From last week I narrowed my proposal to the idea focusing on black out poetry. I was happy to go along with this idea as it was the one I was most intrigued by. However peer to peer critiquing and tutor feedback revealed areas I could further explore and strengths I could further enhance. The critique I received was as follows:
- Questioning what written content I would be exploring. Would it be any articles, poetry, refugee stories or legal documents and legislations?
- How does it target the appropriate audience of 18-24 year olds?
- Consider the location in more detail. Where would the billboards be placed? Somewhere people can interact for longer?
- What are the touch points or he user journey fi they are led to an online platform? Or does the intervention end at the public site?
This feedback has been really important in developing my proposal. Some of them were questions that came up when self critiquing but things I may have overlooked.
In additon to this I’ve been doing research into both black out poetry and the idea of generative poetry. I came across a few websites I found interesting but two in particular stood out, Google poetics and Poetweet. I’ve been trying to look into how I can create more nuanced poems or insightful poetry and its been quite difficult. But I feel like the research has really helped me articulate my thoughts better. And it’s also been fun creating poems with public twitter feeds of Politicians.
So this brings me to my design proposal so far.
Design Proposal
Project: TBC – ‘For those who have come across the seas, We’ve boundless plains to share’
Practice: Campaign / Service Design
Issue: The over saturation of articles and opinions in the media often leads to the inverse effect where a lot of younger Australians, aged 18-24 ignore the information they are being bombarded with. Sometime they do consume it but feel a sense of helplessness towards enacting change. This public campaign seeks to promote awareness towards the issue but also make them aware that there are multiple perspectives towards the problem at hand.
Possible Change: The design will convey the wide discourse around the issue allowing people to discern for themselves what’s happening. It’s not about telling them what’s right or wrong but making them more aware of how the consume information. Furthermore by conveying this through poetry it will intrigue the viewer and also establish a sense of curiosity and perhaps even empathy.
Design Action to Support Change:
The blackout of poetry can be used in two ways:
1. is to use poetry to highlight certain points
2. is to black out words to create the visual metaphor of a maze- the idea of a maze to Australia but one that highlights the refugees journey.
– Drawing on headlines from articles
– Drawing on quotes from politicians
– Drawing on quotes from refugees’
– Inviting public figures and writers to create their own poems
Create poetry with these and impose them on top of an article relating to that topic.
These fill form a series of interactive billboards. they will be timed in terms of blacking out and revealing text but will also give the user the possibility to read it if they wish to.
mute/unmute button
There will be another touch point, where uses can print off the piece of poetry or submit your own piece of poetry to an online archive. It will give you an article to work with and you will use that to create your own piece. This gives the user a place to express their thoughts, a sense of autonomy over what they’ve consumed.
Emergent Practices 