THE FLOATING BOX
AFTER THE FLOOD - OUR DENOUEMENT*
*Final Act
Our interactive story was summed up in our floating box containing a survival kit and journal of Alex, a character that we created who survived the dystopian world of a flooded Seattle. It’s a story not just survival, but how we can maintain our sanity in a traumatic and uncertain situation. Our goal was to impart a story that we humans are resilient and can adapt when civilization (at least as we know it) has collapsed. Our thesis is that even if climate change and human interaction causes “the end of the world” -- the world still goes on but presents a situation where we have to go back to our roots to live “off the land” and make do with what we can find much like our ancestors before us.
(The floating survival kit)
The interaction of the physical component of the survival kit and journal as well as its digital counterpart leads the user to explore a survival situation and maybe how they can see themselves in that position with the goal of learning how to be resourceful. This meant creating a world 50 years from now that was the worst case scenario, and then providing a narrative of how to navigate that via Alex and the items that she collects on her journey. After all, that is what stories are for: to teach how to grow up and survive in a harsh world. In this case, one where all the ice has melted on the planet causing a 70 meter sea level rise flooding and destroying the major civilizations on the planet as most live near a coastline or body of water susceptible to this.
(Alex's world of a flooded Seattlle)
From this world, we created The Floating Survival Kit. We knew that it had to float so it didn’t get lost by it’s user, it contained the bare minimum to make a fire in any condition, purify water to be drinkable, but also to keep safe the artifact that keeps its user sane under these conditions - the Journal and Wilbur, a small squeezable pig that Alex finds that becomes her source of companionship and motivation.
(Wilbur! Alex's BFF in the apocalypse)
.jpg)
INTERACTIONS WITH THE SURVIVAL KIT AND JOURNAL
 |  |
|---|
Oh, and being in a water logged world calls for high tech water-proof paper!
.jpg)
From the beginning, we had the focus of creating a survival kit in a flooded world, so our team came up with a plastic box to keep everything in. We added styrofoam that could be found even 50 years from now in the detritus of our modern civilization of plastic packaging. We knew that our items were not “futuristic” given that civilization would have collapsed to produce anything of advanced technology, and therefore everything would have been scavenged from the leftovers. It was just a matter of aging it to make a modern thing used 50 years into the future, and then found 300 years hence.
The plastic box was too shiny and new, so we took sandpaper to scrape it up, especially on the corners and where it would see the most wear. We set it outside in the rain, dry, then let it get wet again over and over, and then cover it with coffee grounds to give it a nice patina.
(aging the Floating Box in coffee grounds)
The online component (once the user found the passcode to enter) was complemented with hand-made illustrations of each of the items in the box, an online version of the Journal, and a visitor's log where future survivors can share their stories.
Alex's website (Password is 123456)
(Random screenshots)
 |  |  |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
Illustration of Alex by Kyley
(Colored sketch vs. painting)
PICTURES OF ALEX'S JOURNAL ENTRIES
 |  |  |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
Let’s hear from our team members!
(in alphabetical order)
DAVID
I was responsible for helping assemble the physical artifact, and also creating the Journal - this meant coming up with a narrative story (a character that has a goal but experiences obstacles and learns something along the way) based on the world that we came up with. It was an interesting challenge to take something current and age it to look like it was 50 years in the future, and our team came up with ideas to do that. It was also interesting to develop a storyline so I had to pull on my experience as a filmmaker and writer (some of this I was inspired by a post-apocalyptic screenplay I wrote a few years back in addition to other similar films I have seen). I brought my administrative experience as a project manager to make sure all required tasks are done in a timely manner in a way that was equitable for everyone based on their own particular talents that they bring to the table.
