen interface. Aside from the large touchscreen, the fanciest piece of tech built into it (at the time) was face recognition. So as a person approached it the system would detect the face, retrieve and display all the photos linked to it. The project was designed to exist for generations. One of it’s goals was to preserve memories of Santa Ana’s places and people so it could act as a digital interactive time capsule for future residents.
The designers made a significant effort make the system resilient so that it could last a long time: Heat and water resistant glass and plastic enclosures for the touch screens. Solar panels captured enough energy to completely power the different parts of the system. Solid state memory so there were no moving parts. And ethernet cables run underground between the 3 sites and control room creating a closed network.
15 years later the Great Internet Slowdown happened. The proliferation of IOT devices had reached a saturation point that brought the internet to it’s knees. Everything was connected to the internet. Your shoes, the fillings in your teeth, yours cats. Everything depended on fast internet connections, power companies, cell carriers, cars and pretty much everything broke. Except Santa Ana’s MemoryBoards.
Generations later.
Pollution had always been a big problem but the effects during years of the Great Slowdown were devastating. We always knew there was a link between pollution in the air and memory impairment, but when people stopped trying to educate and better themselves, this sent their mental capacities on a dangerous downward spiral. People stopped going to school, stopped learning. People were forgetting who they were, forgetting their histories, names and what they looked like.
Santa Ana residents were struggling with everyone else, but in some ways a little less because of the MemoryBoards.
It became a daily ritual to make the trek from all parts of the city to the 3 MemoryBoards. It became the only way to remember yourself, your name and your past.
Visitors arrive.
Outsiders began arriving in the city hearing of the mythical MemoryBoards that could show you who you are. When asked for their names they couldn’t tell you, they just held out a piece of paper a small distinctive drawing. To 21st century eyes these were symbols of what they called ‘corporations’ or Logos. These people were NBC, Pepsi, McDonalds, CNN, Shell and so on. Their identities had been reduced to corporate logos. They didn’t even have the imagination to design their own.
At first the residents were fine with the newcomers moving into the city and using the MemoryBoards, but then the word got out to distant places and the crowds became unsustainable. The lines to use the MemoryBoards began to stretch past a day and this was unacceptable. “They are risking our memories, we must protect them“. The city government in partnership with it’s police began a policy of testing the lengths of memories that came out of the MemoryBoards. Anyone with less than a year’s length had to leave the city. Outrage spread amongst the outsiders, a storm was brewing outside the city.
And so began the ‘War to Remember’.
Exercise 3.3 – Davidson Young
Exercise 3.3: Speculations – Amin Rashidifar
Exercise 3.3: Speculations – Calvin Lin
Exercise 3.3 – Speculations – Katherine Cheng
Exercise 3.3 – Speculations: Amir Rashidifar
Exercise 3.3: Speculations – Paul Tutty
Exercise 3.3 – Speculations: Francis Rodrigues
Exercise 3.3: Speculation – Shirin Davoudpour
Exercise 3.3 – Speculations – Jennifer Du
Arc: Collapse
Terrain: Childhood
Object: Festival
Mood: Shock
Exercise 3.3: Speculations – Gilberto Cardenas
Arc: Transform
Terrain: The Economy
Object: Clothing
Mood: Decadence
Declassified documents reveal that in 1957 Monsato was given permission by the US government to take part in underground nuclear tests to create cotton that was 10,000 times stronger than synthetic fiber, and more comfortable to wear than silk.
The tests went horribly wrong and a radiation leak in the year 2017 made fabrics made of cotton, flax, wool, ramie, silk, leather, down, or fur and many man-made materials became dangerous for use in clothing as spontaneous human combustion was a common side effect. People found the only safe material to make clothes was paper.
In the year 2027 paper is scarce commodity, newspaper companies, libraries, and magazine companies are a thing of the past. People stopped printing material, and only the elite can afford it to create custom clothe made of real papers. The rest of us have resorted to covering up with layers of flour, glue and paint.
I’m walking home from work, and it begins to rain, I start running to avoid my freshly painted garments from being destroyed by the weather. A sinkhole opens up, without looking where I step, I fall into it, 10 feet down. I look around and find an entrance to a tunnel inside the hole. Out of curiosity I follow the corridor a good 20 feet, inside I find a box containing at least 1000 Time magazines depicting an orangutan looking fellow as the worst man of the century. I see another box; it contains roughly 1500 newspapers from the Fake News Times. In my mind, I know I’ve hit the Jackpot. I can sell the ugly Times magazines for a lot of money, and keep the newspapers to create my own line of fancy clothes for forward thinking people.
EXERCISE 3.3 – SPECULATIONS – John Delshadi
Exercise 3.3: Speculations – Youngri Kim
Exercise 3.3 – Speculations – Shreya Gupta
Exercise 3.3- Speculations
EXERCISE 3.3 Speculations – Amit Barot
Exercise 3.3 Assignment – Speculations
ARC (Grow) / TERRAIN (Brain) / OBJECT (Logo) / MOOD (Anxiety)
Exercise 3.3: Speculations Sarah Murray
Assignment
Collapse, Robot, Machine, Decadence
Exercise 3.3: Speculations – Joyce Xu
EXERCISE 3.3: Speculations – Michelle Chin
Exercise 3.3 – Speculations
Transform, Climate, Gift, Serenity – Link to PDF
Exercise 3.3: Speculations – Miyuki Takazono
Exercise 3.3- Speculations- Mia Itri
About This Course
Informatics 282: Design and Prototyping integrates principles of design process with an introduction to time-based media and the methods used to design new interfaces, environments, services, and products that focus on the orchestration of user experience. You will be exposed to the characteristics of new design opportunities made feasible by digital technologies and the pivotal role of time and attention in contemporary design. Through lectures, analysis of a wide range of examples in communication, interaction, and experience design, and through studio-based assignments that provide opportunities for practical application and insight, you will be introduced to basic concepts, methods, tools and techniques used in the assessment, definition, and design of interactive experiences.
Informatics 282: Design and Prototyping is a course in the Master of Human Computer Interaction and Design program at the University of California, Irvine.