As I wandered around the Oculus without any goal in my mind, I observed several fiberglass seats, where a number of guests were silently and placidly sitting. When I sat on one of the seats, I could see many of their possessions such as jackets, caps, and backpacks that were put next to them. I noticed that most of them were using their mobile devices, and I could see the likely action they were doing. One of them was constantly tapping the screen, which seemed to be either texting or playing games. There were many people with earplugs in their ears; some guy was chatting to his friend over a call while others were listening to some musics. I saw a woman sitting in front of me enjoying her coffee with a snack. Next to me, there were siblings who were talking about their game with excitement.
I left the seat and walked aimlessly, which led me to a place called LovePop, a mall system full of pop-up cards such as people crossing the road, Star Wars, the New York landscape, and many other different objects in 3D. The artworks reminded me of Andy Warhol because of the media he used, as well as my Bridge 2 Project last semester, in which I put several trees as a pop up for my partner. Another place that grabbed my attention was the blue shopping mall full of accessories, such as navy-blue, black, and brown purses and backpacks and pencil cases made of leather. There was a manager sitting in front of a portrait hanging on the cyan-blue wall. When I asked him whether the system was working properly or not, the manager positively responded that the system was indeed going well, thanks to the recent improvements. But he also told me that online presents had ordeals because the customers want to see the tangible, physical items before they decide to purchase. In order to compensate the situation, he stated that he wants to strategize the shopping with online.
The interesting point I felt as I derived through the stairs and the elevators was the variety of different perspectives: the view of the people on the top and the bottom floor toward me when I am moving up and down, the view of those in the elevator toward me in the Oculus, and vice versa. The observation of this inter-perspective gave me an insight of comparing my views toward the visitors on the contrary side and their views toward me. The change in relative movements of the surrounding based on my position gave me dynamic and diverse scenes of the Oculus. On the escalator, I enjoyed the feel of standing peacefully and observing others, without having to quickly climb it up in order to get places on time. Outside the glass-covered elevator, lots of details of the structure of the elevator jumped to my eyes, such as the rope, chain hoist, and jack ascending and descending. This suddenly reminded me of the simple fact that most elevators are covered in opaque walls. On the other hand, I felt like the people on the Oculus were going down when I was going up and vice versa. I realized that those inside the elevator would be looking down on me whereas those outside would be looking at me inside the elevator.
Overall it was an interesting experience to walk around without an aim or purpose, which is something that is not easily experienced in busy daily lives in the city. One particular thing that came to my mind was that even though I was not keeping the track of where I was going, it did not feel like I got lost. Soon after I started wandering, I lost the sights of my classmates, which is usually not the best thing in a group activity with specific purpose. However, there was no destination I needed to arrive, so every moment and scene that were not really considered before transformed into the sources of inspiration to me. There is no “getting lost’ during the process of derive, which provided me a novel and comfortable experience. Furthermore, I could enter a store without having to become a customer interested in their product, which allowed me ask questions other than prices and types of product; it provided me an opportunity to get to know them as an individual instead of someone who is trying to sell their products. At the same time, maybe it is not a good thing to take away their time for too long, since they have specific goal they need to meet, unlike me.
