After the sharing on Wednesday, we got many advices from classmates and teacher. We decide to focus on the idea of culture in lower east side and surrounding area. Although it seems hard to come up with an idea about culture and stranger, fortunately, all of us like this project very much, and we all agree the area we chose is a great place.

Today, we start from searching the information of population in lower east side. We get some good data from NYC government website. http://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/community/community-portal-1.page?cd=mn03
What we want to give user when they come to our project? Lots of people in this area came from different countries, they have various culture backgrounds. We find two films which is relevant to immigrant (foreigner) in U.S – “Stranger Than Paradise” and “Mystery Train”. Through these films, we can imagine the context and understand more about this group of people.

At first, we come up with a idea about sharing various cultures through interactive activity. They can share language or some iconic symbol. We are thinking about making a board with nails on it, and two users can lead each other make a graphic by using string.

 

 

img_7125

img_7126

 

With testing the prototype, we find out that it is so hard to use the interaction like this. Therefore, we decide to rethink the idea again. This is another idea. We can make a diagram and let people come to put their own data here. At the end, we are able to get a very inspiring data diagram. Besides, people can also look others thought and get inspiration from the project.

scannable-document-on-oct-3-2016-11_28_55-pm

 

But we think this might not able to create many interaction between people so we move on to next idea. Since we get stuck and can’t figure out what to do, we go to lower east side again. Sitting there and watching people, perhaps we’ll know something.

How about going back to the rock music history part? As we know that lower east side is where rock and puck born, however you can’t see many rock elements right here nowadays. Maybe we should bring rock back to lower east side! I think of the idea from Paul team, they make a painting activity which need two people do together. It recalls me about number painting. Then we start developing the concept based on rock music and number painting.

img_7136

 

We want to make three poster, and each of them is the cover of famous rock band CD cover. Besides, we will use number painting and let people color the posters. At the beginning, they may not discover what is this, after more and more people come and paint, the graphic will be more clear. Through the activity, we want to tell people about the music history here, for those who do not familiar with lower east side background. Moreover, children and adults can do this without problem.

We make a prototype testing at D12 and we get some good advices from users.

img_7147