Reflection

We learned that the process of forgetting, even if fake for now, was an incredibly relieving and healing process, and we believe that a trash can like this could help facilitate this type of healing in the future. In the future, we would also have marked where the acrylic should go in the box, as the constant shifting and re-alignment was painfully irritating. We also needed to completely  finish scripting and filming before creating scene specific audio files- we learned that the hard way. We got to a great product that most of us were proud of, though we spent hours upon hours of time making iterations and fixing things that didn't need to be fixed.

Through class crits, we realized that we needed to have a better physical piece to the project. The trash can that we used was metaphorical, which worked for the artistic part of the project, but it wasn’t very useful as an everyday object. It was noted how we needed something that could be used everyday, like a paper shredder or a microwave, in order to add value and usefulness to the object. Additionally, we questioned the usefulness and consumer use of the project.  Since it was a trash can in a dorm room, would someone need to buy one just to forget someone?  Would they be publicly placed for widespread use?  This was an interesting concept since we didn't consider the way someone would get access to the trash can and its feasibility.  This really gave us insight that we need to consider the bigger picture and consider all aspects of a product.

We also realized that it would be nice to have an “undo” option for more agency over the forgetting process, but we didn’t include it, as we liked the finality of the project as it was. It wasn’t supposed to be used at any time: it was meant to be a forgetting instance for only the most extreme of circumstances, such as abuse or PTSD. We allowed the person to choose what they wanted to forget and allowed them to back out up until the last minute, but we didn’t want to be able to undo it to add a more dynamic process of feeling to a not-very-dynamic object. We added the “fire” at the top to add more criticality to the interaction, but we realized after the crit session that it could have been done better. We were also going to let the other person know that they had been forgotten in the video, but we had to cut the scene, as we didn’t have enough time left to include it.