I thought I'd try collecting stories from my friends outside of Kingston about objects, to see if any became MacGuffins. I sent a message outlining that the story should be related, not about, an object, as well as some other restrictions. I then sent it out, hoping to receive a collection of stories from which I could potentially decipher one or two MacGuffins.
I have documented a few of these stories in a booklet. I would like to change the format, with a number system that I mention on my planning sheet. Kind of like a catalogue, each object will be numbered at the front, which will correspond to the page that the image appears on, but without the text like the images below. The text will be on pages at the back, each numbered according to the object that they are about.
Below are the images used in the booklet.
From this experiment, I have discovered that MacGuffins are hard to come by without authoring them into a narrative. However, this experiment doesn't confirm that MacGuffins can't exist in reality. My previous test with loo roll and guns is an example. The difference between these two tests is that I was able to author the narrative around the loo paper/gun scenario, while with this experiment I had no control over how the objects were portrayed. Potentially, some of these stories could be reframed to make their objects MacGuffins.
To respond to this, I will need to look more closely at my original definition of a MacGuffin and potentially redefine it in order to move forward.
Some of the design references I looked at for collating the collection are pictured below:
(I wrote about all of them on my research sheets)
- The MacGuffin Library
- Design is a state of mind, Martin Gamper
- Ampersand, Ryan Gamper
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