The goal of this project was to create a mural using every participant’s piece of art; a piece of paper in the shape of a star that they have drawn on. We ask them to interpret and draw out what they wish to achieve in their lives by working hard or what they themselves have to work hard to achieve. They interpret these questions in whichever way they wanted to, as long as they draw it out. This project is entirely anonymous, so they should feel comfortable to draw their interpretation. Our purpose for going about creating this mural is to get our fellow peers to collaborate with one another to go beyond just working to receive a grade, but to create something beautiful. We want to get our participants to go beyond just trying to do the bare minimum and actually unleash their creativity and create a piece of something bigger.
Our initial thought was to make a mural. Then we decided that wouldn’t work. Our second idea was to get construction paper and each group member would take it for two-three days at a time, and just get people to draw on it that way it would be everybody contribution to a greater piece of art. The only problem we had with that was telling people what to draw. We then decided we needed a theme, so that’s when we finally came up with our project. Our mode of persuasion will be the complete anonymity, the meaning of this project and the sincerity of us as people. We will be communicating with our participants in a kind and considerate manner so as to make them comfortable and willing to work with us, each participant will be able to see their contribution on this WordPress website that we have created. We will be giving them all the information they need to know on our project and they will be informed that we will be taking their picture as they are drawing their interpretation, however their face will not be shown if they do not want it to.
My group decided to have the theme “shooting for stars” we felt this theme was very fitting for the meaning we were trying to portray. We each cut out ten stars, with four of us that made forty. Since the requirement was twenty we figured we would go above and beyond just like our theme. As you can see not all of the group members could get ten stars. This made it difficult for us to fulfill the goals we set within the invention mob project.
During the invention mob project my group did not have any writing tasks for me. With that in mind there was no way for me to get better at writing though this process. Since I did not have a writing part, my main contribution was setting up the WordPress website. I also had to keep up with all the demands of the professor. Which included making new pages, and post. In the post were pictures explaining how the group went about the project, it was like a picture essay. We had four different page, that way it would be easier for the classroom to differentiate between the many different parts of our project. One page was called “Contributions” in this page was pictures of our participants’ drawling on the stars. Most of the pictures are side views because a lot of people did not want their picture taken. Another page was “Finished Stars” our professor expressed a want to see the stars up close; her idea was to take a video of the poster when it was finished. We thought it would be easier just to take a picture of each individual star and have them all under one page. The other two pages are the mandatory things we had to share with the class like our goal, mode of persuasion, our purpose, and our successes along with our failures.
The people who contributed to the invention mobs project were my group members who include Amber Moon, Michael Whittendale and Stephanie Lincoln-Baines, along with the twenty-five anonymous participants at Washington state university, and myself. The non-human aspect part of our project was the getting materials from the recreation center under Honors Hall.
The Successes for our project are that it was fairly easy to get enough people to accept our request of drawing their interpretation of hard work and achievement. With all of us being friendly to our friends, acquaintances, and strangers they were quite glad to help us achieve our goal. Also, the fact that our project is pretty much anonymous helped as well. Since not a lot of people are that comfortable with drawing, since they feel that they cannot, and also feel uncomfortable with having their face up online for everyone in the class and elsewhere to see. That is when we came up with the idea of us taking pictures of the participants’ from the side. That way their faces would not be shown but it still counted as a contribution. Of course this also was where our failure comes in.
Our only failure was most of the people we asked did not feel comfortable with drawing. We got a lot of responses saying they were bad at drawling, and that they did not want people to make fun of them. It became a hassle to get people to feel comfortable enough with drawing. Even though our project was completely anonymous quite a few still did not feel comfortable with drawing. Thankfully, we all worked our way around this drawback and got enough people willing to draw even though they felt uncomfortable about it.
We noticed within our failures there was a deeper issue at work. We wondered why some many people were not confident enough to draw on a star. My group members and I concluded that most people have low self-esteem problem. Some people do not let it affect them as much but other people let it consume their way of life. If you worry so much about drawing on one little star, how do you handle other situations in life?
Overall I would have to say our project was a major success. We accomplished our goals and we created a wonderful piece of art that was donated to the Stephenson Complex Center. They said they would hang it up but did not give a specific date. During this project I learned to collaborate more with my peers, and get out of my comfort zone.
