Week #04
If I had 10K and 10 months to work on my project, I would probably go for a big scale piece. I'm thinking something monumental, that ideally would be placed in a public space — I'd look for a location that is strategic — somewhere people tend to gather for protests, or in front of a relevant governmental institution's residence.
I'd spend maybe a few weeks looking for research and publications on this topic — on social and personal boundaries, on moral-ethical boundaries and how they are crossed (The Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt is one example). If there is some way of quantifying it, or sectioning it into stages, or something like this, I'd see if it makes sense to incorporate that into the meter.
I'd spend some time researching the possibility of making the red line itself — now it's pretty large — something that is also heavy, and can only be moved by a great number of people. I'd think more about this, about who and when and how the red line should be interacted with. But ultimately I would probably lean towards making this into a more social-collaborative effort kind of thing.
Big scale and public placement means it has to be very sturdy and reliable so I'd look into what material would work best, probably some mix of metal and fancy plastic. I think the form would be different, I would try to make it something that is easily seen from afar, like a beacon. I'd also consider showing the news coming in, so maybe take inspiration from Jenny Holzer's work and display headlines as they are coming in, while adjusting the meter accordingly. I'm thinking the headlines could be in different colors representing their score as they speed through a strip of LEDS.
Bottom line is I would spend much more time on both research and experimenting with different mechanisms, different materials, and different forms and prototypes.
If I had 10$ and 10 days to work on my project I would probably think about making it completely web-based (this is the worst case scenario), but hope I can manage to make it physical anyway. I would spend the first 2-3 days just trying to work on the code pipeline (API -> ML model-> server -> client -> Arduino?). Depending on how that goes, I'd spend another couple of days on tweaking and balancing the calculated score (I think this part is quite important).
If at 5 days it's not fully working yet then I go with a web-based experience and try to make it as meaningful as I can, possibly deviating towards a more collaborative / crowd-sourced red line kind of thing. But if at 5 days I do have the digital part working then I move onto quick sketching and prototyping — will probably stay with the sketch I currently have because of the time limitations.
I will probably need 2-3 days to plan, design, find / model, 3d print and gather materials for fabricating. Then I have 2-3 days for actual fabrication. The 10$ would probably be spent on a small-ish piece of red acrylic or something similar. I can use scrap wood / cardboard / paper for the rest and I already have the electronic components. If I sand the wood real nice (and maybe stain or paint it with whatever is available in the shop) it could possibly look slightly better than a prototype.
My main worry is about the fabrication and mechanisms, particularly the meter mechanism (the actual meter that moves based on the score). I know from a previous project it's not easy making paper roll reliably, and I don't have a better idea on how to do that part yet.