IRIS
During the process of doing the project, I am mainly responsible for helping create and update the team website for our group. The team website was exciting to develop, and the remaining work is to keep track of the group's project process. Besides that, our group has a perfect theme to start with. The first and most natural part is some necessary survival props. In addition, the more difficult part is the construction of the narrative element, so we created the main character Alex, and constructed the diary and website from her perspective. This makes our physical works more detailed and extensible, and also has some interactivity on the website. And in the production process, we ignored a part of the plan made at the beginning, but we still included the part we ignored at the end, which is about the cure of mental illness. Therefore, after discussion, we found a cute prop, a squeaky pig. This prop meets our needs, and Alex's companionship through this prop reduces the mental illness caused by the bad weather and environment. I think the more interesting part is our group discussion and guessing all useful accessories, rummaging at home, and slowly we had the final version.
JARED
During this quarter I was focusing on bringing a project that would be pleasing to the eye as well as bring a message that would be recognizable from someone who has not ever seen the project. Making something that can be interacted with without confusion was really important to me. When team members would bring up ideas about the project i would try to shed those ideas into a light that could be understood by anyone in the class. I tend to be rules and instruction oriented, so I did have some struggles when there weren’t specific routes for an idea on the project. It made it very fun to develop and change ideas to fit a narrative. It was enjoyable making an artifact that was oriented many years into the future. I don’t normally think creatively so it was better for others to determine the idea for the overarching story. I am good at following instructions, so after the ideas were finished I was able to speak to how they met or did not meet requirements.
KYLEY
I was responsible for the digital aspect of this project. I created the project’s websites (the password protected Tumblr, and Alex’s Weebly site), and drew the item inventory illustrations on the Weebly. (I also drew an illustration of Alex, just for fun.) In the story of our project, our protagonist travels south throughout her journey, and in the end she shuts down Alexa before it can do any more damage to the Earth. After deeming that it was safe to do so, Alex sits down and decides to create a website to document her experience online and provide a guide on how to use the contents of her box, in case anyone finds it in the future and wants to put her survival kit to use. Since the government was also considered an enemy of the people, Alex decided to password protect her website to keep the government from accessing it.
I basically used Alex’s reasoning as my own when creating the website. I wasn’t able to put a password directly on the Weebly site because it required me to upgrade it, so instead I created a Tumblr sideblog, password-protected it, and used a code that would automatically redirect whoever is accessing the site to Alex’s Weebly. Other than that, I didn’t encounter many challenges when making the websites. I also already had minimal knowledge in HTML/CSS before starting this project which helped me out a bit. David and Randall created an awesome story, and I did my best to create a visual representation of Alex’s world via the website and my drawings. Overall I had a lot of fun with this project and loved how our box, the journal, and the websites turned out looking.
RANDALL
Originally we were unsure of what direction to go in with this project, one of our readings early on had a website that showed what the world would look like if the sea level rose 1-7 meters or so. I’ve lived here, Virgina, Massachusetts and Rhode Island and took a look around places I was familiar with at the time, I was very curious about it. When we were struggling to think of a future scenario and an artifact to go with it, I began to wonder what if ALL the ice melted? Turns out this isn’t a novel idea and other people had done the leg work, that’s when I proposed a fairly worst-case-scenario speculative future in which climate change melted all the ice, sea level rose by 70 meters, ⅔ of humanity formerly inhabited areas between sea level and +70m are either dead or migrated, what then? Somehow it stuck, we ran with it and created this survival story. The “Rite in the Rain” journal is something from when I was in the Navy, I’ve held onto it for 6 years thinking it would eventually be useful again and here we are. The water purification tablets and firestarter also came from my personal camping gear. I wrote the write-ups on how to use the gear, emulating “Alex’s” voice as best I could. Originally the box was going to be a styrofoam ice box but it wasn’t as easy to find as we’d thought and modified accordingly. Otherwise we were pretty consistent with our story from beginning to end, mostly adding detail as we go along. Overall it was a very interesting project, I enjoyed seeing what other people did with the prompt though it was kind of sad seeing so many people go full pessimist on the future. I’m old enough to be jaded, I expected more youthful optimism from the others.