17. Invention, intellectual property and income

1.1 Assignments of the Week

• Develop a plan for dissemination of your final project.
• Prepare drafts of your summary slide (presentation.png, 1920x1080) and video clip (presentation.mp4, 1080p HTML5, < ~minute, < ~10 MB) and put them in your website's root directory

1.2 Dissemination Plan

I designed an outdoor study course on topic of the history and new born of Shikumen. This project was inspired by my teaching experience of this course.

In this course, I will take students to visit Xintiandi, the most famous Shikumen building in Shanghai. I tell them how people in the past lived in Shikumen buildings, and how Shikumen was transformed into a commercial district. Since the Shikumen buildings in Xintiandi have lost their residential function and the internal spaces have been greatly modified, children can only see the life in the Shikumen in the past through pictures. The picture is flat, but the building is three-dimensional. So I hope to design an installation that will allow children to more clearly feel what people in the past lived in Shikumen buildings. I would name this installation "Shikumen Time Machine".

This device will first become a teaching aid in my classroom. Since the cost of making a installation is not high, I will just fund it myself and will not consider its commercialization for the time being. In the future, if this installation is popular with students and there is market demand, it can be made into cultural and creative products for sale by the company where this research course is held.

Me teaching the course

1.3 Future Opportunities

I have two ideas about future opportunities:

• At present, this Shikumen Time Machine only shows the courtyard scene of Shikumen. In the future, I may make other scene installations in Shikumen buildings, such as pavilions, attics, wing rooms, kitchens, etc., to form a Shikumen time machine series.
• Since the electronics and programming technology used in this installation are not difficult, the production process of the installation can also be integrated into the course, allowing students to create their own time machine after understanding the history and humanistic stories of Shikumen architecture.

1.4 Summary Slide and Video

Summary Slide:

Video: