Making the ordinary, extraordinary: (Site brief)

The brief we where given was to take the everyday object, analyze and research it in depth, then create an outcome that looks at five aspects of the object. The everyday object I used was our kitchen bin as it (in a weird way) has a lot of character.

The research I undertook and considered was…

-Other works that made the ordinary- extraordinary such as Marcel Duchamp’s readymade toilet, Tracey Emins ‘Everyone I have Slept With 63-95’ camping tent, Carl Andre Equivalent VIII 1966 and Piero Manzoni- “Merda d’artista” (artists shit).

-What is a bin?

-Measurements, dimensions and location of my site

-Materials and how it works or other ways it could work

-Hygiene, touch, smells and sounds

-Human interaction; how much each individual uses it and what goes in, how the bin feels when we individually go near the bin, how healthy is our bin?

-How the meaning of the bin could be changed: if it had different owners, if it was put somewhere else, could it be used as something else (not a bin)- is it only a rubbish bin because we are told that is what it is, when is rubbish considered rubbish

-The fear and laziness of each housemate and how we do not like to change the bin until it is really necessary.

With this in depth research, I decided communicate the laziness of changing the bin, how unhygienic it is including sounds and smells, what each housemate puts into the bin and how it differentiates between us. In a general conversation with Pete (one of my six housemates) he said “Our kitchen bin is like a game; everyone balances the rubbish on top of the pile, the person who tips it, changes the bin”. Based on this quote, I decided to communicate my aspects through a playful flash game in the style of a common time waster game, very student like.

(Story boards for the narrative of the game which came with a Disc full of sound examples and quotes that would be used)

The general idea is to pile up the rubbish whilst balancing it:

Each piece of rubbish is colour coded and has a scoring value (depending on each housemates eating habit; the healthier they are, the easier to balance their rubbish therefore a lower score. An unhealthy persons rubbish will be heavier and harder to balance, therefore giving it a higher scoring.) To begin lower scoring objects are dropped in order to let the player get used to the game.

The better you get at the game, the heavier the objects you need to drop; therefore the harder it is to balance the bin. As the pile gets higher and the bin is balanced, the levels increase. When a level has been increased, a housemate says a quote (as there are six house mates, there are six quotes therefore six levels). For obvious reasons, each level increases its difficulty (heavier objects are more often being dropped making the rubbish pile much harder to balance).

When the pile collapses as the pile is too unbalanced or not enough objects have landed onto the pile, a voice over of James Cox shouts ‘UNLUCKY’ (This is usually said in our house when someone gets the ‘short straw.’)

The scoreboard will then appear to enable you to enter your details. The score will put you in sequential order in both ‘My Scores’ and if you have a high enough score, in ‘Top Scores’.

This brief was particularly useful to us as it helped us develop a new way of researching and encouraging us to looks beyond the obvious.