Dates: 13 October 2022- 27 October 2022

Group members: Changlin Hou, Ruoxy Song, Zuzana Galova and me.

WEEK 1

This topic felt icky from the start. Coincidentally, the day we received the brief, I came home and found mould on my raspberries and just thought to myself that it was meant to be.

We had been asked to create an experience around mould highlighting the good and bad properties of mould. Starting with a bit of research and reading up online about the types of mould, I started becoming interested in slime mould. What was most exciting was its ability to support the ecosystem.

So we as a group decided to visit the Natural history museum to observe the ‘slime mould collection’ but upon reaching we found out the collection was private and required special access to view. Bummed out by this, we decided to stick to the two research methods we had been instructed to use for this project but I got a nice sketch anyway.

The AEIOU research method was done by personifying the mould growing in my raspberry box. The love letter and break-up letter had emotional depth describing our relationship with mould. Our primary takeaway from this initial research was to take one good quality and one bad quality of mould and make an experience out of it. We picked ‘Disgust’ and ‘Coordination’ as the two main qualities of mould that we wanted to work with.

Deciding to represent the ‘disgust’ through touch and the ‘coordination’ through the game aspect, we came up with the idea of a game experience. We thought of designing a game that would require the participants to coordinate but also have a feeling of ick to it. The participants were supposed to feel like they are putting their hands in a mouldy environment. The top of the box was opaque with only armholes cut out, this allowed us to elevate the tactile experience. The goal of the game was to find as many coins as they could in 30 seconds.

INTERIM PRESENTATION

The presentation itself was not well planned since we started the game on the side while my group mate was still speaking. Overlapping two things like that did not work out in anyone’s favour. The idea came across as too abstract, there seemed to be no direct correlation with mould. They advised we get more personal and specific with mould instead of traversing the vague. Our course mentors advised us to observe actual mould closely. The research method of AEIOU was also not done properly, so any valuable insights which this method could have otherwise offered to our experience was missing.

WEEK 2

My group mate, Zuzana, was living in a recently flooded apartment and it was interesting to hear about her experience with the latency of mould. Intrigued by the sense of mould invading our private spaces, we decided to do the AEIOU research method in our kitchens, to get a range of data points. We also decided to do interviews as part of our AEIOU, to understand how the other users of the space felt around mould and how their past experiences with mould have been.

Alongside this, we also began to grow our mould in a ‘mini kitchen’ made entirely out of food. This was kept at Changlin’s house, who was going to be observing the changes daily.

Once we collated our data from the AEIOU research, we started noticing similarities and patterns among our findings.

Listing these conceptual understandings of mould, we began to discuss and explore the experiences that could embody the same.

A lot of back and forth happened during the ideation phase amongst the group since we wanted to make sure that the design of the experience was well-rooted in the research.

Our ‘mini kitchen’ of food had begun showing signs of visible mould and just within 1-2 days, the mould multiplied super fast.

FINAL PROTOTYPE

We went ahead with the experience of a ‘mouldy fridge’, and how that highlights the sense of latency. We began building it with real mouldy food items (we had a stash of those by the end of this project) and juxtaposed that with packaged food that would be sitting in the fridge alongside the real mould.

The development of the latent mould also occurs due to a busy or lazy lifestyle. The project also aims to say that many times, fresh and mouldy food items coexist. We added the sound of a clock ticking for the added sense of running time, with which the mould only grows and to give the participants the experience of rush.

The experience was loved by the participants, some of them chose to not pick any food item, while some of them pondered for a bit and some went straight in. We received feedback that the sound of the ticking clock and the lighting really helped tie the experience together and that it was well executed.