Blog 3
Last Monday I attended the last class of my Better Lives project: critical design. Back to November, I remember I immediately chose this project because, even though I didn’t know what it exactly was about yet, I found really interesting the idea of using images and clips to analyze a problem.
However, it was when we started that I really understood what we were asked to do. Our teacher Fabienne explained us that we were supposed to create a trailer (and a presentation about it) about a “wicked problem” we were interested in, with the aim to evolve this problem and not to solve it. At first, I found the idea really challenging, since I realize this was the first time I was creating something just in order to raise awareness on something without expressing my opinion.
After I understood the real aim of the project and I started feeling confident with this new kind of creative process, I started thinking about the problem I wanted to develop. Actually, the choice of the problem has not been the hardest part. In February, the better live lecture about empathy really inspired me and I was really interested in realizing something that could give importance to our relationships and the way we behave toward others. The connection with how people were behaving during the pandemic was immediate. My theme was then “egoism and how it affects our society”. I started my research by downloading some of the most touching clips from the internet. I found videos showing people fighting for food in supermarkets, people escaping from red zones, Heads of State announcing ridiculous measures, and so on. I decided to edit these clips one after the other and to alternate them with some sentences about the fact that we are usually taught to be nice and caring. The aim of my trailer was to create a contrast between how we are taught to behave and how we actually act, without a personal opinion or a final conclusion.
When I finally completed the project I felt I really understood its meaning. The various themes the Better Lives unit proposed us are all problems without a definitive answer. Through the lectures, we were all supposed to think about these huge issues and try to develop a personal opinion and a personal way to solve it. The best way to solve a problem is to push the largest number of people to be aware of it and to constructively think about it. And this is what we were asked to do through our projects. After I showed my trailer to the other members of the group, I got lots of interesting feedback about it. They all told me that thanks to this trailer they would have started to think more about their own egoism and their behaviors. Thanks to this project I feel that my way of thinking and creating are enriched and more positive.