For the missing assignment, my idea is more conceptual that pratical and again, the themes of space and interactivity are combined.
Portuguese people have a special characteristic, very human indeed but for me very peculiar - we love to complain. We complain about everything that happens with us but we don´t do anything to change. I know that this is a commum characteristic of people but as a Portuguese I think that we exceed a little bit. Maybe living in New York gave me more awareness of this fact and also because I don´t see that happen so much here. People are more relaxed or at least they don´t expose so much their complains to the outside. That it´s also another question that remains but in the end I think that there is different cultural aways to approach and view the world.
But, going back to the assignment, my idea is to design a Complaint bag that listen to all your complains. This way, we can put everything out from inside without having to through that negative energy into someone else. The bag becames a friend that listen to all your complains, a shoulder where you can relieve everything.
As we are talking with the bag, complaining, complaning she starts to change it´s shape ( inflate), like trunks of a tree. When we stop complaining, after a while she go back to it´s normal shape. If you complain to much the trunks started to grow and roll over your body making you prisoner of your own complains.
The Complaint Bag wants to give you awareness that complaining so much about the world, people, normal life only affect yourself and that you have to get ride of it or if not you get trapped.
It´s funny because this idea is inside me for a long time, maybe influenced by the ScreamBody, a work by Kelly Dobson and also because I suffer from complaint as a typical portuguese girl.
The idea is to create a bag that could be inflated and that have different holes, from here the trunks start to grow, as we are complaining. The bag have a microphone.(listening to our voice) and in each hole there is a fan that is activated according with the duration of the complain.
I need to make some drawings in order to turn the idea more clear and also to try to make a prototype to study how can the trunks grow in order to roll around the body.
But I love the idea and the concept because is very related to here I came from.