PROJECT #2: PROPOSAL

PROPOSAL: THE CAROUSEL / SUN SET

address in detail what you will do for your project and why

Recalling the near past provides a certain level of comfort. NOSTALGIA also provides a soft landing form the fears of extinction. Once diagnosed as melancholy, which was a bona fide psychological malady in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nostalgia serves as a mental safety net. What better lifeline to throw a drowning soul, for example, than the progressive illusions produced by vintage advertisements, which during the Fifties were conceived to ease the postwar generation into the atomic age? It triggered desires that provoke consumerism/consumption. And consumerism was synonymous with patriotism.

For this project, I will utilize vintage advertising as creative inspiration for a reimagined, emergent focused representation of the same advertisement. Advertising from this time period was pre-personal computing, created without knowledge of what was possible. I will develop a 3-dimensional object that will represent the focus of the advertisement. I’m providing two options for presentation – depending on the capabilities of my Arduino screen. Upon further research, it may only be able to display photos – no video. For example:

Video – Sony TV advertisement. ex. reproduction of vintage “SUN SET” television. (3D model/mold) The video screen will show video, not from/for the time. (1966-67)

Photos – Carousel advertisement. ex. reimagined/redesigned modern ‘carousel’ that utilizes the screen to show still images

Skills needed/Resources needed

Large format printing
Arduino/Processing
Video player/screen
3D printing

Deliverables/Sketch of visual aspects:

Ultimately this project would end with an interactive installation but believe that is too much to accomplish in a 4 week time period. For example, for the Sun Set – the advertisement would be hung on the wall behind an outdoor lounge chair, with soda pop sitting on the floor nearby. The vintage television would be set atop other artifacts from the time period. This vintage television would play emergent technology era imagery/video. This interactive installation would beckon the viewer to sit down, engage, watch video content.

This is the first hint at ubiquitous nature of tv, beginning of its saturation on our society. This project is designed to showcase emergent technology influence on product, consumerism, and culture.