myProcess: Ideation and Prototyping W9

Week 9:  Time Capsule P3…

The Year 2145.     The Discovery…

Create a protagonist to act as the central character for your narrative.
Storyboard and sketch several ideas for your narrative. Create the visual narrative through the use of a photo essay, animation, comic strip, etc.

Step 1. Research possible Earth futures.

I searched online Articles from diverse sources:   FutureTimeLine.net, Future of Earth: Wikipedia, Science: Holocene Extinction and Anthropocene Epoch, Aeon Digital Magazine,  Business News to Quora and Medium articles..

Then before reading articles I looked up who the writers were and their accreditations.

Step 2. Compile the information.

Compare the articles and decide which predictions were similar, and how they diverged and why.   It’s difficult to predict the future since it is entirely dependent on how governments and society act going forward, in addition to unknown future weather patterns and seismic activity.   Look back little over 150 years ago ,  Charles Darwin publishes “On the Origin of Species” in the UK 1859,  in the US, the American Civil War (1861-65), and the beginning of the great Industrial Revolution.   This initiates the Holocene Extinction leading to the Anthropocene Epoch of the mid 20th century.

Science 08 Jan 2016:
Vol. 351, Issue 6269, aad2622
DOI: 10.1126/science.aad2622

Structured Abstract
BACKGROUND
Humans are altering the planet, including long-term global geologic processes, at an increasing rate. Any
formal recognition of an Anthropocene epoch in the geological time scale hinges on whether humans have
changed the Earth system sufficiently to produce a stratigraphic signature in sediments and ice that is
distinct from that of the Holocene epoch. Proposals for marking the start of the Anthropocene include an
“early Anthropocene” beginning with the spread of agriculture and deforestation; the Columbian Exchange of
Old World and New World species; the Industrial Revolution at ~1800 CE; and the mid-20th century “Great
Acceleration” of population growth and industrialization.

Step 3. Let the information sit before a mind map session.

The result below is a mind/concept map combo.

Step 4. Creating the Story with a mini concept map.

I want my narrator to be a steward .  A new position that was formed in the tail end 0f the 21st century.   In the future there will be many jobs lost to mechanization, but so many new jobs created.  Jobs we never even imagined.

Step 5. Storyboard

Now it’s time to start sketching the storyboard for the narrative and to decide  how to present this story in the time I have to present it.   I decided to try a comic strip style.  I wouldn’t say it was a proper comic strip, perhaps a picture book with a story??

I manipulated my storyboard sketches photoshop and imported them into illustrator…   Then I back tracked a bit to the story and the narrator. I wanted to use an Indigeous Indian name and came across 2 names from the Tupi Indians of Brazil.

Jaci would be my protagonist. Jaci means ‘moon’, and I created a new pronoun ‘hse” a gender neutral pronoun that would be developed near the end of the 21st century.

The story starts out at Jaci’s great great grandmother’s farewell message virtual gathering.  She is the 163 year old matriarch of  hse family. Her name is also Tupi, Maiara ‘great grandmother, wise’.  She has been in a coma the last few weeks, but connected to a neural network that allows her to communicate virtually.  And she’s decided it’s time to go. She’s lived long enough.

Reflection on the project

I didn’t have enough time to develop the story… I left it at the point where Jaci and hse Grammaiara’s avatar find the time capsule. The project had a lot of step by step processes that were difficult to fit into one week. If I had more time I would develop the story more and create a graphically stylized comic strip that enhanced the story.