cinema.

For the second timeline we were asked to investigate light in the context of ‘designing a better mousetrap.’ I arrived at the movie projector. Storytelling is very important to me. I’d say it might be one of my main interests in industrial design, especially for cinema. I’m not exactly sure what category of mousetrap design that falls into, but perhaps it will soon be made apparent.

Using cinema as a medium for telling stories has been common since the turn of the 20^th century. Humans are relational creatures. We’ve been telling stories since we were in caves… While the spoken word and the written word have been with us for ages, cinema has come and is hopefully here to stay. The tools for projecting movies onto a screen have changed over the years in technology but majorly not in end result. Projectors still exist to do one thing—show movies on a large scale. I suppose the mousetrap design I’m might just kill the little guy quicker. Or more efficiently. Or might be able to be put in more places in the home…

It’s very interesting to think that not long ago, the home cinema experience involved most often enormous (and by today’s standards, crude) television set ups. It’s refreshing to have the magic of a rear light projection able to be affordable enough to be brought into the home. Many people nowadays believe that cinema is dying—that the cinema experience is dying. People blame the internet, piracy, television, all kinds of things. I refuse to believe that. I believe that an experience cannot simply ‘die.’ People are right to think that things are changing—the advent of new technology means that the gatekeepers will have to adapt. But the fact that people are buying and using home theater systems means that the experience, the magic, of cinema is not dead at all. People still want the big screen. They want it so much that they’ll set it up in their homes.