1. Introduction

The Video below functions as an auditive exposition to the setting of the story and sets the scene and mood for the mini stories depicted in following comic strips.

2. Project Development: AI Avatar as Symbiont

2.1 World building

After the scope and theme of the project was decided, it was time to define the story in more detail. 

We asked ourselves a number of questions to elaborate on the setting.

2.2 Define the Phygital Characteristics

To let us have a basis to develop our story, we picked some phygital dimmensions and thought about the basic word settings.

2.3 Explore the System of the Phygital Space

Based on the basic world setting, we used system map to explore the relationships between person to person, person to space and person to reality, we also discussed on the introduction of articles of human rights.

2.4 Stories: The First Version

The first version of the script revolved around the „Initiation Day“ of a young child. 

The idea was that, since humans are implanted with their AI Companion chip at a young age, we would show the child's perspective on the world without having access to the avatar world, as it would only be visible to and could be interacted with individuals that have already been implanted with their own chip.

The child would then be taken to the city's AI Avatar Center by his parents to receive his own chip. After existing the center and on the way home the child is accompanied by his new AI Companion and is now able to see and interact with the Avatar world.

2.5 Stories: The Second Version

After some discussions on our speculative world and the concepts in it, we realised that there were some aspects we didn't covered in the last version of our stories, so we were trying to present more in the second version.

3. Final Stories

4. Final PDF Presentation

5. Reflection

Melina

This project was very educational regarding the story telling aspects.

This includes the story itself, defining which details must be included and where they might be overwhelming and we should leave room for imagination. 

It also made me very aware of the importance of HOW, once a story is imaginated and more refined, it must be told in order to be perceived the way we intended. Obviously every viewer has their own perception and will interpret the story for themselves and the control we as creators have is limited. But still - choosing the right media, the aesthetic language, length, level of detail and such give a the opportunity to get our message across. 

We took a long time on world building details and deciding on the keyframes of the story, which led to a shortage of time for the execution of the project.

In hindsight, I would definetely go back and take more time for the actual product, since I strongly believe in the relevance of the philosophical and ethical questions we aimed to open up, but feel the final comics by themselves don't really convey those.

I also learned be be more „concrete“ when creating...anything really. Finding some fixing parameters and proceed based on those, to anchor the story and project in a form that can be depicted with the media we have available. (Thank you Boris for that feedback)

Additionally I practised diving deeper and peeling the layers of my initial ideas to get the most obvious aspects out of the way and move on the a more refined version.

I wanted this project to be something I could show in my portfolio, which it didn't turn out to be. Instead this is a work I will propably never show, but one of the projects that taught me a lot for my future works.

Guolong

First, I have learned a very important point in speculative design, or maybe it could have a broader impact on other types of project in the future for me, that is „think from the bottom and then jump between the bottom and the top“.

Just because of our adverse approach - we went from the top first, it made everything much complex in the first place, much time was spent on defining the world setting. So if I do our project again, I'll first find some relevant scenarios to our topic in my real life, and then try to throw some stones into it and see what could happen.

The second thing is about the way we as a team worked. We should have worked together more time. The way we learned from the course to define a new world and to develop a story in this world is actually very useful, but besides the time spent on the wrong approach, we spent less time on using the methods to support us to develop the stories.

Last but not least, I have very well felt and realised in this semester, not only in this course but also in another, a teamwork needs a good framework not only for schedule plan but also for methodology/approach, you as a member in team need to be able to (energetically) focus on it, otherwise you could be lost and everyone could be lost, how can a project be well guided?

And wait, to the final feedback from the others in this course, the stories we showed have actually triggered many discussions and reflections, which is not bad.