For this project we were given everyday objects and tasked with reimagining it to highlight the senses. In the first stages of the project we were put into groups and asked to perform this task multiple times, just to get the feel for the brief and what we were being asked to do. The first few tasks were challenging as its hard to put a spin on an object you are so used to, especially something like a toothbrush. We looked at different types of more “abstract” toothbrushes but still didn’t quite meet the mark with the final as we didn’t think big enough, this was something we looked to improve for the next excersize.
For the next object we were given, we were given a plant pot. We did some research into plants and found that they have feelings and are aware of what goes on around them
We decided to have a smart plant pot that interacts with your plant and tell you how its feeling based on indicators that it gives to communicate to other plants via an app on your phone.
Data Garden’s MIDI Sprout device is designed to translate electrical impulses from plants into musical notes. 
After the day of the workshop we were given a few days with a new item, this time with toilet paper. We did some research looking at the action of pulling toilet paper. I came across the idea of doomscrolling and constantly seeing bad news on social media, we wanted to link the idea with the environment and the amount of waste that mass produced commodities like toiler paper produce.
We then decided about the staging of this, it would be an installation, with the toilet paper being mounted on a tree made out of paper mache from leftover toilet paper.
After these mockups I wanted to make an animated mockup of what this would look like, using stop motion software and after effects I created the following videos
For the next part of the project our groups were rejigged and we were given a new object. Our object that we were given was a coffee percolator. At first we did some research finding out exactly what a coffee percolator is and its functions.
We took some inspiration from our previous workshops and decided to focus on the similar workflow of creating the 8 steps to help realise our final.
We decided that we specifically wanted to focus on the function of the percolator, that being the focus on heating the water on a stove to make something happen. We came up with the concept of physical and mental burnout and decided to use the coffee to signify this. We decided to use coffee to burn as almost everyone drinks it in order to have more energy before and during work. We looked at multiple aspects of coffee such as the smell, taste, colour and the heat from it when touched, these were things we hoped to incorporate into the final.
We decided to look at things like the water cycle for inspiration, focusing mainly on the “cycle” aspect as we felt that the idea of the cycle fit well into our idea of burnout as people are having to repeat the same things day in and day out and it can be taxing.
https://www.danaemattes.net/inherent-processes.html
I found these images from “evaporating pools” that I felt fit well into our idea of water cycles and evaporation.
https://mashable.com/video/thomas-kovachevich-paper-evaporation-dance-performance/?europe=true
https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/8110/tania-kovats-on-evaporating-sculptures
Looking at other sources of evaporation inspiration how it can be used to create other interesting outcomes.
These are the 8 steps we went through in order to realise our final
I created some rough code using TinkerCad to get across the idea of temperature, this was one of our early experiments.
I used the LED display on tinkerCAD in order to display the temperature, as well as having the light come on after it reached a certain temp.
We really liked the idea of distillation as it is caused using a similar process to the percolator so we decided to look into this and have this be part of our final.
We decided to have our final collect the water from the distillation process, that the circuit would be completed by the water falling into the water collector this turns on the light. We then had the idea that as there was more water in the collector that the light would begin to grow brighter. This idea came from some very early research, that coffee percolators sometimes need to be left to “brew” so that the coffee is stronger, this would have a colour change similar to what our final would have. The idea of the weight being a controlling factor is similar to the “handle” idea that we were shown in our workshops.
Above is a scale that someone made for the micro bit this is what we would use if we had full access. The weight of the water would increase the brightness. We also were discussing how to make the final have a proper input. We decided to showcase this in the final by having a laptop receive emails, in turn that would activate the stove, the more emails received, the hotter the stove becomes.
We then decided for the video for the emails to come from your boss, as if being overwhelmed in the workplace, this “coffee boss” is relentless and constantly emails the “protagonist” of the video “Jim” to get to work. Building up the intensity of the content and frequency of the emails as the video goes on, in turn increasing the heat.
As there was no way to physically display most of this in the video we decided to convey the majority of it using “smoke and mirrors” I was tasked with creating the effect of the light increasing with time.
Here using after effects I tested how to use the ambient light effect and how it relates with the rest of the scenery in the footage, this can be easily implemented into the final by using the lighting already in the shot.
Using the Light layer setting and upping the intensity, in order to create the brighter image. I’ll handle the FX section if theres anything else we need to add in using after effects I can do that.
Managed to add the effects of the light switching on / off as well as cut down the video from 2;45 to 1:00 to fit the brief. I used the Speed/duration function in Premier Pro to speed up some footage and cut out small segments in order to shave off extra time. I tried doing this in AE but proved too time consuming. I then installed Premier but came across some issues with the different versions as the new version of Premier installed the new version of Media Encoder meaning that I couldn’t properly export the footage. After updating AE the problem still continued. I was feeling very much like Jim our project, stressed and burnt out. However after restarting the creative cloud app it worked fine.
After completing this project I am very happy with our outcome, I feel like we have a very solid concept and strong metaphor for or final outcome, however I cant help but think that this project would have been so much more enjoyable and easier for everyone in the studio, creating a final that is one physical outcome is difficult when you live in different countries, but tools like Miro and zoom helped us successfully realise our final.
Stewart Marshall IxD 