Hey guys!
I’m dividing this post in two parts, the first one will be my impressions about the prototyping stage of our project, and the second part will be a brief post about my experience along the semester.
Prototyping,
I should start this post admitting that I did not had much of a hands on during the prototype stage of this project. I was happy and pep during the first stages while we were iterating upon our ideas, but then I fell ill during the two weeks that took the group to remove the idea out of the two dimensions of the paper and add a multimedia layer of reality to it [in that sense I’m most thankful to have amazing members in this group, especially Merrille, who so brilliantly pushed the project to its conclusion].
So, my experience during the prototype stage was somewhat the one of a passer-by. What I did was to try the project out in the real world and refer back to the group my impressions.
My conclusion of this experience was actually pretty good. Beside the fact that the project worked tremendously well (both the hardware/software aspect of it and the ideology behind the concept), it gave me a new perspective, the one of a producer. Not as much in the sense of a video producer, nor so much the one of a artist/photographer who exhibit their work in a enclosed space. The best part of this experience was to look around Wall Street and know that for a duration of a heart beat there was something in that space that was created by a group of people, specifically for that space, that could have been used by anyone of those people going about.
It was certainly liberating. The project was supposed to enhance one’s perception of one’s surroundings, it definitely enhanced my perception of the space – not only of Wall Street and this project, but many more spaces enhanced by many more projects to come [hopefully].
Thank you PI team, this was a great project. =]
The Second [and final] post.
This is a hard post to write. This group went though a lot since the first week of class [even before that, trying to figure if it would happen or not].
As I said before I got in to Public Interactive almost naked, I may have had my socks on. That was never a problem, from week one until last week when we had our last encounter, I was part of a group of 4 outstandingly intelligent people that developed their concepts of what Public Interactive is together, by reading the same texts and experiencing the same things. Funny enough those concepts are completely different, they explain the same type of event but through different perspectives.
I guess that was the magic of this semester, having such a great and engaged group [I, for once, was really engaged in the task of posting late in the blog]. David gave us a really good theoretical fundament to what PI is. By that I mean two really open texts that did not really conceptualized much what Public Interactive is. What I know and understand as Public Interactive came from exploring and conversations with this group.
When I was thinking about this post I first though about dividing the semester in different section (reading, visits, final project) as I did before. But here, at the end, looking back [♪♪over my shoulder♪♪] there’s no separation, the parts now forms a whole and I can see that in the dynamic of this past semester my ideas and concepts surrounding this subjects were volatile and changing until the end [I have my definition for the moment, but I’m pretty sure it might change in the near future].
I don’t know what else to say. I have to thank the group again for this semester, it was definitely the best expericence I ever had inside the 4 walls of a school class. Thank you! [and thank you PIRT for exist so we can keep up with our conversations =D]
Thank you guys! I hope you all have an amazing holiday season and see you soon!
