Bedtime Stories
Bedtime Stories is an interactive documentary microsite that raises awareness about the injustices of the U.S. immigration detention and deportation system by focusing on the detention bed quota. Introduced in 2010, the quota is a Congressional mandate that requires the incarceration of approximately 34,000 immigrants in jails and detention centers in the U.S. at any given time. The site uses animated GIFs to simulate a “bird’s eye” view of people sleeping in a detention center and highlights the personal stories of immigrants who have experienced detention through embedded text, audio and video. The viewers are then asked to take action by following the DWN social media accounts, mailing lists, and tweet to end the detention system quota.

View our site:  http://dwn-staging.herokuapp.com/

Username: guest
Password: stopdetention

View our Final Presentation.

After a successful Design Candidate Brainstorm with our project partner, we were able to finalize our idea. We intend to make an interactive documentary around the Immigration Detention Bed Quota Campaign. The website that we are creating will have animated gifs of people in bed that will be embedded with media and links that are all clickable and shareable on social media outlets. The ticker at the bottom will share how many days and hours have been stolen from this targeted community.

Bex and Aditi helped us facilitate a Design Canidate Brainstorm with our project partner last Monday morning. It was a really productive session. Everyone shared at least 1 project idea and they are all documented in this google doc.

We will be meeting up on Sunday, March 23rd at ITP to finalize our idea so that we can begin prototyping our project. At that time, we will also work on our presentations and finish up our working agreement.

Side note: If by chance you’ll be in New York from March 20 – 23, What I Learned from a Decade of Fear is a must see show at La Mama Theater. It explores how incriminating an average life is. They use security technology as a storytelling medium.

Day 2 of the Discotech was really productive. My team met up for the first time in person and did a lot of brainstorming. We are currently working on refining 3 ideas around the bed quota issue to present to our project partners this Friday.

Our professor shared with us a really helpful strategy timeline for Transmedia Projects. This is something that we’re definitely considering at this stage into the design process. We’re also trying to schedule a meeting with Bex Hurwitz to try to get more feedback on our ideas.

The Detention Watch Network works through the collective strength and diversity of its members to expose and challenge the injustices of the U.S. immigration detention and deportation system and advocate for profound change that promotes the rights and dignity of all persons. Our project could potentially focus on the Detention Watch Network’s current campaign to end the bed quota.

The reality that exists is that the immigration detention bed quota requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hold a minimum of 34,000 immigrants at any given time. Having a quota on how many people must be locked up every day is an issue that indirectly affects everyone. Chrislene, Sean, and I met last Wednesday 2/19 via a google hangout with Silky and Carly from the Detention Watch Network to brainstorm ideas.

A question that came up during our conversation is what would the world look like without detention centers. During the upcoming Discotech this weekend, we hope to address this question and explore the possibilities. We will be meeting with our project partners on Friday 2/28 to finalize what will be covered during the workshop portion.

So far we’ve been researching relevant projects and other inspiring works and started a list:

Punishment and Profits

Innocence Project

Personal Analytics

Data Visualisations by Jer Thorp

MIT database of interactive documentary projects 

Iced Game

Between the Bars

Vojo

For more information about the end the bed quota campaign, please visit: http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/EndTheQuotaNarrative