Indian Temple, 2017, Flickr.com

Tourists climb Sigiriya Lion rock fortress in Sigiriya, Sri Lanka, Getty Images

Jakub Vondra Ancient Temples Kit, Pinterest.com

“THE TWO WIDOWS” — COVER DETAIL FROM L’OEIL DE LA POLICE (1908), Atlas Obscura

This article shows how humans are basically programmed to adapt to a herd mentality, as we have a natural desire to fit in with the crowd. This often leads to less individual thinking and more reliant on their neighbors. A sense of individuality is lost in society, as the people create an evolutionary stunt in humans.

My object is designed to solve the problem of mob mentality in a quick, effective way. By using balsa wood, paper, and string, I plan to make a form loosely based on ancient temples and the guillotine. I plan to incorporate the bright colors from the Indian temple shown above and stairs, as well as a pulley system. The stairs, which lead to nothing, entice the herd thinkers to approach and enter this structure. The all seeing eye is then set atop balsa wood and hung by string, dropping itself on herd thinkers like a guillotine. This symbolizes how humans often self destruct, which is what I believe mob mentality is doing to society. They willingly walk into a death trap, which is the concept of group thinking and the death of individuality. I would like to have the eye be movable with a string system, but I still have to work out the technical details. 

The functions that prompted my decisions to make this form stems from how annoyed I have been lately with how people are acting on social media with herd thinking. I wanted to show how these people are walking into a trap of their own design, as they choose to believe things because they are in an echo chamber. I research old Hindu and Greco-Roman temples for my inspiration, as well as the guillotine. I wanted to incorporate the bright, seductive colors from the Hindu temples to attract people in, as well as ruins surrounding the structure to show how outdated and faulty group thinking is. The design process on wood worked much better, as I could not make the feet for the temple like I had hoped. This website was extremely tedious and I really disliked the process, as I am a painter.

The physical structure relates to my content because it is an effective way to get rid of these people (the guillotine), and it shows how they walk into the trap themselves. I also made my structure in the middle of the desert surrounded by ruins to add to this effect. It is obvious that it's out of place, but you want to look at it anyways. That's where it gets you. In my 3D model, the structure is made out of ancient rocks and stone, as well as with a bright pop of color to lure the viewer in. The eye, which functions as the guillotine, looks over the desert. I chose an eye because it prompts curiosity and it is a common motif in my work. 

My definition of form follows function ties into the idea of practicality before aesthetics. I define form as the shape the object takes and function as the job it is supposed to perform. I found that in order for this to work for me, I had to make sure my form (the base model) was structurally sound before I could worry about how it looked. The form was more important in the end because it kept it all together. The function, which is to be a guillotine, is achieved through a string tied to the guillotine in my wooden model. In my 3D model, I thought it would be better to leave the string out and have the eye work as its own entity; it decides when to drop itself. Before I started this assignment, I thought that function was the most important, as it does a job and/or is aesthetically pleasing. But, I found that the base has to be solid, or everything falls apart.