Building on the feedback from my supervisor, I started looking into ways of making the installation more visually attractive, or at the very least, more visually different. I knew I wanted to communicate a dystopian-like office space. Hence I returned back to my original references to observe once again and note what kind of artefacts, props, lighting and other immersive experiences that they used.

Using my findings. I decided that lighting, and the props was going to be crucial for this type of installation. Especially since that I am not able to do it on a larger scale as I had wanted to in the earlier weeks. I put all of these together into a brand new blueprint for myself. With this in hand, I moved onto working on the artefacts and props.

I began planning out my other props and artefacts by recompiling all my the technical experiments that I felt were visually interesting enough to be displayed in the installation. My hope here was that at the very least, some of the visuals would be appreciated by viewers even if they did not understand the project. My intention here was to mount them on some foam boards to add an additional layer of polish, akin to oil painting canvases.

Next, I looked into other printed materials that I would need. To emulate the work I had references, I wanted to also produce a newsprint to further support the narrative elements of this dystopian future. I made sure that the newsprint was filled with actual written content by generating it through ChatGPT. However, the themes of each article were drafted by myself based on the research for my thesis and potential implications I had discovered through said research. One notable example here is the headline “World’s First Universal Basic Income Act Passed by European Union”. I felt this was an important headline to put in as talks surrounding UBI is extremely prevalent in discourse around the future of work in light of automation.

I also looked into creating an installation panel and a custom notepad just to add more polish to the installation as supporting elements.

One of my final important artefacts for the installation was an audio recording. Throughout planning this installation, I kept thinking about how I would be able to tap deeper onto people’s five senses for this experience, and I decided that audio would be a great way to do that. Using the draft of a narrative I drew up earlier in this semester, I reworked it to be shorter and to be more personal. This would be an internal monologue of a creative who is from the future scenario that I am speculating, and it would contain their personal reflections of the events that led up to this speculative future.

Once I was done with the draft. I then moved onto my next dilemma. I had two options for the audio. Ideally, I would have liked to use an AI-generated audio voice over. However, from my initial explorations, as I had wanted to use an AI voice with a Singaporean accent, I had only one option for voice models, and it was severely lacking. Hence I was leaning towards simply hiring a freelance voice actor as they would ultimately cost the same amount. I wasn’t too sure on what to do so I left this matter for my consultation.

One suggestion that my supervisor gave to me was to use extremely sterile lighting, just like what I had referenced previously. They suggested to darken the area and utilise light bars to make the area itself contrast with the rest of the exhibition space. This sounded like a good idea and was one that I was quick to agree to.

My supervisor also explained why they preferred an AI voice over instead of an actor. Their reasons were similar to mine where they saw value in staying true to the nature of the project. That is, using AI to augment my creative workflow. Even at the cost of the overall polish of the project.

Lastly, my supervisor talked about how there was a significant difference between doing an installation that’s good versus one that was excellent. However, I had to disagree here as unlike many of the projects I had referenced, I was a sole designer here. Doing an installation for the first time. Not to mention, I was extremely limited by the space and budget constraints. Many things went wrong with this project and I’m still adapting. Personally I felt that everything would ultimately come together so I took this advice with a pinch of salt.