Context

Cultural Masks is a project made for the module 'Sensors & Senses' in the context of Sencity Festival. Inspired by the native tribes of North America, the masks aim to bring people closer to nature by letting them experience certain parts of the weather without vision. Trough its design we hope to make people think about how so many cultures are slowly disappearing.

Process

The context given by Sencity concerned parties. Both me and my teammate did not feel a spark for this context, which is why we decided to slightly twist it to fit our preferences better. We figured that parties are about celebrating, and we could celebrate something of our choosing, in this case, nature.

One of our first ideas discussed the fact that people always see rain as a bad thing by highlighting the beautiful side; rainbows. After playing around with refraction we realised it did not come across the way we wanted. While being beautiful, the refraction did not have the desired effect, as it was more of an effect rather than an experience.

To make the masks more experienceable we settled on just the rain instead of rainbows, drawing inspiration from native American tribes, who celebrate the rain. This choice also gave us a new direction for the second mask. Instead of the sun, we decided to have it be inspired by campfires.