Public Open Mic

So... as most of you guys know Michael and I have been exploring many different ideas.  The last idea that we were working on was the camera and notebook idea.  The interaction between the user and our prototype made us realize that there were no connections being made between the people using the camera/notebook.  Each page started to become an individual idea that stood alone, rather than a thought provoked by the previous entry, which was what we initially wanted and thought would happen.  We started exploring different ideas that might be able to solve this problem of discontinuity between the different entries.  However, somehow within our discussion, we ended up coming up with a public open mic idea! 

This idea would involve putting a platform and microphone in a public space, like union square, and would be open for anyone to come and talk about anything they wanted.  The next person would then come up and either say a response or any thought that was provoked by what was said by the previous person, and so on.  While discussing this idea a problem we saw coming was how do we get people to want to come up and talk?  Instead of just resorting to bribing people with food, for friday we decided to just go out there to see what would happen.  Instead of setting up a mic and platform, we decided to do individual interviews.  We would approach the individuals and would allow the next individual to listen and see the previous interview through our cameras.    

We started out in Union Square and started interviewing individuals we found sitting around.  We started with a middle aged woman and asked her to say whatever she wanted, anything she was passionate about or had on her mind at the moment.  She started to talk about Obama winning the presidential elections and her views on it.  We then went on to interview 10 people in total.  Each showing the last interview that was done.  The last person ended up talking about his views on being positive, not mentioning the election or Obama once.    

Although we are not exactly sure where this will all lead to in the end, we found the process and outcome very interesting.  We also discussed different ideas of approaching it, such as giving the initial person a topic.