User:Mxrwho/The Final Project/The public moment

project info

During the public moment I will present some of my work for the final project in the glass box.

My idea is to create an experience, where the audience will have to follow steps.

(1) Look at themselves in the mirror.

(2) They check the publication and the photos.

(3) They listen to at least one song.

(4) They play with the midi devices on a computer (using the big screen in the glass box).

(5) They look themselves in a mirror and reflect on their thoughts (and write them down for me to harvest).

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The feedback

I received extremely positive comments about the relatability of the publication and the photos, and about the liveliness of the drawings.

The feedback I received about the midi was also very positive, and very diverse: I heard from at least two visitors that they felt relieved, that the device helped them to distance themselves from words and not take them personally. Others felt the intimidation of the negative words and most (but not all) chose the positive words, either to refer to themselves or to friends that were with them.

Most visitors spent time thinking how to fill in the form, which had the prompt "Thoughts on (self-)image," while sitting in front of the second mirror, and their feedback was often very personal and intimate.

Few had the time or the deeper interest to listen to the audio pieces. Most of them listened to the first one but their interest faded afterwards and they went further. I believe that the relatively low volume (just the small loudspeaker of the player) and their reluctance to actually hold the device and bring it closer to their ears was a decisive factor. Also, one group that came in tried to use the cassette player as a recorder in order to record a midi-made "song". It was an initial thought I had too, and it was nice to see it in other minds: Maybe creating the conditions for it to happen would be a next prototyping step: Adding the recorder and the microphone to the installation (after all, it was a huge part of that era for me too and it fits the narrative and the atmosphere), providing a set of sounds the visitors could use to make their own pieces, and offering them the opportunity to receive the results of their recordings digitally [because cassette giveaways would be very costly and much of the tape in a cassette would go unused].