Parallels Expo: Tribute to Myrtle Katherine Cobb

How much of the world can escape from our notice? Who decides who makes history?

Does it even matter?

Concept

We are small specks in the grand scheme of space and time. We wanted to remind people of that and pay tribute to the ones that get lost through the cracks, or forgotten, even when they spend their whole lives trying to understand and help others understand the world as it is. Our objective was to lead people through an invented scientific breakthrough while giving them a little puzzle to solve with sound and their environment.

Implementation

Our project was an experience in augmented storytelling. We had a background for our researcher and her life story. We built a touch-sensitive painting with acrylics and conductive paint on a wooden surface and made it interactive using Makey Makey’s and processed sound clips. We wrote and recorded audio logs based on our constructed story and set up a “research space” with a homey look at the venue.  

Link: listen to the recorded audio logs

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1diqHq8UGj9AYyFeSbHYjCXh8ifj3nda_/view?usp=sharing

Motivation/connection to parallels

Our connection to parallels is that we wanted to create some kind of factual information which could be expected to be true. Our goal was to experiment and see if it could be paralleled elsewhere, so we chose to add a storytelling element into the experience. The objective was whether this could pass on a similar feeling/experience.

Responses

Most visitors did not second-guess the existence of Myrtle. For most people there would be very little reason to. We made her backstory believable enough to, for an uninformed person, seem realistic. Especially the part about woman education in the early 20th century appealed to many visitors. The authenticity of the audio logs was questioned a fair bit, which we expected seeing how recordings from that time are rare and especially the later logs get full-on science fiction. To our amazement some people actually did completely believe the logs were real, although that was mostly thanks to them not really understanding them. The “big reveal” that Myrtle never existed came to many visitors as a surprise. Mostly people with no background in science believed Myrtle was real, but because they only just learned of her supposed existence the surprise was not that big. There were few instances where the reveal was a real shocker, and also a fair amount of people that were simply sceptical of the whole thing from the start.

Visitors reacted positively on the painting, although sometimes they needed a small (or big) hint that it was, in fact, interactive.