The first of my three ideas was to make a scrapbook of the quarantine and COVID-19 pandemic experience. This particular idea is interesting to me for a variety of reasons, but especially for the idea of documentation. This idea originally came from the category of “Environment Around You” when I was thinking about the fact that this is a really defining moment in all of our lives, but because of the fact that everything is online now, we may not have real documentation of what it was like to live during this time come to a couple of decades. We always talk about how the internet is forever, but its really only that the internet is only alive for as long as the internet is being used. Weirdly enough I was drawn back to the 8th grade reading The Diary of Anne Frank and wondering whether there would be any sort of firsthand knowledge of the lived experience of the COVID-19 pandemic come 2070, or 2100. This idea for me includes the needs of functionality, it documents information and experiences about the pandemic and the lived experiences of others, usability, being able to pass on the information and act as a firsthand document from the time period, and creativity. There’s also an element of communication involved in the actual process of gathering the information since I would be calling friends and family for stories about what they doing, which would force me to stay in contact with people something I have a hard time doing.
My second idea was to create “COVID-19 The Musical” with my family. Throughout this whole quarantine, I’ve been going a little bit insane. Constantly being in the house with no escape and no outlet is a lot for me and for my entire family. For me this idea was one where we could work together as a family, satisfying the need for love as it encourages working together and communicating, and spend a couple of weeks, if not months, doing something a bit random, but a lot of fun. In terms of keeping my family from getting bored and murdering one another for small annoyances, it satisfies the need of functionality, and it would encourage creativity and thinking outside of the box in a time where it feels like we’re all trapped in one. It would also force us to continually be working on something rather than simply giving up when we’re bored or don’t want to work anymore by pushing us towards an end goal. This idea of consistently working, and consistently working at the same level of quality, would also encourage cooperation and thus cut down on any sort of in-fighting that may occur in my 5-person household.
My third idea was to set up a 24-hour film event with my friends and I. I would contact a series of friends and family and we would agree upon a 24-hour period where we would have to write a script and film and edit a movie. This falls under the “Connection to Others” category of my brainstorming exercise, since it would require contact to and from others as well as cooperation over large distances. Again, for me, this idea satisfies love, functionality, and creativity since we’d be working together to come up with an end product that we could then show our friends and family and have a lot of fun doing in the process. It would force us to think about logistic concerns and technological concerns to allow us to film in different locations without being together, but overall I think that it could be a really fun experience and a great way to stay in contact with people.
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