Bubble Apocalypse at the Conflictorium
The day did not start well. Everything that we had planned for today fell apart. Hooking up two circuits together seemed like a simple task last night. But it all descended into sheer hopelessness and panic as the clock ticked by to the deadline. Worse still, even the bubble making solution was behaving strangely. Luckily, Shashank was at hand to troubleshoot our problems, and at 11:59 A.M, Uttisht Varanasi and Nikita Arora finally hooked it all up successfully.
For the next couple of hours, we tweaked the final setup by making it more efficient and user friendly to use. When we reached the Conflictorium, we ran into more problems. As it turned out, the afternoon sun was playing havoc with your resistance values, and our original location just outside the museum had to be shifted to the balcony, where the Sorry tree is located. After some more minor niggling connections were fixed, we were finally good to go!
No sooner had we caught our breath, when the first wave of kids swarmed in, eager to see what this orange contraption was all about. They immediately touched the aluminium hand holders, but were thoroughly confused when they saw nothing happening. It took some time to explain how it worked, but within 10 minutes or so the young ones had figured it out. They understood the basic concept of the installation, and were guiding the others to hold hands to form the human chain to make the bubble machine work. The initial confusion and want for instant reward was soon replaced by the need to work together to get the bubble machine to work for longer and produce lots of bubbles. Eventually none of us had to guide them on how to make the installation work.
Even as the waves of children kept on coming, the bubble making machine worked perfectly, only needing the occasional soap bubble solution top-up. But such was our luck, that due to current fluctuation one of the adapters stopped working. While Nikita and Uttisht went to source another adapter, Ishita and I were tasked to hold fort and convince the eager kids to wait for just that little while more till we connected the new adapter. It felt awful, telling the kids that the bubble machine wasn’t working but it did give us a chance to step out of our enclosed balcony and see the work of the our batchmates and the members of the Unbox Caravan team. It was wonderful to see their work, but even more fascinating to see the reaction to their work.
Just before the day ended, the new adapter was installed, and we got the community-connecting-bubble-making-machine working again. Although most of the kids had left by then, the rest of the Unbox Caravan took this opportunity to come visit us and play with it themselves.
Eventually we had to wind up, but just before we did, faculty members from NID visted us and had a blast with the community-connecting-bubble-making-machine working.
Avni Sethi, the creator of the Conflictorium also popped in, and had a few suggestions for us, but she too loved what we created.
We honestly didn’t what to expect from this installation, and nor did we have complete faith in our own idea behind this. What we did know was that even though we might not have imparted any message, we did bring people together so that they can enjoy something that everyone loves-bubbles. I was very surprised to see the reactions and the instant impact it had on the visitors. It’s stunning to see how something as simple as creating soap bubbles can captivate people, and enable them to connect with each other, even if it was on a very basic level.
Next stop: We will now work toward putting up this up at the National Institute of Design, and showcasing it to the community on Friday.
