#HashTrack
the social media as social hub
...
Even in 2020 there is no need to fake your life online.
Try with starting to get your real one together
a two-week practice-based design project by students of "Code & Context" and "KISD"
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The Task
In the project entitled "Buena Vista Social Hub" we were given the task:
Build an Hyper-Machine.
Hypermashines - On Videotypes Kynetic Depandancy and online Cybernetics
A machine that combines a Rube-Goldberg-Machine and technology in some way.
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Initiators of the Buena Vista Social Hubs: Prof. Dr. Lasse Scherrfig, Prof. Nina Juric, Dr. Olsen Wolf, Darsha Hewitt
Our Idea
With our project we want to point a light on the world of social media,
which is parallel to the real one and on the fact that they are actually incompatible. People try to merge these two worlds or at least create the illusion that these are one respectively the reflection of the other.
The result many times is simply to create another existence that wants to mirror the real one, but that actually leaves room for a distorted version that is easier to shape whenever you want and within reach of a tap.
Unfortunately, this form of freedom has been abused and has turned into a form of duty, of need, of addiction, overturning what was once admired into something to which nobody wants to give more importance and reaching exasperation.
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Which event led to the next event and how can we find analogies?
It‘s June and this year a lot of events have already happened.
Problem follows problem and so on.
What could make a barrel overflow?
So our product should show the connections of problems in the year 2020 and address human influence via social media. Bit by bit we will fill a barrel and analyze if and when the barrel will overflow.
Concepts
The year begins and so does the spread of private messages, political decisions,
entertainment posts and human desires.
Society influences its environment and thus the environment influences the people. Things are happening, positive and negative. But the question of guilt still has to be answered.
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In the following, you get detailed information about every Event, we showed in our Video.
What is the context behind the process and which material we used?
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2020 begins and so we (@VistaHub) send our first tweet via Twitter to the first big event of winter 2020:
"Welcome to 2020! This will be an awesome ride!"
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Between every event there will be different Twitter Posts and with every Tweet, a barrel will fill up.
The meaning behind the story:
The German proverb "Das Fass zum überlaufen bringen" is carried over into the world of social media, and through physical events the barrel becomes ever fuller. Event 4 happens in the present when the video was shot and what will happen is uncertain at this moment. What we do know is that Event 4 is the final straw that breaks the camel's back.
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Process
Week I
We did some research to understand how a Rube-Goldberg-Machine (a machine intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and overly complicated way) works and how we can apply some of the principles used in such an artifact to our idea.
We thought about what kind of technology we wanted to use in the project and how we would be able to create a link between the two.
Another very difficult step was to find the right idea and to combine all the different parts and by doing so to produce a homogeneous product without any part of it losing its identity.
Week II
After we found the idea and knew roughly what to do, we were faced with the dilemma of what type of material we wanted/had/should use.
We had also a lot of questions that needed to be answered:
„How can we do it?“
„What is the best one to use?“
„What technology?“
„How do we want to communicate?“
„How do the machine and its parts communicate?“
„Where is the best place?“
an so on and so forth…
Each one of these questions got its own research in order to be answered.
We used the „try and error“ approach, which helped us to iterate faster and by doing so to find the right solution that could satisfy our needs.
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Equipment
We borrowed our film equipment from Kisd:
Film camera: Sony Alpha,
Film camera 2: GoPro Hero 5
Spotlight: Bowen's spotlight,
Recording: Zoom H5 audio recording device
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Reflection
Dario Miceli
The two weeks were really tough.
We worked very hard both due to the kind of project, the difficulties we met to find the idea an develop it, the lack of experience in certain fields as well as the fact that with a new to a bit of time is needed to be able to get into the right direction.Â
Sure, it is all part of the process and we understand it.
At the end we are very proud about the results and hope we are also able to convey ideas in such a way that the viewer can identify with our point of view and receive the message we want to convey.
Fabian Vitt
Funny Saturday Experiment:
Get a Twitter(or respectively any other social-media-network)-api-key and play with it.
Node-Red and the Debug Console will be totally fine to get a small glimpse of the enormous and brutal river of information and opinions flowing around you, at any point in time.No matter if you are participating or not.
If you have a look at it from a certain angle, it really acts like a kind of liquid: Most of the time chaotic and unorganised. But if given a bit more direction, more like laminar flow, it becomes a force to be reckoned with.
Kay Schuh
Creating a Rube Goldberg Hypermachine with just the materials and resources we had or could gather easily was challenging. So I found the part at which our project was completely in a digital environment, the one with Minecraft, very interesting and saw it as an appropriate component since it provided us an infinite amount of material and more ways to give the machine a unique design while it was less of a struggle to get every part of the machine work. Definitely a good option when creating a Rube Goldberg Machine in a very limited time. However, everyone of us seemed to have faced demotivating issues until our final result was created. We really had to push ourselves towards finishing everything we wanted to finish within the timeframe of Social Hubs.
Monique Holthuizen
As my last short-term project in the second semester at Kisd and as my first project with physical group work during Corona times, I was quite lucky to be part of such harmonious cooperation.
The interdisciplinary experience through exchange of knowledge and the support of four experts assure me that I made the right decision when applying for the project. The two weeks were very intensive and stressful. Time planning could have been better and we were late for the submission of the concept but on time for the presentation. Two hours of sleep for the presentation on Friday was a little self-inflicted. We are not yet machines, but we give our best as social human beings in a developing media world, with coming stimulus satiation and growing time shortage.
We were creative and learned the meaning of it. A film rail made of wooden beams, the GoPro case served as a tripod and baby powder made the rail slide. We built a Rube-Golberg machine and put it in the context of a social hub.
I think I'm glad about what we did.
