We kicked off the second week with an intense brainstorming session, for our personal story development. We had a few minutes to answer every question, and some of the questions were extremely personal, so I felt really confused and tired after answering them.
Some of the questions were:
- What are you perceiving? (Smell, touch, etcetera)
- What are you thinking?
- What are you feeling? (emotions)
- Think about your intimate circles, who do you see, what are they doing.
- Describe the conflicts within each of these intimate circles.
-Analyse/dissect the dynamics within these conflicts and map them.
-Take the story -> conceptualise ideas how you can tell the story with the audience in a "micro space" This can be anything, a performance, installation, on a screen, etcetera. It was for us to decide.
-Take the story, think of ideas how you can tell the story as:
- a physical experience
- collective media experience
- interactive experience
I'm not going to talk about my answers in detail, but in the end, the essence of all that I wrote down is that I have a hard time connecting with people, on an emotional/mental level, because of (mental) walls that I have built up around me. I automatically shut down when someone/I gets too close. But when I do connect with someone, it is the most overwhelming, rewarding, sublime, and rare feeling I can experience. And to me that's very beautiful, but also extremely scary. Because most of the time we all have this mask we put on everyday, for society. So, really opening up to someone leaves you feeling vulnerable. The mask is dropped, the walls collapse and someone sees who you really are. Really scary stuff.
But it felt really unnatural.
At St. Joost, we normally have a few weeks to develop our concept/story, and to do research, and now we had to be ready in a few days??! That was really rough and left me with quite a headache... but it also felt good to be challenged like this.
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Tuesday 6-9-16
So I have to create an immersive story, in a micro-space.
My brain was so fried after the first day, I just didn't know what kind of story I wanted to tell anymore. But then I thought back to a quote I once read, and I can identify with:
“....it's the ability to elicit or facilitate these sensations and emotions that drive my work. We take a lot of our daily lives and experiences for granted, letting internal thoughts and concerns stop us from fully engaging with experiences as they happen. If my installations can undo our autopilot and create an experience to engage with, then that's one of my major motivations.”- Elisa Artesero (artist)
That's exactly what I want to do too as a storyteller.
So then I thought to myself, what kind of experience makes me feel engaged with the moment, undoes my autopilot? It's feeling connected to someone. So, back to my first idea after all.
I want my audience to experience that sublime feeling(beautiful but really overwhelming at the same time) I get when I feel connected to someone.. It's a spark that can suddenly happen, like during a deep conversation for example. Connecting with someone is hard though... It requires you to be vulnerable. And that's scary, painful but rewarding too.
So I won't really be telling a story, as a traditional 3 act. I want to generate an experience, that leaves an internal transformation in my audience.
But how am I going to give the audience such an experience??!
So I talked to some people about this, and their feedback helped me:
Basically I was left with these questions:
How do I create a setting/context where people will start to feel connected to each other??
How do I create a sublime experience for the audience to engage with?? To get them out of their autopilots?
Those were difficult questions. So I looked for inspiration. I mainly looked for artworks/installations that give me that sublime feeling. and I sketched some ideas:
but I just didn't think these ideas would create the connection that I was looking for. I didn't want people to be focused on the space they're in, I wanted them to be focused on each other.
So I did a bit of research on how to get people to really connect.
And well, it seems that eye contact, prolonged eye contact, helps people to synchronize brain activity, and therefore form a bond.
Here are some quotes that inspired me:
"So many of us have fears and insecurities that we would like to keep hidden from other people, and there’s something about eye contact that can feel like we’re totally exposed. Naked, even.”
"For many people, prolonged eye contact at any time can feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. But allowing it, rather than avoiding it, can also be very bonding.”" - http://jejoue.com/blog/the-eyes-have-it.html
"Prolonged eye contact synchronizes brain activity between two people, according to a new study at the National Institute of Physiological Science (NIPS). This synchronicity is crucial in establishing and facilitating our face-to-face social interactions."
"The findings indicate that mutual eye contact might be a crucial component for human face-to-face social interactions, given its potential to bind two individuals into a singular connected system. The researchers would like to conduct further investigation to truly understand what is at work behind interpersonal communications.
“Based on the enhancement of behavioral and neural synchronization during mutual gaze, we now know that shared attention is hard to establish without eye contact,” said Norihiro Sadato, senior author of the study." - http://psychcentral.com/news/2015/12/19/eye-contact-synchronizes-brain-activity-between-two-people/96480.html
Based on all those articles I read, I wondered what would happen if people could only see each other's eyes. How intimate and overwhelming would that be? Would people start to feel connected quicker, as they can't be distracted by other things around them? So I quickly sketched this idea of a "looking tunnel":
Literally creating tunnel vision.
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Wednesday 7-9-16
I was quite nervous when I thought of making an object. I'm someone who loves drawing, and I'm terrible at making 3D objects. But, this was another challenge I decided to face.
So I made a (really shabby) prototype, based on my ideas and feedback from others.
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Thursday 8-9-16
We had a very interesting talk about science fiction today.
Science fiction: How can sci-fi stretch our imagination on what's possible in the future?
Science fiction is a way
- to study society
- to reflect on our world views, then and now
- to make our own future scenario
The 3 themes we talked about were:
- Utopia & dystopia
- Reality or simulation?
- The next body; trans- and posthumanism.
Some interesting films that were mentioned were:
- Videodrome, by David Cronenberg
(interesting quote: "There is nothing real outside our perception of reality. If you can control your senses, you can control your "reality")
- They live, by John Carpenter
- Uncanny Valley (2015) by Federico Heller. (it basically shows how VR will destroy us. People becoming addicted to virtual reality, because it has more and better things to offer than our reality)
Science fiction raises so many interesting questions, so I felt really inspired after this talk. :)
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Anyway, after that I tried out the prototype I made yesterday, with some classmates.
After hearing about their experience and receiving feedback, I adapted the design. So instead of a box, some type of transparent binoculars seemed like a better idea. Because the box is too dark inside. I also have to make the experience even more intimate, because the box still creates a safe distance apparently.
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Friday 9-9-16:
So I made a new prototype:
When looking through the binoculars I can still see to my sides though , so I need to create something like horseblinkers to really create that tunnel vision. It also has to be put on a sort of pole/tripod, that is adjustible in height, so people won't get distracted by holding the binoculars all the time.
And the installation should be in a light, serene, empty room, free from distractions.
After testing out my newest prototype, I think this would be the most ideal to make:
I just hope I can create that setting where people will feel vulnerable and
uncomfortably intimate at first, but leave them feeling like they developed a bond, in the end.
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In short: this week really tired me out, because all of a sudden my working process had to be done in a few days instead of a few weeks. But it also felt good to work this hard, like an exercise for the brain to work quicker.
Another thing that was important to me was what Frederik and Marcel said about seeing the potential of your ideas. At first, ideas may seem stupid or not worth it, but if you just go along with it, the idea can grow and bloom. You never know what it can turn into.