Fragility Of Life draws a connection between the fragility of the dinner plate and the fragility of human beings. You walk across a sea of shards while plates are hanging from the ceiling. Each plate has a quote written on it. All these quotes are something that hurt someone. Something that broke them. Some of the plates tell you their story. At a certain point, the plate falls and breaks.

We started with the assignment of creating an embodied experience centered around or from the point of view of a non-human object. We chose the dinner plate, because it's something we use everyday and is seemingly unimportant. We used the characteristic fragilty and connected it to our own fragility. We wanted to show how your words can break someone. Be kind to each other.

The tech (which is what I mostly worked on) consists of multiple Arduino motors hanging on the ceiling. The plates are connected to these with nylon wire. When the motor turns, a hook is pulled away from the plate, causing it to fall. We used Max MSP to connect the Arduino with audio files of the stories. When you hold your hand in front of the sensor, the story starts. If we had more time (and better sensors), we would've wanted it to detect when you're standing in front of the plate.

We used ceramic plates for the shards on the floor, because they are safer to walk on. They also produce an amazing sound that creates an eerie effect. The plates with the quotes are mostly made of porcelain. The fragility of porcelain caused the plates to (usually) break when falling and is another connection to a human's fragility. If we had the chance, we would've wanted to fill an entire room with the sea of shards and the stories.