Summing up all the previous feedback, I suggested that this week we need to work on two burning issues that have been annoying us for 2 weeks:
Make the design real and place it in Brixton for a benefit to the locals
How blockchain helps this design, what it meant to have all the transactions recorded
A Sense of Community
In response to the first question, our group decided to do another street research in Brixton, since we have experienced the multicultural atmosphere there, this time, we aimed to explore the unique features of this town. I realised that combine different musical specialities into one song or video can not representthe special culture in Brixton. Therefore, in this research, instead of randomly asking people to display their skills, our group wanted to record the activities which locals do in their free time that expose them to the life and culture of Brixton. we called it "Cultural Talents".
"Cultural Talents" research in Brixton, photo by group
This research core was for gathering people together and matching their own cultural interests with the others that they would like to learn or be interested in. Also, participants were encouraged to create any weird or fantasy outcomes by mixing multiple talents.
The Core of the Blockchain
Thinking about the second question, I looked back at the brief and reflected on the purposes of this project: 1. For us, understand blockchain at a micro level and explain it in our design without any "explanation"; 2. For audiences, be involved in the blockchain design and actually feel what it's all about. As such, the value of this project is more than the explanatory but the experiential.
Consequently, I summarised the main effect of blockchain technology and wondered how this mechanism could be incorporated into our cultural mashup activities. Since blockchain can help to keep track of information and verify its integrity, it exists to ensure the capability of an individual to conduct the next transaction through previous records.
However, reflected on our design, for a long time, we have only regarded it as a shared ledger without fully using its verification function. Whether week 4's idea of music mashup or week 5's idea of skill mashup, we used the blockchain as a shared playlist or a folder for storing outcomes. Other features, such as time sequences, anonymous nodes, traceable data etc, appeared to play no role in those ideas. Hence, make the blockchain reasonable in our design is the primary mission now.
Art Fund Based On Blockchain
Therefore, I proposed we could nave an art fund that follows all features of blockchain so that our concept would be more reasonable. Ines and I designed a rewarding system that everyone can donate to their favourite creations and everyone in the network could use the shared rewards to create new stuff. By using blockchain technology, each transaction would be recorded on the network so that every piece of donation, every 'like' of artwork is transparent to all nodes in the network.
Culture mashup foundation, Ines and Svaney
Design A System
Furthermore, Manali helped us design a low fidelity prototype for the digital platform, simply demonstrated the steps of share skills, find collaborators, support artworks and apply for foundations.
Digital platform, Ines, Manali and Svaney
On the other hand, Gab was preparing the physical artworks and visual slides that we could explain and show our idea on the presentation
Artworks by Gab
Speed Dating and Feedback
We had the second speed dating with our peers this Thursday. Three mostly mentioned keywords from their feedback are “Blockchain”, “Physical” and “Community”. Briefly, people liked our idea of creating a sense of community and encourage people to collaborate and create something new and weird. However, they also wanted to directly see and feel what blockchain is in a more physical way and suggested we consider more about the gap between the digital platform and the physical spaces.