I'm going to write my process in chronological order, so my final work will be shown in the last of this blog post.
Doodle and Brainstorm
First thing I did for the project was to doodle bunch of ideas about my time capsule. Here, one of the biggest problem was in which form I want to (or should) put my 99 songs in the capsule: analog (without electricity) or digital. It took me a quite amount of time which way to go and I ended up choosing digital since it is just easier to start with. My concern about the digital is that it is highly possible that there might be no electricity when people find my time capsule.
(I really liked the concept of analog and I would love to work on it in the future. If I chose analog, what I would do was printing 99 songs in vinyl record, create a record player which can be played via hand-spinning without electricity, and create a box which encourage people to create their 100th song, print it out in vinyl record and put it in the box.)
Version 1
So I decided to go playin music in digital way, now I have to think about its container. There are three items in my capsule, 99 songs, the book, and my letter. My first idea of the box is this. My first approach was to build something that fits every three items without thinking about details. I happened to have some styrofoams from the box of my new furniture so I just use them.
First, I cut styrofoams so that the book can fit into the container. I made a hole so that people can easily pick up the book. Then I came up an idea that it would be fun that people can see my message (letter) after they pick up the book.
After that, I struggled how I can put 99 songs into the container. Two choices are easily came up: (1) Put smartphone in the container (2) Put some kind of digital music player. For now I chose the smartphone idea since it is just easy way. To be honest I am not a big fan of this idea because it is too straightforward and no interesting hook, but I can think about it how to improve my idea AFTER I finish this version.
Also, while making this styrofoam container, the idea of making the container as a book hit me. “Book” implies stories which I want to convey via this project. Nice :-)
Get some fresh air
Next day, I went out to get some fresh air because I feel I was kind of stuck, then I found some great insights. When I went to my favorite cafe, I found a free magazine. This inspired me to use news paper to make my container. News paper is a great medium for a time capsule because it has NOW feeling for me and HISTORY feeling for people in the future. I also found different ways of book binding so that I could use it for my container. (I also have to tell that I found a super cute book about cats in NY shops in a bookstore newly discovered. It's nice to go out!)
I did not want to spend money to buy bunch of news papers, so I searched around the city and got many free papers. What I am going to do is to make a book-like container to put my items using them.
Version 2
Here is my container version 2. There are several things I need to consider.
- The paper I chose is too weak to hold my items. Should I choose ticker paper, or somehow fix papers by glue or something, or? Also, styrofoam has a grip to hold items not to fall off, but paper doesn't. How I can solve this?
- What to do with a cover? Cover is very important because it gives a first impression.
- Still don't like the idea of smartphone to play music. Need solution.
I don't think I was able to finish this work, but time is over. This assignment was fun! I will work on and finish it.
Forgot to add my memo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F-C--FSNzyxbvX8wwjvBQ3O3CskTteOL/view?usp=sharing