Case Study: Hadestown

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Hadestown is a beloved show of mine that I had rewatched thrice. It combines Greek Mythology with current problems in modern society like famine and poverty, using Hell(Hadestown) as an analogy for cheap labor in factories.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/hadestown-tragedy-trying/

Hermes, as the narrator of this story, enters in and out of the narrative of Hadestown. Orpheus also plays the role as narrator when he sang the ancient tale of Hades and Persephone. We, as the audience, see three layers of reality onstage. Hermes’s narrative, Orpheus’ narrative(in one scene), and Hades and Persephone’s narrative.

The picture above is a paragraph from the pamphlet of Hadestown.

Case Study: The Power of Placebos

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This process is to demonstrate the power of placebo and show that even when people know they’re taking a placebo, it can still have physical effects on the body.

After receiving a “fear erasure tablet”, participants are put into scary situations like being locked in a dark room or a coffin, and their physical reactions are monitored. Remarkably, even though the participants verbally acknowledged taking a placebo, their body’s stress responses are lowered after taking the pill compared to before.

This shows the mind’s ability to override our autonomic fight or flight responses and biologically reduce fear through expectation and suggestion alone.

Derren Brown discusses how placebos have been clinically proven to reduce pain and change hormonal secretions through psychological factors.The video is an entertaining demonstration of just how powerful the placebo effect and mind-body connection can be.

Feeling Stuck…

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7.4~7.8

I’m currently having trouble defining the change in my project.

I’m uncertain how fantasy and magic tricks can create new change in both areas because performances such as this already exist, and they already create excellent change in this world.

I have tried to pick out a specific group of stakeholders to specify the change, such as Chinese high school students(which is the group of stakeholders for the intervention on May 13th, where I created a dystopian world based on current reality in the Chinese education system). But it detoured my project to education rather than fiction, which caused huge confusion in my audience.

I am trying to plan for interventions but finding it hard to take action because the research question hasn’t been completely defined. I’m currently planning out interventions on fantasy and magic tricks separately, and try to piece them together like jigsaw puzzles in order to create something new.

Jordan Peterson once said, “You’ll have to sacrifice the pluri-potentiality of childhood for the actuality of a frame.” I think it is similar with projects. When starting a project, I really enjoy the endless potential and as time went on, have spent too much time mourning the fact that I could only choose one area to work on. It will happen whether we want to or not, and the main difference is whether I choose this limitation in time, or let it get take me unaware.

But I’ve already chosen my limitation. I’ve identified as a writer of fiction and comic artist, specifically on the area of fantasy. What stumped me was that, I don’t know how fantasy can create change, new change, to this world. And that was why I kept adding elements to it that was inside my comfort zone, like result-based education, because I was a student in the majority of my life.

I’ve had a paralysing fear because I was unable to define the change of my project and therefore since the start of independent study, I was hesitant, even unable, to create interventions. However I needed to undertake one soon to get the project out of a stalemate.

4.19/4.27/5.10/7.3 magic workshops

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I have also been in touch with several magicians based in London via a magician’s workshop. According to them, magic isn’t as entertaining if you perform magic alone, you have to weave a story or a narrative into it to actually attract an audience. Requoting Derren Brown: “Magic is a great analogy of editing reality and forming a story and mistaking that story for the truth.” It is quite a valid way of storytelling.

6.16~6.21 Pre-Intervention

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I have contacted an expert on worldbuilding and have told them 2 of the fictional stories I created. Their reaction was to immediately come up with 2 storylines to broaden the story further.

I want to emphasize that, if we view this interaction as an intervention, sharing my comic to a worldbuilder does “create change”, because they came up with brand new ideas because they saw my work. The evidence is shown in the pictures.

Story Link:

Useless Objects & Reshaping the Object

Redefining My Research Question

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Recently I have been feeling quite lost in the way I convey my project and felt the need to redefine my research question. I had trouble with identifying the focal point of my topic, failed to address my topic in a clear and succinct matter, and conveyed it in a wrong way. I’m redefining it right now in order to gain evidence and feedback from the area that I had always intended it to.

6.14 about education

For my project, result-based education acts as part of the “compost heap” in the mind for me as a writer/creator of fiction.

For my intervention on May 13th, I created a fictional, exaggerated version of results-based culture. My aim is NOT to create change in the structure of the Chinese education system(it’s impossible). It’s to use the negative experience of an individual to create something beautiful. A piece of speculative fiction like Black Mirror is only going to reveal an incident to possible stakeholders rather than change the incident itself. But revealing as an action does create change.

The intervention does provide evidence to a research question, but not the research question that I chose before. I need to doublecheck the function of interventions and the specific field that I want to change.

Research Question updated up till now: How can we measure the impact of fantasy-based fiction?

A project on fiction, unlike a design project, doesn’t have stakeholders in a particularly focused field, and the impact it creates is relatively intangible. It inspires change in individuals rather than creating tangible change itself.

Yoko Ono Exhibition(not technically useful but recorded just in case)

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Went to see Yoko Ono’s exhibition at Tate. I personally didn’t really chime with her way of performing but I really loved one of her works——Bag Piece. Because I truly felt nameless and without identity in that bag.

Being in an interdisciplinary background, I found it hard to pick a specific field and harder to link all the fields that I had an interest on together. Which is an area that I need to work on.

Case Studies about Narratives

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Oh, He’s a JOURNALISt…

This story contains overlapping narratives about different people editing a real incident and turning them into a piece of news on the media for their own benefits.

nYE
One man’s dream of the NHS

From campaigning at the coalfield to leading the battle to create the NHS, Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan is often referred to as the politician with greatest influence on our country without ever being Prime Minister.

Confronted with death, Nye’s deepest memories lead him on a mind-bending journey back through his life; from childhood to mining underground, Parliament and fights with Churchill in an epic Welsh fantasia.

Michael Sheen (Under Milk Wood) is Nye Bevan in this surreal and spectacular journey through the life and legacy of the man who transformed Britain’s welfare state. It’s written by Tim Price (Teh Internet is Serious Business) and directed by Rufus Norris (Small Island).

Fiction and Belief: Revisiting my BoU

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Requoting Narnia from my BoU:

In the story, Puddleglum would believe in Aslan and the world he came from even if he’s in a world where neither is real.

Puddleglum’s words were the “Ontological Proof” in a form suitable for kids.

An example of Ontological Proof from from Ontological Proofs Today by Miroslaw Szatkowski:

Fantasy creates belief in its audience. It inspires change for different individuals.

3 septembers and a january(the sandman)

This story comes from the Sandman, and is a very inspiring tale about the story of how believing in a fantasy can change a person’s actions. I regard this story as secondary research because it has a true background story.

Joshua Abraham Norton, a resident of San Francisco, arrived in 1849 and thrived as a businessman. However, a failed attempt to monopolize the rice market led to financial ruin. In 1859, following this misfortune, Norton declared himself “Emperor of the United States.”

Despite lacking official power, San Francisco embraced Emperor Norton’s eccentricity. He received courtesies like free travel and meals, and even his self-proclaimed currency held value in some shops. While some viewed him as odd, others found amusement in his pronouncements and enjoyed his presence.

Emperor Norton’s reign may have been unofficial, but his impact was real. He became a beloved local figure, immortalized in the works of literary giants like Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson. His story serves as a reminder of San Francisco’s unique character and its embrace of the unconventional.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton(from Wikipedia, will find reference on this later)