#summer assignment

My current one is making me journal. Easy except I have to partake in what I’m calling “mandatory fun” where basically it’s giving me weird ass tasks such as

•Own a farm

•Wrestle a bear

•Stare into the face of god

Like? And making me read poetry? What happen to authencity I would not willingly do half this shit

A little about me: Hi, my name’s Elena! I worked in video games for 4 years, but became a little disillusioned by the game world and am here to explore outside of that world (both through non-traditional games and beyond games). I really enjoy creative coding and would love to continue to make work of that nature.

The questions I explored in my first thesis brainstorming are the following:

1. How do we redirect the trajectory of our personal technological devices from sparking pleasure (e.g. through the creation and instantaneous fulfillment of desire) to the creation/ cultivation of joy?

Reading both Addiction by Design by Natasha Dow Schüll a couple of years ago, and more recently, “Joy”, an essay by Zadie Smith this Summer, I’ve started to think about the slippery path of pleasure fulfillment in our personal devices. Joy, Smith writes, is a more nuanced pleasure, and one that is often preceded by a struggle or hardship of some kind. Is it possible to veer away from pleasure-fueled addiction and towards a path that takes into account our past, present, and future instead? What would a fundamental design shift in our user experiences look like?

2. Can we create technology to help facilitate a “reset” on the negative patterns of behavior we have deeply ingrained in ourselves as individuals and as a society?

Sparked by reading How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan this summer, I began to think more deeply about the ability to temporarily expand the plasticity of one’s brain, and the benefits that that might have on humankind. In his book, Pollan discusses the ways that LSD allows its users to easily move beyond the constraints of their sober mind. He goes on to describe this as being equal parts scientific, since it is stimulated by a chemical, and spiritual, a word the users regularly use to describe their experience. Is there a way that we can integrate technology into our lives that has a similar effect?

PROTOTYPE 1

I decided to start with the low-hanging fruit and make a simple alteration to my phone to try and eliminate (or reduce) the feeling of pleasure and anxiety stimulated through notifications. Namely, I wanted to see how overwriting the notifications from fleeting alerts about email, instagram, etc to reminders of deeply joyful memories might affect me. I wanted to attempt to provoke joy through my personal devices in a very literal manner in order to attempt to understand what joy means in this context.

I removed all notifications on my phone, including texts, phone calls, etc and created a new email account that would be the only app notifying me. I then wrote a bunch of draft emails detailing joyful memories from my past, and wrote a script through gmail to email me these drafts throughout the day at random intervals.

I didn’t find my 1st prototype that compelling, and I realized that instead I might be less interested in the difference between pleasure and joy, and more interested in the reevaluation of the way people engage with their technology and the capitalist markers for a successful experience (efficiency, speed, etc). My second idea for a prototype was simply to mess with these markers and see what kind of result they might yield.

I landed on an idea of cutting out the human middleman when it comes to browsing the internet. What if humans relinquished control of their browsing experience and instead were at the mercy of a completely randomized browsing experience? How might that change the way we feel when we pick up our phone mindlessly, or sit at the computer with no real intention? On the other hand, how might this change the way we come to the internet with a purpose? Below is a story board I drew detailing out what it might look like. The user would start with a search term they type themselves, but the links they click on and the trajectory of their search would be determined at random.

Response From Fleur:

Here’s what I’d do:

Start NOW. Do the pomodoro technique (set a timer and work 25 straight minutes and then break for 5 minutes. Repeat until done.

Also, only do what you absolutely have to do. Do the bare minimum on all the assignments as quickly as you can. Then touch them up. Some teachers won’t collect them the very first day. They might give you one extra class period to do them. But you won’t know if they’re going to do that until you get there and it might not happen. Also, because school is blue/red days. You should probably do your blue day assignments first (if you have blue and red day assignments).

If any of your assignments involve reading, here are my tips on how to do more reading than you have time for: http://realtalk-tj.tumblr.com/post/177418892121/how-do-u-get-through-the-apush-summer-reading

Remember, at this point it’s not about being perfect, it’s about being “good enough”. If you know you can’t do a perfect job because time is limited, your goal is to get as many points as you can get above a 50%. You can make up for it later in the year. And that’s perfectly okay.

Also, take care of yourself. No need to stress and panic. Limited time for summer assignments is not gonna ruin your grades. Maybe take 10 minutes at some point each day while you’re working to lie down and listen to a guided relaxation recording from here: https://students.dartmouth.edu/wellness-center/wellness-mindfulness/relaxation-downloads/guided-imagery-visualization

Response from Hedwig:

Response from Hedwig: