Shackles
OVERVIEW
Shackles is an art installation, which aims to draw people’s attention to lithromantic, understand their behaviours and psychology. The high-fidelity prototype of the installation integrated Arduino UNO, Arduino micro servo, Arduino ultrasonic sensor, LED light strips and other technologies. Starting from the root cause of this type of avoidant psychological, an experience interactive installation is used to improve the current public’s unfamiliarity and misunderstanding of lithromantic. The core idea is to make the public understand the main cause of the psychological disorder for lithromantic, and to visualize them through the art installation.
How might we make people aware of the existence of lithromantic and dispel this misunderstanding?
Design Process
Online research
Paper
Inspiration
The first time I know this term is in a Japanese TV shows, the Heroine is Lithromantic.
In the topic of “What is the experience of being a lithromantic” on a social App, an anonymous user said this,
“I want to love but I can’t. I’m sorry that you met such a person like me. I’m really sorry, I’m struggling with myself every day, every day I’m lingering, and every day I hope to beat myself a little bit. I wish I could love you like a normal person.”
Also, I am Lithromantic as well, I was touched by the description, and decided to attempt to combine the topic of Lithromantic with interaction design.
L Reika no Shinjitsu
After I came up with this idea, I began to do some preliminary research of Lithromantic, which I hoped I can find a point where I can start with the design.
Background
What is Lithromantic?
Lithromantic is not well defined, so it is hard to find literal about this.
Lithromantic, the prefix “lith” is associated with the meaning of “stone”. So the word itself literally implies a kind of people that is “anti-romance”. This phenomenon is first verified by Julie Sondra Decher in her book The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality.
It basically means that when lithromantic have a crush on someone, loss of interest in potential or actual partners when they romantically initiate.
How do they usually behave?
• Loss of interest in potential or actual partners when they romantically initiate.
• Feeling romantic attraction that fades upon being reciprocated.
• Fantasizing about romance but preferring it only on theory, not in practice.
• Experiencing discomfort upon entering a romantic relationship with a crush.
• Feeling romantic attraction but preferring not to act on it.
What’s the cause of Lithromantic?
From the previous studies on lithromantic, there are three main reasons which may cause lithromantic.
When they were babies, they lacked care and feedback from their parents. and they gradually cultivated characteristics such as independence, having clear knowledge about themselves, and having a strong objection to being drawn near and close relationships.
They are often low self- esteem. Those with low self-esteem are extremely unsatisfied with and lack confidence in themselves. Such people are always haunted by the illusion that people who feel attracted to them would just leave in the end when they knew their true face. This kind of pressure and fear just push them away from any intimate relationship.
The last reason is the lack of security. “No confession, no rejection; no love, no hurts”. This kind of people refuse to step into a relationship because they refuse any potential of being wounded or hurt others.
User Research
Lithromantic is currently less well known. And lots of people have misunderstanding of lithromantic.
I interviewed some people about this topic. Most of them didn’t know what is Lithromantic, and part of them thought Lithromantic were love rats, even the certain people who are Lithromantic thought themselves were love rats, too. Lithromantic is not a sexual orientation.
Lithromantic is only a state of mind, which can be reversed, while sexual orientation cannot be changed.
Current Situation
I found Julie conducted a survey in the study of lithromantic, they randomly conducted a questionnaire survey among 211 people.
Through sorting out the content obtained from the research, two intent ideas are preliminarily determined.
Intent Ideation
Storyboard
README
1. I’m lithromantic.
I have been a good girl in the eyes of my parents and teachers since I was a child.
My mother is very busy at work.
We spend very little time together every day.
My father takes care of my study, but he seldom praises me.
2. My childhood friend could leave me because of a piece of candy.
She was persuaded not to be friends with me.
3. I thought that as long as I had good grades and a good personality, my parents’ attention, friendship will come to me.
I’m often not sure whether I like someone or not.
If the party show affection to me,
The other party’s shortcomings will be infinitely magnified by me unconsciously.
Soon, I will have an aversion to him.
I think I’m a little timid.
If I don’t know a person very well.
I don’t dare to like anyone easily.
5. When he pinched my face for the first time to show the intimacy.
I realized that I hated physical contact.
What comes with it, it is my physiological dislike and distance from him.
After his aversion to him. I’m starting to hate myself. Feel guilty and sorry for him. But I don’t know how to fix it.
4. I used to be in relationship with a boy. I love to fantasize about bad ending and masochism between us. Then because of that heart-wrenching feeling, a person curled up in the quilt and cried bitterly.
6. Since then.
I don’t dare to get into a relationship anymore.
Afraid of being hurt and afraid of hurting others.
I always think that people love me just because I can show the good side.
As long as I expose my shortcomings.
He will immediately stay away.
Sketches
Development
Warm colors of the light represent positive feelings, and the cool colors represent negative feelings. The stronger the light, the stronger the emotion felt by the heart.
The rotation of the heart tightens the strips on the heart, indicating that the psychological state of lithromantic has been formed, and the receptor is tied and no longer accept everyone’s love.
Technology analysis
The prototype consists of three parts: the heart model made of ultra-light clay, the main interactive behaviours of the device is done by the effect of ultrasonic ranging sensor and WS2812B LED strip, and the steering gear and tripod head are used to make a 180-degree rotation effect.
Sensor Mechanism
LED Light Strips
Steering Gear
This is the first time for me to make an Arduino interactive installation, which is the most difficult part I have encountered in this project. The components of Arduino are programmed by Processing, Then my grasp of Processing in the past semesters made me more confident to solve the problem I may meet in the project.
Processing&Arduino
Schematic Diagram
Hi-Fi Prototype
Content
The user can experience the installation in the shopping street, on the way to work or other places where young people gather.
When the user enters the experience space, there will be a reminder and a welcome message telling the user how to experience the installation. When the user places his hand over the sensor, the LED strip begins to glow. The warm color of the light presents the effect of water flowing from the user to the heart. And a story of Lithromantic starts to begin.
In this story, the user, as the person around the girl in the story, the light flowing to the heart is the goodwill and love given by the user to the girl. The stronger the intensity of the light, the stronger the goodwill is. Showing that at this time the girl is still confident, willing to trust the people around.
The user can see the power they are delivering to the heart.
The user’s hand is still over the sensor. As the story develops, the color of the strips tied the heart is cool color, which represents negative feelings. It’s easy to find that the girl is surrounded by the negative feelings. A step-by-step presentation of the formation of Lithromantic psychology.
Even though the user kept his hand on the sensor, no light was moving toward the heart. The end of the story is that the girl becomes a lithromantic, wrapped and bound by feelings of inferiority, and no longer has a channel for transmitting and receiving love.
Workflow
Running Video
Reflection&Outcomes
The project is designed to step by step from inspiration, research, determination of design goals, determination of scheme sketches, prototype making etc. Regarding myself and their own experience and the feelings of those in the same situation around them.
Because there was a basis for illustration learning in the past, it presented my concept design through sketches. I always thought that it was a difficult process to turn abstract design ideas into intent ideas. Still, sufficient research in the early stage and the determination of achieving goals made me proceed more smoothly in this step.
It didn’t go well when making a high-fidelity prototype.
First of all, because this is the first time for me to use Arduino and Processing to do the physical installation, all aspects of the functions are unfamilar with, and the nature of the components that the installation needs to use is not clear. There is no clear understanding of Arduino. I mistakenly think that, like Processing, as long as the code is accurate, the link of the component can run smoothly.
However, the identification of components is not stable, the sensor is not as sensitive as expected, and other unexpected conditions have caused me a lot of challenges.
But I am very satisfied because I finally succeeded in making the prototype I expected, and I hope I can help people solve problems through my design.
There are still many parts that need to be optimized in my project.
1. The prototype is a proportional reduction prototype for the physical installation. However, the size of the component is not considered in advance, the single-chip microcomputer, sensor, breadboard and so on can not be successfully hidden behind the prototype, rather than directly exposed to the user. For example, the size of the sensor makes it impossible for me to wrap it in a sphere of ultra-light clay.
2. The colour of the lamp belt does not change before and after. There is no obvious dividing line in the three stages, and the last flashing purple light belt of the experience does not bring a sense of struggle and restraint.
I benefited a lot from this design. I know that design can not be taken for granted according to their ideas. The design of each interaction and the machine to people’s feedback has its meaning. For example, at first, I designed the rotation of the heart, but I only thought that the effect of the light belt was too single, so I added the rotation. After thinking about it carefully, I designed the rotation of my heart to tighten the winding light band, while rotating 180 degrees also means deviation, symbolizing a different transformation from the past.