Wage Love

Inspiration

Ceremonial dance in honor and respect, social media/viral fundraising, global community activism. The City of Angelos needs angels now more than ever to address the devastation of the LA fires. However, what people see are the physical damage- we have to address the heavy internal trauma that comes with having to rebuild their community, using whatever resources necessary. We want to bring social back to social media. Inspired by Sultan Sharrief's research on Virality, Philantropy, and the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, we believe in the power of showing the social and philanthropic potential of XR technology through using it to support our human connections during this time of devastation.

What it does

We have built two XR outputs to be shared to a widely accessible audience. When thinking about who we were addressing, we considered the platforms (Tiktok vs. Snapchat vs. Browser) and chose to use Web Browsers and AR Filters so that it can be accessible to a diverse audience that our LA team advised us to do. The filter is being supported by our fundraising website http://wagelovenow.org. The website describes the mission, shares the vision, and tracks the fundraising dollars generated by web traffic and filter use. A 3D globe spins to show the current submitted social media dance videos from people around the world. The QR code links to the web app where the user can find the filter to participate. The filter itself instructs the user to join in an easy to learn rhythmic dance using various hand arm and body movements that correspond with the four elements - earth, air, water, fire. The user is then instructed to move in time with these elements in a rhythmic way to express their feelings about the fires and desire to show support. In this way the ceremonial nature of this global initiative, the visibility around quantity and geolocations of participants and the live updated donation tracker offers a warm beacon of worldwide support during this time when LA is struggling to maintain optimism.

How we built it

We used Lens Studio, Snap AR, Web AR, TikTok Effect House, Adobe Premiere Pro

Challenges we ran into

• Potential song copyright issues, containing scope
• We struggled a lot during this challenge, on almost every little. Our mission was clear- to find ways we can immediately provide aid to the LA community. If we didn't have on-the-ground support from LA team members, and not co-created with them, we would have easily created something that was worse than not helpful- virtue signaling, appropriation.
• The tech issues and our personnel were spread extremely thin, even more so than an ordinary hack. Not only the emergency hack, but the format of the community hack, made it so that team members had to divide their attention between different projects.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we were able to collaborate so heavily, generate so many ideas, ask so many questions and really take the time to craft a strong vision for the project despite the time zone difference! We are extremely proud of our mission, of how much we've learned about what the LA community needs, and that we really aligned on a shared goal. Not often do we find a team that is ready to support each other and jump in to help.

• We're proud of how our team came together, without the standard format, incentives (startup support, hardware, etc) and structure, of a hackathon, on an issue we care about. Our hearts led first, then our craft and skills followed.
  

What we learned

We were all able to learn something new and useful. It was a hackathon of firsts! i.e.:

• This was our first ever hackathon working across timezones, while addressing a humanitarian crisis.
• This was our first time working in Lens Studio.
• First time having members who were spread between other community projects
• We did not have a UX Designer. We figured that out and got it to work.
• We built this so that it can be easily transferred to, should this fundraiser have momentum.

What's next for Wage Love

Continue forward with the campaign and have the following out:

• Web XR with a way to record, share, and invite friends + loved ones to a "dance challenge", inspired by the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
• Track the success of fundraising going towards 1 organization.
• Work on securing sponsorship from a foundation so that it can reach a larger audience

Built With

• adobe
• lens-studio
• premiere
• snap-ar
• tiktok-effect-house
• web-ar