Manasi Kulkarni's profile

Plurality and Wellbeing

Bringing the LGBTQ community in plurality.
This is an interactive installation where the users face some controversial and complicated issue of constructing identity. There are seven circles which contains words related to gender as an identity. The circes includes words about romantic attraction, sexual orientation, range of gender expression and gender identity. The users can create different combinations and learn about the diversity of the people. The information provided as a result of the combination will help the people understand how perfectly natural the phenomenon is. The straight people never really understand how complicated it is to understand oneself with respect to the gender. There are many people out there who have come out and become successful despite the struggle. There also many people still struggling trying to find out who there are. There is a lot of research that goes behind their identity as sometimes they have no idea why they are that way.  
I went ahead with this idea as I wanted people to understand that as soon as we start learning more about the gender identity, it will not only help us construct our own identity, but it will also help the people struggling to come out just because of fear of being different. The interaction happens by rotating the circles and coming up with combination that best suits yourself or an identity that you are curious about. It includes a dictionary that will help the users through words they don’t understand. At the end it will show traits and stereotypes of the identity and personalities who belong to the same identity. This will help them know more about their identity and take efforts to break the existing stereotypes. Each circle also has a blank space where the audience could add anything that they want in addition to the existing words.   
Gender is one of the most fundamental aspect of one’s identity. It deeply influences every part of one’s life. Sometimes this aspect is narrowly defines and rigidly enforced. The people who are outside these norms face a lot of challenges. Even a small change in the aspect become a disapproval. Rising empathy and thoughtful consideration of the diversity and uniqueness and validity of every person’s experience of self, we can accept diversity of people into plurality. This will not only help in inclusion of people, it will help people to be comfortable in the society and celebrate who they are just like everyone else does. 
INSPIRATION

The identity wheel has been used as a part of inclusive learning in lots of colleges. It is an activity sheet that helps student reflect and identify themselves socially and how other perceive them according to these identities. The student is asked to fill various social identities in the worksheet and then further prioritise according to the their self-perception and others perception of them. In addition to the social identity they are also asked to fill a personal identity wheel which helps the student reflect on dissonance between social and personal identity. ​To encourage students to consider their identities critically and how identities are more or less keenly felt in different social contexts.  
These activities usually take place in classroom and universities to put forth the barriers of inclusion. This also helps understand how we don't consider some aspects of us as our identity as we consider is to be a privilege and then normalize other identities. For example, if english is the first language of a student, they will rarely think of language as a part of their identity, but someone else might be identified with the language they speak. This helps build communities and encourage empathy amongst each other. It also shows the diversity in the classroom and sensitize students with what they have shared. 
Ars Magna Zairja is an instrument used by medieval Arab astrologers to generate ideas by mechanical means, by combining numerical values ​​associated with letters and categories to arrive at new ways of thinking. This device captivated the Mallorcan Ramón Llull, using it in his ARS MAGNA to combine series of categories around concentric circles, expanding the possibilities of knowledge. He believed that creating various combinations of different existing concepts we can derive new truths. Ars magna was made of paper, we could rotate the circles and make different combinations of concepts and categories.  
PROTOTYPING
1) Making people aware: The idea was to make an interactive installation that will make people aware of their identity and tell them that it is perfectly fine to be who they are. It will talk about   the LGBT community and their importance as well in a way that will empower people to accept them and tell that it is perfectly okay to accept who they are 
2) Explain the youth: Breaking the stereotype of LGBT to be “adults”, questioning whether should a princess always fall in love with a prince? Telling the young adults that it is perfectly okay for a princess to fall for a any other girl. Creating books where people can change the characters, the way they look and who they fall in love with.  
3) Giving a role model: A platform where people can read about the success stories of different LGBT people. Know more about the community through the platform   
4) Gender diverse public places: Include the community while designing signs for a specified gender. Deciding how to use the silhouette icons where not only male and female but consider the whole diversity. 
5) Gender diverse digital platforms: Sometimes, some people are not exactly sure about their gender identity and sexual preferences. Asking their gender for any kind of information can be a little hurting for them. We need to keep our options open and think about how we can make the digital platform like profile avatar’s, marital status on social media, gender revelation on social media etc. I would want to study about how I can think of the same as a subtle way of questioning and giving more options so that everyone is comfortable while answering. 


REFLECTION

I applied multiple research and analysis methods as I had limited primary resources. I tried to validate every doubt that I have with a reason. As this was a really vast topic at a point I was overwhelmed seeing so much information. I had a tough time narrowing down the topic to a point where everyone who sees or uses the product will relate. I finally came down to gender as an identity and decided to focus on that as people straight people don’t usually see gender as a very important identity even though it does make a lot of difference to a lot of people out there. I wanted to plant a seed in their minds about this thought so that they know that understanding one's gender identity goes beyond looks and it how they feel which is very much natural. The process that went into this project was more observation and secondary research based and some primary research as well. I validated my ideas first by using pros and cons of the topic and coming to final two and they make an empathy map to decide which will make them introspect and understand more and a SWOT analysis that helped improve my product idea.  In this project I as an individual have grown more aware of how things are in the outside world, right from when I was researching about the marginalised community.  Taking this project forward I want to think about how I would make it more interactive for the audience so that they introspect and in turn bring a change at least in the thought of the society. Once people start empathising towards the community that's when we people will including the community in plurality. 
Plurality and Wellbeing
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Plurality and Wellbeing

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