Kate Tran vs. Technology

This video shows the process of how to destroy technology that has been obsolete. It is a shame to see all this technology go to waste  but I can assure you I had fun making this video :D

A Night In New York

This is a video that I made in response to the hierarchy. Its an abstract form of how the city would look like if it was made out of technology. I chose New York as it is one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world.

Hierarchy of Technological Needs

Looking at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs earlier, I felt that today, technology has a much more important role in people's lives. I wanted to reflect this importance and at the same time recreate the levels of the pyramid in my own way.

Research for the pyramid

I gave students a list of objects such as computer, television, ipod, phone, video games, transport, camera, etc. and asked them to write down in order what they think is the most important to them. The phone was on top of the list for 11 people out of 22. Interestingly, three people even put the ipod down as their most important object.

I was surprised that transport was considered to some people as less important than things such as video games. Only two people considered it as the most important object. This shows that people are now attached to technology and they would prefer to stay home rather than go out.

The graphs shown above are based on the results I gathered. I wanted to use them to create my own new version of the 'Hierarchy of Needs' pyramid based on technological needs.

Requiem for Detroit?

Roger Graef is film maker who decided to document the other side of USA, the almost deserted Detroit. The documentary describes how Detroit rose to the fourth largest city in United States and how it went down, both by population and economy. Who knew that the automobile industry, which made the city famous, would be the same reason for it to fall down. This shows how powerful the impact of technology can be on a society.

image credit: guardian.co.uk

Anthropomorphic

 

When researching, I came across the term Anthropomorphism, which is giving human characteristics to things that you wouldn't normally associate with these characteristics, for example a talking rabbit or a farting alarm clock. Looking at technology I feel that it too has been given a role similar to a person. You can give your ipods a 'personality', by choosing its colour, case, name etc. It's not enough that technology greatly affects our lives, people are now designing robots to replace us. The pictures above are a result of me trying to combine a human image with a mechanical one. I think we rely so much on technology that it has become a part of us.

How to destroy old technology

I went to Andy's workshop again and used his POWER TOOLS to destroy some of the things I bought - LPs, cassettes and video tapes. These are examples of how things looked after destruction. I also filmed the objects being destroyed and plan to make a slow motion video.