A co-participatory, speculative theatre honouring the legacy of August Wilson

Timeline

2 months~

COLLABORATORS

1 Project Lead Coordinator
1 Designer

CONSTRAINTS

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MY ROLE

Conceptualising experience and building digital design artifacts through code and Touchdesigner

Over a series of design sprints, research, and speculative frameworks, I worked with the team to conceptualise and build out the design artifacts for the experience, leading the creative tech experience and touchpoints.

CONTEXT & INSPIRATION

In our time spent in the August Wilson Archive, we found ourselves moved by an outpouring of memory...

For years after August Wilson brought his plays to life, people from across the world reached out to him with letters filled with gratitude, shared experiences, and stories of personal transformation. These heartfelt messages are now safeguarded within the August Wilson Archive, offering a space for everyone to engage with his legacy.

In this inaugural opening of Speculative Theater, we invite you to explore, reflect, and uncover your connection to the collective narrative.

SPECULATIVE THEATER: PLAYSTATIONS

The theater inauguration and construction of Act II, 'Recollections'.

Participants were invited to reflect on prompts that ranged from describing the physical places where they felt most at home to expressing their innermost feelings and sentiments.

Much like the plays of August Wilson, it was through the power of words that characters, scenes, and realities emerged—resonating deeply with many.

Research & Concept development

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What are some existing challenges non-profits face, and expect to in the future?

Our first step was to conduct user interviews and secondary research on several non-profits around Pittsburgh.

We conducted user interviews with nonprofit leaders and synthesized our findings with an affinity diagram, through specific quotes/phrases noted down.

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Identifying Signals and Drivers

From our diagram, we highlighted the issues and goals addressing three states of time: the past, present, and future.

We also used the interviews to identify signals (evidence/ideas of where the future is headed) and drivers (long term trends) of the future.
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A shift towards more individual involvement and local efforts

Leaders envisioned a vibrant community as one that is tight knit, where everyone is able to help each other out.

Some of the long terms and trends (drivers) include technological advancements and lack of funding. We discovered that smaller organisations anticipate these challenges, and also have a fear sustaining a business and organisation model.

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Futures Ladder

Using insights and themes from our interview, we brainstormed more optimistic and pessimistic future scenarios regarding the nonprofit landscape in Pittsburgh.

NSR, our client, was most interested in the scenarios that involved the centralisation of resources, where physical spaces become collaborative, dedicated areas for groups to tackle wicked problems. They were also interested in scenarios of nonprofit marginalisation by institutions, and losing their working privileges in pursuit of larger impact.

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Scenario building - Futures Wheel

We expanded on these top scenarios using a framework called the futures wheel, allowing us to build upon the narrative we have, and consider how this future impacts society from a social, technological, ecological, economic, and political way, which can be used to think about how we want to prompt participants.

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Designing the experience of the installation

Several artefacts were created to support the narrative of a speakeasy based in the future called People’s Vertex, where Nonprofits and other grassroots organizations face heavy resistance from the system,to the point where their work can be described as back alley and stigmatized.
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BRANDING & ARTEFACT DEVELOPMENT

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Branding & Design

I curated a moodboard to lead the direction of branding and also posters that would be inside the speakeasy. I mapped out ways we could visuall yrepresent a sense of repression and resistance to something more ‘hopeful’ and light.
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Visually, we looked at more grunge, dark and somber, and anti-design visual styles to more colorful, playful, and modern visual styles with chrome, nature like elements.
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UI Interaction and worldbuilding

Several tablets were used to display the Figma prototype during the experiential futures event, and people were allowed tointeract with them using their ID keychains given at the beginning of the experience. Small half-letter sized menus were also scattered across the bar space, giving visitors ample opportunities to read and digest the different services.

The UI serves as an interactive and ‘futuristic’ medium between the curated services and users, while also roleplaying the possibilities of future narratives/work offered by patrons of the bar.
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Final Takeaways

A future scenario didn’t have to be perfect, it just had to exist as a starting point for conversation. What if this were the future, why would it exist and what would that mean to you? That's what we asked participants.

From the project, I also learnt a lot about speculative design as a research but also storytelling method - another way design can frame and shape the way we engage with people and things around us.
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ACT 2 IN PROGRESS

Behind the construction tarp: Playscapes of memories, evolving scenes that grow over time

A playscape or scene is composed of multiple layers of memories, drawn from the audience’s contributions. It is a performance—a dynamic interplay of words and ideas—a dialogue between actors, the writer, and the audience.

By overlapping fundamental shapes and weaving sentence fragments from diverse memories and voices, a conversation emerges. Much like language, it forms the foundation for worlds and realities.

THE WEB INSTALLATION EXPERIENCE

A digital archive and 'recollection' of memories hosted on the web

Participants can access the input page to add their memory, distilled into 1 or more sentences. The contributions show up in the space as words stream down in a loop, where memories are contributed, viewable at speculativetheater.com
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FINAL THOUGHTS

Special thanks to the designers and the UPitt Library Archives

For all the designers and folks involved – Shannon Wei Lee, Jocelyn Ibarra, Sofia Iversson, Vicky Gonzalez, Doretha Murray, The Time Travel Agency, and the University of Pittsburgh Library Archives for bringing this amazing project to life.

OTHER TECH EXPLORATIONS

Iterations and explorations

From playing around Touchdesigner the first time to dealing with the backend configurations for the experience –

PLAYSCAPE VARIATIONS IN COLOR, MOVEMENT, AND SHAPE