How we learned - our journey
Phase 1 of the COLLOQUY project began on January 8, 2018, with the kickoff of the two studio courses, Studio II and Studio IV as part of the CCS MFA IxD Program. 5 second-year students from studio IV reviewed the historical records of the original installation, including photographs, movies, flowcharts, and contemporaneous descriptions. Then, they passed the synthesis to 7 first-year students (Studio II), to build the prototype. Meanwhile, one of the instructors, TJ, who worked independently with fabricators, wrote the software, constructed the hardware, and used 3D printing to fabricate a 1/6 scale working mock-up of COLLOQUY in its 1968 operations.
In parallel, second-year students continued to the next sprint of ideation. With the help of Rinat Sherzer, students imagined extrapolations to conversational machines with capabilities for modern technology and context. Bruce Mcintosh also invited to do a workshop of documentation to help students building the concept of preserving and recording the whole process. The whole projects of students' work and the full-scale, 10’ by 12’ replica exhibit at 7F, hub area, CCS Taubman Center at May11th 2018.
Archaeology
1. Collect Materials
Our team started from collecting materials from 1968 Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition, and Gordon Pask’s paper “A comment, a case history and a plan”
Photographs
Videos
Content
2. Analyze Materials
After reviewing the available content, members of Studio IV met and repeatedly formulated a hypothesis to prove/refute their observations, producing several testable assumptions for studio II so they can build the prototype and generate feedback to refine the deduction.
Decoding the important pieces of the flowcharts
Goal: To understand how the pieces function
Table and flow chart comparison
Create Storyboard
Goal: To visualize how the pieces work together in a sequence
A framework, defining each piece and its functionality
Communicating the story with simple scripts
Discussing the storyboards with members of studio II
Feedback and prototype provided by Studio II members
3. Conclude Phase I
This is when the team developed a clearer understanding of Colloquy, and therefore attempted to create and use a conversation model to frame the overall interactions that occur between male and female mobiles.
Build Conversation Model