Black Quantum Futurism:
Black Womxn Temporal Portal
TIMEFRAME
8 Weeks
MY ROLE
UX Designer
Product Strategy
Product Design
TOOLS
Illustrator
Rhino 3D
Vray
MENTOR
Rasheedah Philips
In collaboration with Rasheedah Philips, a nationally recognized artist of Black Quantum Futurism who had received an award from the Velocity Fund, I conceptualized a prototype for a pod that serves as an individualized healing space for women, target especially Black womxn, to retreat and relieve stress through light and sound therapy and healing through a series of coordinated future visioning and trauma healing. The portal is an interpersonal experience and a part of an online experience, created by Black Quantum Futurism.
0.0 Overview
0.1 Overview
Problem Discovery
Working closely with my client and collaborator, Rasheedah Philips, her initial ideas considered the unique, intersectional temporal experiences of Black women, femmes, and girls and the ways in which we are being actively erased from the objective, linear future, the Black Womxn Temporal Portal is a temporal sanctuary for self-identified Black women, femmes, and girls. Based on the principles and interdisciplinary practices of Black Quantum Futurism, the Black Womxn Temporal Portal spans multiple mediums - it is a physical capsule/portal, as well as a web-based and film-based toolkit of Black womanist temporal rituals and tech. The Portal serves as a statement against limited statements about what the future is (The Future is...) that excludes Black women, femmes, transwomen, and girls. The statement recognizes the plurality and quantum nature of the future(s) where Black woman, femmes, girls exist and are safe, loved, and valued.
1.0 Define
Sketches
After meeting with my client and collaborator, Rasheedah Philips, I began to sketch initial concepts expanding on the idea of a temporal experience, and dove deeper into healing, formal expression, implications, and metaphors. “Wounds” as the physical and psychological traumas that Black womxn have experienced historically and in present-day systems of oppression are expressed through scars on the surface of the portal. The uterus, or “womb” as a giver of life, re-generator, and safe space that supports growth represents the internal operations of the portal, its form, and structural components.
2.0 Research
Themes & Concepts
The spatial qualities of the portal celebrate the female anatomy as both an independent form and a carrier for the development of autonomy, while its formal expression represents healing and communication through scarification, “wounds”, and the interplay between the void and object, it interprets and communicates with its spatial context while protecting its internal “operations”. Language as form also became a central theme of formal design.
Through the paradox of healing through “scars”, the “wounds” of the surface are Nsibidi scarification characters oriented to create the seams of the welded portal components. The user becomes the operator of the portal’s communication of the user’s experience through illuminated Nsibidi characters while simultaneously receiving “operation” of societal wounds from the portal through light therapy, sound therapy, and the healing process of the Black Quantum Futurism virtual experience.
3.0 Create
Concept Development
Following the sketch phase, I explored how the internal interface of the portal could serve as a platform for the BQF virtual experience. The spectrum of light and sound is controlled by the user. by allowing the user to set the atmospheric experience, it gives them more control over the healing experience.
We were also interested in the effects that light and sound waves have on resetting the immediate emotional state. The experiencer steps into the portal and activates it via custom light and sound frequencies, they go through the quantum mapping experience.
The form represents a disjunction of a confluence of parts brought together by a common thread of dismembering to remember the body - embodied in form.
4.0 Ideate
We had a $10,000 budget to design and potentially build the portal. We partnered with a local fabrication studio to help us price materials and construction costs. I iterated various typologies with my client/collaborator to strategize the optimal form that expresses the physical and metaphorical themes we wanted to convey, and how the target user would experience those elements within our current budget.
5.0 Implement & Document
After reviewing the formal studies and meeting with our fabricator, the final typology was selected for further advancement. The structure of the portal resembles the pelvic bone that supports internal organs and the trunk of the human body. I created a ribbed structural system that can connect through “tongue and groove”, mortise, and dowel methods. The surface of the portal is constructed of sheet metal welded together and anchored to the ribbed structure with T-nuts. The final documentation includes a construction template and call-outs of components.
Interior Design
Touchscreen display loops short films based on time travel.
Interactive display mounted on adjustable gas spring arm displays interactive future visioning platform that takes users through a workshop style experience.
The vertical hydraulic door anchors into a latch which the user controls to provide a sense of safety and security.
Touchscreen display loops short films based on time travel.
Interactive display mounted on adjustable gas spring arm displays an interactive future visioning platform that takes users through a workshop style experience.
The vertical hydraulic door anchors into a latch which the user controls to provide a sense of safety and security.
Plan View
Interior Cut view of Portal
The interior size of the portal is approximately 5’ in depth, 6’ wide, and 7’high, to allow comfortability of all body types. It was important for us to design an equitable space for all body types and genders to experience.
6.0 Realize
Web-based Portal
Black Quantum Futurism, interactive experience will prominently display and loop two short films a series of short films previously developed based on a time travel novel called Recurrence Plot (and Other Time Travel Tales).
The time travel experiments and rituals shown in the films are simultaneously the kinds of exercises and experiments one can do in the Portal. The films also exemplify the Black womanist temporality themes that are at the heart of the proposal.
Take Aways
Collaboration
Working directly with an open-minded artist allowed me to capture their vision and expand concepts and themes based on principles of their work while also having creative freedom of the final product. During the design phase, it became clear that our ambitious and thought-provoking design would require additional labor and material cost. Our final budget was 5x our original projection and we decided to settle on a more modest design. Although the cost of construction exceeded our budget, the construction template serves as a future build while simultaneously existing as a speculative art.
Universal Design Principles
The iterative phase allowed us to explore different options to find the right resolution that adhered to both of our principles of universal design that is for a diverse abilities. The sound spectrum allows people of varying vision abilities to be able to experience the portal. The texture of the Nsibidi groves can be experienced through touch, allowing the user to experience the art by identifying the characters on the form.