Intro lesson
I learnt about the brief and understood what was expected from me by the end of this project. Premise of this project are as follows, research and create a modern device in a time it didn’t exist yet with the materials that are available in that time as well.
Firstly with the class we looked up different time periods that were important to human civilisation to use as a starting point. Then thinking of different types of devices (I came up with Kettle, Uber, Power-point and glasses). This was a good exercise and allowed me to broaden my thoughts on what a retro device could be. It also got me to start thinking of ideas of what retro device I was planning to create.
Brainstorming
In the same lesson I created an quick idea by putting together one time period and one device to create a retro device. My idea was taking ‘The Age of Discovery’ A time where Europeans countries travelled the sea drafting key maps to be able to navigate the ocean well. The device I chose to this era was Power-point. I chose this device because of their usage of maps. In our modern society power-point is used to show an aesthetically pleasing presentation. Key features of power-point is the ability to move around images as you please, add animations to create dynamic slides as well as add text in different font/colours. More features include adding coloured backgrounds and slide transitions. All to make presentations more appealing to those you show them to.
Developing the idea
I came up with the idea to create a spinning mechanism (resembling a globe however globes did not exist yet in Europe). The other design I came up with was a pulled up map that resembled the mechanism of the ships that were used at that time.
Developing a story
I thought of making this story about a European leader that used this contraption as a quick and effective way to document the land in map form with a some flair of course to mimic power-point.
However after listening to some feedback on needing to be more specific on the region/place where this contraption would be based, I did some research and settles on Italy, mainly on Christopher Columbus as he was a famous drive towards The Age of Discovery.
My Teachers mentioned something about maps that intrigued me which is the idea of adventure maps, ones with drawings of sea creatures and in a more artisan style rather than just an cartography map of the world. This gave me an idea of a story about an father who had a daughter that heard of the stories of The Age of Discovery and decided to invent his own map making device (Also known as Power-point) to help his daughter create her own maps and decorate them, to make her feel like she was adventuring much like Christopher Columbus himself.