I found the crit extremely helpful because I got lot a lot of feedback from people when I asked them to write down the feelings they got when interacting with or looking at my forks. Some of the things they wrote down were:
"They are very frustrating!"
"Wierd but it's not the type you'd see everyday"
"The latex is infuriating because it looks like it would work but when you pick it up it just flops- misleading"
These are the kinds of responses I hoped to get out of people because now they have more of a negative attitude towards an object that they once recognised. However, not everyone felt negative about the forks, one person even said that they were quite satisfying to look at.
"I still think that you would use them to eat food"
"Jewelleryesque"
"They make me think of other uses for food, potato masher"
The fact that people are still reminded of food makes it evident that I haven't altered the appearance of the forks enough to change everyones feelings towards them. Maybe I need to take more extreme actions in the metal work shop to make the forks completely unrecognisable? However what I like about my fork's so far is how the changes I have made to them are quite subtle.
Further research:
To test how people interact with my fork's further I have conducted a number of filmed experiments involving a person trying to pick up as many peas as they can from a plate using my altered Fork's. I decided to make them test my forks out in the usual scenario in which a normal fork would be used (for eating food) to see how different/ hard my forks are to eat with. Whilst the participants were filmed a lot of them let out sounds of frustration or struggle when trying to pick up the peas- another influence for the title "Fork Frustration" or got embarrassed and started laughing.
Here are a few of the videos I found entertaining:
Many of the contestants enjoyed the challenge of the activity and I got a very positive response from them which has encouraged me to let the interaction with people and my made objects direct more of my research. Many of the contestants came up with similar actions or approaches when picking up peas according to the shape of the fork and I have struggled with getting a variety of results from people. One reason I think this happened is because my models are still too familiar with people (people can still tell that they are forks), and also they are all a similar size to a normal fork. In response to this problem I could experiment with making my models a variety of sizes. I think if they were bigger it would give a bigger opportunity for interactions with more of the body rather than just the hands which could give my research more variety. Also people looking at my work in the crit would often pick up the forks and place them on different parts of the body for example running them through their hair, stroking their cheeks or arms with them, poking other people with them, or even pretending to lick them! So even this shows that there are many more opportunities for bigger interactions. I could also change the nature or location of the experiment because the pea experiments restricted the interactions to just the hands. Maybe I could introduce more than one person in each experiment?, Do I want to hold the experiment in a private space or public in a performance art type of way?, Would a public space alter people's will to participate/or embarrassment?
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