Jan 24-28
Teammates - Jinqi, May, Sofia, Zhe
<aside> đ Brief: Design a way for people to embody and enact the outer appearance of a digital avatar.
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After a brief introduction from our associate lecturer Stephanie Singer about her project Violet Disruption, I felt like we were in a very new territory of exploring by looking at digital avatars as a means of liberation, empowerment, a champion for the vulnerable, healing and protection.
Mixed Reality Avatar - Violet (by Stephanie Singer and her team)
Mixed Reality Avatar - Violet (by Stephanie Singer and her team)
There was a bit of confusion on whether this outcome should be delivered using the avatar Violet. But after clarification, we started to think about what we wanted to convey the concept through our experience. Us being a all female group, we decided to create an avatar that help women feel safe at night walking down the street. Because even in the city of London, the capital of a developed country, I personally donât feel safe at night.
When we were thinking about Violet-like personalities, I got this picture of Amy Schumer in my mind from the movie âI feel prettyâ in her stage performance scene. Thatâs the kind of liberation I was imagining.
After much of the discussion on how we want this avatar to embody this concept, we took a break and started watching and talking about anime. Zhe brought up the conversation about the various Dragon Warrior princesses (Queen Serenity (manga), 2022) and each one started naming their favorite. I, who dint have much knowledge about anime couldnât contribute much.
Queen Serenity (Queen Serenity (manga), 2022)
Goddess Selene -StephanieChn https://www.deviantart.com/
Sofia intervened to talk about the correlation between one of the character Queen Serenity from anime with the Greek mythological goddess Selene. Talking more about it we realized that we were talking about the perfect thing for our project.
The reading that we did on âMetaphors we live byâ (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003) gave us nudge to link these two ideas together.
The possibility of portraying Selene as the protector who can see and be seen but not touched
The moon that comes out at night watches over what happens during the night
She provides people with her power of self-reflection of light that can be given to people who are intimidated in darkness
The purpose of the mirror was to reflect back the eyes of the on-looker (make them face themselves)
Our aim was to create the avatar to represent Selene and also to let people experience her presence. Every idea we came up with was the physical representation of the character. But with the timely feedback from our tutor, we decided to make Selene a physically but let people experience her presence digitally.