Narrative

We approached the project with the idea to make a dragon-like shape out of cut paper and cardboard, and suspend it from the ceiling in a way that people could interact with it by moving its body around. Interaction was an important concept when we designed and built the dragon as we wanted to represent childhood memory of pure sensory touches. From our readings, Katja Kwastek's Aesthetics of Interaction in Digital Art and Paul Dourish's Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction, we learned that interaction has many different aspects that we have to think upon. Paul argues in his writing that "technology should be perceived as an extension of the body part - ready-to-hand - without interrupting user’s conscious." Even though the installation is not solely technological or digital figure, we were influenced by the concept that in order to make the best experience out of the dragon, we should design it to be intuitive so that we do not interrupt the viewer's sensational stimulation. We kept this concept in mind while following procedure to create the body of the dragon:

To start off, we wanted to make it in a modular way so we came up with several ideas for making the units of the body. After deciding on a design, we used everyday materials in creative ways in order to bring it to life. Each unit was created using cardboard and strips of tracing paper, which were very meticulously hand-cut using a ruler and x-acto knife. After connecting the units using fishing line, we installed the piece by suspending it from the ceiling using more fishing line -- a very intensive process as it was difficult to have our creature keep a rounded shape. Finally, we covered each unit in soft stuffing material. We also attached a wind chime to the end of the dragon so that it would make noise when it was moved. 

Since this project branches out from the installation with media component, we also had to work on the media, which was the video to be played in the background. Among diverse idea of how to utilize media, we were inspired by a former Ideate project for generative performance, Silhouette performance. Silhouette performance brought up the concept of shadow and how they could be used in an artful way. From further research on installations using shadows such as shadow bath and musical shadows, we could confirm that projecting over the dragon so that the shadow of the dragon would make a feeling that the dragon is flying in the background scene will make the best use of media component. 

To find the right contents to the project was another task for us. In many of South Eastern Asia's literature, water is often used as a metaphor for a life. For example, a Korean poem, "Longing" by Chi-hwan Yu, sings about the sea and the ocean. In this poem, he uses the property of water to materialize the abstract concept of human life. The water starts from the sky, then flow across different terrains, then finally, reaches the sea. This common metaphor on water has inspired us to make a media aspect out of water cycle. We spent a lot of time choosing only the scenes we want to use and to give meaning to the visual media. 

In the end, the chosen scenery and sequence were used as a metaphor for life, and in addition, they were projected onto the dragon, giving the visual effect of the dragon flying around.