The visual identity has been defined.

The coding is completed.

And the website is operational

Animations not done yet.

Working on servor-based connection to finish the heavy coding to keep all the light animations and graphic design for the end of the project.

I didn’t try a very graphical approach yet, and just hard-coded everything for the basic functionalities to be working to start.

The hair style can be customized, as well as the clothing and the shoes. It is also possible to change the skin colour, the eye colour and the hair colour thru a colospectrum.

Depending on the time it takes me to make the rest of the application, I plan to make a wide series of hair styles and clothing sets, with casual clothes as well as ridiculing clothes.

Some exemples :

• a hooker outfit
• an S/M outfit
• a suit (to have the doll impersonate your boss)
• an emo kid suit
• a Korean hanbok
• a tecktonik outfit

I thought of implementing accessories for the doll to allow the user to make more alike someone he knows or ridicule it more but it would be of no use for the torture part and even be an annoyance. So I think I want to have a set of backgrounds for that purpose in the Photo Booth instead, just like at corny photographers’ studios.

Screenshots of the Dressing Room application :

The Gut-Doll project is going to be developped as an online flash application. Being online the application will be available to anyone from any connected computer. To visualize pressure, stress and hatred conducting to the use of this application, I chose to allow the user to take snapshots of its pressure relief / doll torturing and to explain it anonymously with a description which would be more emotional than pure  “users online” data.

At the launch of the application, the user will have to choose between 3 rooms : the dressing-room, the tower and the photo booth.

The dressing-room

It is basically what it sounds like : the room where you can dress the gut-doll to customize it. The gut-doll is unisex, so the user can make it wear anything. The purpose of the dressing room is allowing the user to make the gut-doll ressemble someone he wants to take revenge on or to ridicule the doll.

There are collections of items that customize the doll depending on its body parts. The users clicks on the buttons on each side of the doll to try on the doll the different items.  The user can customize : the hair style, the hair colour, the skin colour, the eyes colour, the clothing.

The Tower

The Tower is the dungeon of the application where the nasty stuff happens. The user can pick from a drawer the torture instruments he wishes to use on the doll that.

Exemple of items and their interactions:

Hord of Ajumas – runs on the doll and inflicts lots of bruises as well as noise

Microphone – use of the users’s PC’s microphone to make the doll shake to yell on the doll and make it shiver

Fire – Burns the doll and makes it all brown and bald

Soju pouring – Soaks the doll and makes it drunk and look silly

Photo Booth

The Photo booth allows the user to choose a background and to make a snapshot of his doll in it’s current state as well as write a brief description of why he made the doll look like this, it is then saved in the website’s database and given a specific url so that anyone can access the image and description. All of that anonymously.

What I want it to make user experience:

1. Allowing people to take revenge on other (ridiculing, hurting other)

2. Be evil with no consequences

3. Amusement

4. Relief from stress eventually

How it could work :

1. On a portable multi touch device such as an IpodTouch or iPhone : Application or Web Application

I learnt on the Apple Developer Community that to make an iPhone (or iPodTouch) application, you can only develop on mac OSX, whereas to make an online application, you can develop on any coding software on a mac or a PC.

The advantage on developing the project for this kind of platform is the included accelerometer inside the device, as well as the multi touch surface allowing a haptic interaction between the user and the doll.

2. As an online application using Flash

Advantages are the ease of developing and that it allows the project to be experienced by with much more people as it will be accessible from any computer.

Ideas for the application :

• Unexpected and unusuals reactions from the doll
• Ridicule the doll instead of hurting it
• More situations than just putting needles or hammering the doll’s face
• Be able to dress up the doll to make it resemble someone you hate
• Have your way by punishing the doll then click on a button to ‘release’ the doll into the doll world to contemplate the issue of your outlet on the doll (cinematic scene like what happens to Nanette Manoir in the Angela Anaconda series)
• Have the doll experience korean situations such as packed subway, being hit by ajumas, wearing high heels, be soaked by soju etc…, marinate in a jar of kimchi

During my stay in Korea I have heard on the news of many suicides of famous TV stars and singers. But it’s not only in the celebrities sphere. Last week a 10 years old child took his own life by hanging himself because he felt his grades weren’t good enough. That along with the infamous numbers of working middle aged men that commit suicide when they are faced with loneliness or worse : shame such as unemployment. Celebrities, salary men, young people, students : Korea has become one of the countries with the highest suicide rate and some even say the highest rate of suicides of all developed countries.

Also, Korea recently saw its alcohol consumption rise significantly although it already had the record of highest alcohol consumption per inhabitants (with an average of 53 360ml soju bottles per inhabitant).

Suicides and alcoholism are two important demonstrators that show that there is something going wrong in a society. But what is it ?

I think the answer is the pressure. There is pressure for children to get into the best schools, for workers to produce more income and to obey orders from hierarchy, stress from extra long working hours, social inegalities and the loss of tangible marks in a very changing society. (Article on korean economics and how it infers on social relationships on The Grand Narrative)

There are lots of guides about how to manage stress but I don’t think they are any effective and finally they don’t address the same kind of pressuring.

