Potatoes, Risings, and Machines were the highlights of this exhibition. Welcome back to my Blog! Today we will be talking about the Winter Exhibition 2023. The topic we talked about was the Haiti, Meiji, Xinhai, American, French, Russian, and Easter revolutions. Our driving question was “How Do Ideas Drive Change?”. I think Ideas drive change because without the thought of something different everything would be the same.
The Project
We told the story’s of these revolutions by creating a rudegoldberg machine with each connection representing a big event. Essentially creating a giant moving timeline! Before we researched about the revolutions we had to fill out forms deciding what revolution we wanted to research. We were then put into groups based off our answers, after we were put in our groups we did a lot of research. We looked at Crane Britons theory and made our own diagrams. We then used the information we learned about our revolutions and made a infographic about them using Crane Brintons theory.
Here is my Crane Brinton Diagram:
Here is my Infographic:
The Machine
Once we had all the information we had to choose six key events and then create metaphors for them. Then once you had your metaphors you then created a blueprint of a rudegoldberg machine with all of the metaphors or connections you came up with. Everyone in the group shared there blueprints and one connection from every blueprint was chosen for the big group machine. The machine itself had be as big as a wall and work, which is not as easy as you may think. Once all of the connections were chosen the engineer had to make a blueprint of the final machine, once finished we were able to begin building. I think my group did a pretty good job building. I had a lot of fun being the project manager because I was able to keep everything moving smoothly and we got everything done on time. I also had a lot of fun painting the boards and making the machine look pretty. There was a lot of problems whilst building such as the balls on the big board kept falling off or not knocking the weight off the platform. Even though the machine didn’t work every time during the exhibition it still worked a few times and everyone was really impressed so I see it as a success. I think the machine or the actual building was definitely the hardest part in this project but it was rewarding in the end.
Here is my blueprint:
Here is the final blueprint:
The Documentary
During the building process we had to make a documentary which I thought was super fun because I interviewed and filmed all of my group members. For the documentary we had to interview and film the building process as well as explain a bit about out revolution. Overall I think the documentary turned out really well and luckily one of my group members had brought a projector to the exhibition so we were able to show it off easily. If you would like to see the Machine work and want to see videos of the building process I will put the link below.
Here is the documentary:
The Exhibition
I think we did a pretty good job decorating our space. We had last minute streamers and pretty lights and signs. For food we had baked potatoes, potato chips, and for drinks we had ginger ale. The setting up was quite stressful because we couldn’t find one of our marbles and had to substitute it which meant the connection didn’t work as well so we had to fix it and during that process some of our rails broke. It was very stressful but once we figured it out I think it looked good and worked. We also had to explain each connection before staring the machine and I think our speech was pretty good because we spoke clear and united. Overall I think we did a pretty good job and during the exhibition everything went smoothly.
Here is a photo of our stand:
What I Would Change
If I were to do this project again I would want more time to build because I feel like we were a little rushed. I would also spend more time making the machine look better as well as making the machine one or two big pieces rather then two big pieces and four small connections. In the end I am happy with my and my groups work and this project was pretty fun.
Thanks so much for reading my blog I hope you have a great day!