Remix Culture and Concepts
This week in class we discussed the term remix culture. Essentially, remix culture is the encouragement of creating new ideas by merging or combining already existing concepts. It often focuses on improvement and change by elaborating and expanding on other people's creations. In order to explore remix culture ourselves, we were given a task to create 10 new concepts in Tinkercad by remixing different things we found on Thingiverse in order to come up with new meanings.
Here's what I came up with:
Concept 1
In this concept, I wanted to explore the relationship between western and indigenous cultures. There is a gross opposition between each world's ways of construction and worldview. By borrowing a turtle and a cityscape, I wanted to demonstrate how colonizers not only colonize their space but also other culture's ideologies.
The concept of a world turtle is believed to have stemmed from Native American myth and legend. From the Lenape and Iroquois creation stories, the Earth has grown from the shell of a sea turtle as soil is piled on top of it's shell. But what happens when the world that the turtle carries is no longer it's own, and instead a massive city constructed from colonizers that eats up and pollutes the world?
Concept 2
In many senses, food has become an accessory to people. Instead of simply being something we consume to stay alive, the way we present ourselves around food has become an important and very apparent theme in our society (carrying Starbucks cups, or how your favourite type of burger can impact the way people see you). By giving food this type of representation, we project our identities and meanings onto food. The image below is what might happen if instead of food being accessories to us, we were accessories to food.
Concept 3
Emojis have become such a common method of communication that they almost make people seem robotic. It's almost cruel to assume that complex human emotion can be perfectly described through tiny little pictures of faces.
Emojis are extremely limited, and this attempt to bring emotion into texting and online communication really makes us feel more like robots. Instead of being an expression of how you really feel, in reality you're locked down into one simple emoji which tends to limit our emotions instead of express them. This makes us feel like a walking robot with only emojis to express ourselves, as shown below.
Concept 4
As I kid, I always got confused over tow trucks. Whenever I heard someone talk about getting their car towed, I thought they were getting toed! The idea of a toe truck seems funny yet extremely strange. It would be wild to see a truck carrying a massive toe down the road. Or better yet, a giant foot.
Concept 5
Often times it seems objects are thrown together without much thought. Deisgn companies are too focused on making money rather than improvement or innovation. They are scared to go outside of the box because what they're doing now works so well.
In certain movies (the Star Wars saga and the Avengers), plot is often sacrificed for the ability to make money in the future. Characters are made out to appear dead in a great dramatic turn, but then soon revealed to be perfectly fine. This is so that in the future, they are able to mash characters together in order to squeeze more content and money from the franchises.
Taking these ideas to the extreme, I decided to mash together a chainsaw and a toothbrush. At first glance, this objects seems great! You can cut down trees and brush your teeth at the same time, something I've been totally missing out on. But in reality, it just makes everything that much harder. And very dangerous. This concept is a call to be careful while walking the balance between essence and evolution.
toothbrush: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:46444
Concept 6
Society today has an extremely uncaring attitude towards violence. There's violence happening all over the world. People are dying to military violence every day, yet it's become such a comfortable backdrop to our environment that nobody cares - only because it doesn't effect us.
I decided to create a new weapon, where we can comfortably sit atop the tank as it tears the world apart. Now we can finally play spectator to the violence that we're so ignorant to. Maybe if people can finally see how much the world suffers, they will start caring about it.
Concept 7
This concept is based off of those old-school propeller hats. Now you can grow up in style, and still have fun! We're often pushed out of what we love when we grow up, especially when they're considered childish or deemed unwell for the adult life. Why not combine both, and have the best of both worlds? Now you can wear a fancy fedora, while still having fun! I believe we should resist the idea of growing out of what you love, and instead embrace these things as you get older.
puddle jumper whirligig: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:39195
Concept 8
For some things, one just can't go without the other. For some reason, it's portrayed in media that a coffee just can't go without a donut. But why do these two things even go together? I've never actually seen somebody eat a donut and coffee for breakfast. And who would want to eat a donut for breakfast? That sounds like a far too sugary morning for me. At least now, you can enjoy them both of them at once! With a new donut handle, you can even get your fingers sticky as a bonus.
Concept 9
The concept below is a literal take on how we're ruining our planet. Whenever we consume things, we are taking a small bite out of our planet. Everyday things like driving, eating meat and taking showers are really just eating at our planet. But because everybody else is doing it it's really nobodies fault, right?
I thought it would be a funny realization to portray the Earth being eaten. I wonder what it would taste like? Probably a squishy ball of dirt with a very warm surprise inside.
Concept 10
We have safety systems in place for almost everything. But what are we supposed to do when these safety systems are faulty too? One example that comes to mind is the police system. Police are meant to serve and protect everyone, however recently it has become clear that there is deep-rooted bias in the system.
The concept below illustrates another less likely example of this. What would we do if a fire hydrant caught on fire? Maybe we could attach a hose to the top and fight fire with fire.
fire hydrant: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:148256