Computers and Stress.

Some people like to play video games and think it’s relieving them from stress because they get caught in the game so badly that they feel nothing else exists and they slowly leave their real life identities on the side (World of Warcraft, MMORPG, Second Life). But it’s not really helping and can lead to further more stress because of the game itself or worse : real addiction and even death as some people even die of playing too much.

A pressure situation similar in Asian Countries and What humans really like to do : hurt other people.

The South Korean stress situation actually resembles a lot the Japanese current situation : same pressure for education on young people, pressure on women to stop working to marry and have children, pressure on professional aspects for working men. Looking up articles on social pressure in Japanese society : I learnt about the story of Akira Hareruya aka Nagurareya.

Photo by Takanori Kobayashi

Mr. Hareruya is a retired boxer who lost all his money and has so much debts that he has to go in the streets of Tokyo and offer his services as a human punch ball . For 1000 Yen, people can punch him for one minute without him retaliating. I was very surprised at first that he would get any “customers” at all for doing that.

But I read in the 2002 interview of Mr. Hareruya that since he started his street shows in 1999, he thinks about 10 000 people came literally to hit him. The huge number made me think that obviously there are quite a few Japanese salary men that think it’s a relief to hit someone even if it’s a stranger and you pay for it.

Although it is considered very wrong, I think a lot of people feel better when they can unload all their frustrations on someone else and transfer that pressure. Since when you are not high-ranked in a company’s hierarchy it is highly unlikely that you have a subordinate that you can make miserable or in a more caring way, that it is not socially acceptable to pass on to another human being all your frustration and pains. So I think that having a digital subordinate to hurt would probably be amusing and stress relieving.

Using computers to get stress-relief by being evil

I feel that computers which were designed to provide for humans beings and that are not yet sentient beings, should be able to provide relief from frustrations and pressure.

In lots of games like ‘god-like’ games such as Populous, Dungeon Keeper or Black and White by Peter Molyneux, action games such as Fable or strategy games such as Sim City, Age of Empire, or The Sims, game-users have always tried to use the game differently not following the rules to level up and follow the game synopsis but to act completely evil : torturing loyal minions, provoking volcanoes on top of your own town, slapping villagers, killing off children wandering in the streets of calm little towns, having your beloved sims take a swim in the pool and then removing the pool ladder…

The computer could be some kind of voodoo doll.

There are some existing voodoo doll programs that enable you to place pins and needles on dull straw voodoo dolls that emit the same crying noise each time. But I think it doesn’t allow any relief (nor pleasure) and has a very narrow approach. (exemple 1)

I think the most relieving part in the voodoo doll isn’t the ‘psychological’ part of putting needles in the doll but the visual of the pain endured by the doll which proves you the transfer of the frustration and pain has been completed and which doesn’t exist when you use a real doll and put needles in it. Voodoo dolls come from Haitian Shamanism but I have also seen Korean Straw Dolls used in Gut ceremonials of Korean Shamanism . Guts were held to cleanse people’s souls or to assure prosperity and well-being.

What I would like to do :

Therefore I would like the computer to relief from pressure by offering an alternate ‘torturing’ experience more vivid than what is currently used providing different and unexpected reactions to induce an excitement in the user to see what reaction the character will have to the torture and “cleanse” the user’s mood.

Click here to view the video : Computer & Game Procrastination on Vimeo.

“Meat” refers to animal tissues, it intends muscles mainly but can also designate internal organs, the word “meat” carries also various senses. Firstly, the word “meat” mostly intends in current language animal tissues that are killed, prepared and packed for human consumption, but the word “meat” can also be a metaphor for humans.

2. What is the relationship between computers, meat & pleasure ?

Pleasure is being induced by stimulation in various areas of the brain such as the nucleus accumbens, hypothalamus or the septum pellucidium. Pleasure can be experienced thru various activities, such as : eating, exercise, sexuality, music, usage of drugs, writing, accomplishment, recognition and service.

Computers grew to fulfill humans needs. Firstly being built to achieve what was too painful or annoying for the human strength or mind (heavy calculators were the first computers), they now deal with making humans happy.

Although some activities that induce pleasure for humans were few decades earlier requiring a whole equipment, preparation or social connections, the progress of computers and the burst of Internet, made some of those brain-simulation activities available all the time by programs, database and abscess to global communication. Also, it allows people to connect and interact with other people sharing the same interests and acts as a match maker so social interactions can be initiated from home.

Nowadays, humans do rely on home computers to provide for them with leisure and brain-stimulation and ease their everyday, becoming slowly irreplaceable and acting as an orthosis for humans.

But physical interactions were not for the moment explored. Eating, sexuality, use of drugs could not be emulated yet by computers. Although widely demonstrated in movies or animations whether as sentient cyborgs specialized in prostitution (Pris in Blade Runner, Gigolo Joe in A.I, Malice in Malice@Doll), or as immersive virtual reality devices, the form of future computers has yet to be determined.

3. Research Strategy

1. Definition of the main themes / words

2. Mind Map of the principal word

3. Background search

4. Research of exemples in science fiction