01 Concept (Lonely in the crowd)
Deliverables
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Presentation
While population is growing and people are moving into cities, many citizens are facing the feeling of being alone in the crowd. What is the cause for this sense of loneliness and how can it be treated?
My interest lie in a aesthetic presentation of an interactive installation (or similar). I want to use the time given time for the bachelor work to analyze known social phenomenas in our society and experiment with different technologies.
The currently often discussed topic of the high suicide rate in Switzerland was the initial thought. In a couple of weeks the swiss have to vote wether they want swiss soldiers to keep their army weapon at home (as it is now), or if they have to bring it to a central depot. This is important because most suicides in the country are committed with the swiss army weapon.
However, I decided not to look into the subject of suicide for the next four months. Instead I want to look at the feeling of
loneliness in the crowd which could be one reason out of many for suicides. It is much more subtle and not as depressive. If you travel through a big city in the rush-hour it is very likely that you have had this feeling where you are surrounded by hundreds of people but everyone is a complete stranger to you.
What is the reason for this feeling and how could this situation be changed?
I picked my favorit ideas and made sketches. This was very useful to communicate them better, and to get a more detailed image about the story the installations are telling. All the ideas just cover a small part of the whole story.
Here are some of the ideas I covered in my sketches
Shadow: Project shadows of two randomly selected people to the wall (distraction). Add virtual parts to the real looking shadows, or even animate the whole shadows. Animate the participants to act together.
Mirror: Project a mirrored Image into a mirror frame. In the mirror only ONE person appears. Through closing the distance to the mirror, the crowd around the person fade in.
Creature: A little, animated creature establishes contact to strangers and make them talk to each other. (joyful)
Picture Frames: A bunch of picture frames are placed on a wall in public. They can be filled with individual content by the pedestrians themselves by using a camera and a screen inside the frames.
So the big question remains, what am I going to do in the next couple of months. There are many different aspects in the whole project. I need to think about...
motivation: how can I motivate pedestrians to take part in the "installation"?
extraction: how can I separate someone out of the crowd?
aesthetics: what is it going to look like?
connection:
how can I connect strangers to each other?
evolution/story: how can I make the participants come back the other day?