Installation + Concept note

CONCEPT NOTE:

Wari

I believe in what I see and I know I can see myself.

But sometimes I do not believe because I cannot really see myself.

I am a non-believer. But that makes me a believer of some kind doesn’t it?

And here is when I see myself caught between believing and not believing.

A few years ago, I went on a road trip with my father to a village in Maharashtra.

We were going at the time of the Wari, a procession which took place in the memory of Saint Dnyaneshwar, a worshipper of Lord Vitthal. My father had walked the Wari a couple of times earlier and listening to his recounts of the journey, the culture, the people, their conviction and belief in whom they walked had made me curious. Why did they walk?

I am not a believer in Lord Vitthal or God and I find it difficult to hold such strong convictions. If asked I would say “I believe in myself, or rather my Self”, ‘Me’, who can touch, feel and whom ‘I’ can control.
And having identified that belief I decided to walk.

Little did I know the fragility of my ‘Belief’. Only a short way into the walk and I was completely immersed in the euphoria of everything around me. The people, the music, and the walk itself were converting me. I felt the power of the space and what it was doing to the Self within it and before I knew it, I was a believer.
For that short period of time, I became a believer of Lord Vitthal. I believed in the walk, the people I walked with and for whom I walked and that is when I saw myself caught in this act of believing and non-believing.

I saw myself temporarily slipping out of believing, entering non-believing and vice-versa. My Self and my beliefs would always be something that was in constant construction from the experiences I had had and was yet to have.This experience changed the very person I was.

Identities are formed out of certain beliefs.  Believing is so internalized, that we do not know that our identities are constantly being redefined by the act of believing. Who you are in this moment, your Self, becomes the base for the experiences that await you. Your identity is being constantly reconstructed through your experiences.

How does it feel then to have your identity challenged when confronted by an alien belief?  What is it like to lose control over what you thought was your Self, to relinquish the belief that this Self was inexorable? How does your Self handle the discomfort of having its identity questioned?

As a non-believer, I walked the Wari and it made me question how I could believe that I was a non believer when in fact I believed.

And because I had questioned that to such an extent, the grounds of belief and non-belief that I stood no longer seemed as firm and compelling. I experienced a fragmentation of my identity into my own beliefs and non-beliefs,

I keep slipping in and out of who I am because my identity stems from the beliefs that I have. But if my beliefs are changing, multiplying, I am constantly being recreated as another self which is always a little different from the earlier one.

A few years ago I went for a walk and it changed the way I look at a lot of things. We don’t know what lies ahead and what experiences may transform us, empower us, or even break us. For now we are who we are and all we can do is walk as a Self within a space.

Rough Skeleton of the Walk

The absolutely important part of the walk and the experience is working. My sensors are working too..

Done with my rough setup of the events that happen in the walk. Couldn't project on a LCD. The corridor has no power supply.. Had no choice but to project on my Laptop... :(

Fixing on a space to test the walk

The space with the needed props. 

A quick update of the past week

Designing the walk and the experience.

Tested the walk on a number of people, people who had no clue about the project too...

Observations: The element of play is inherent to the walk since it is interactive, now the challenge is to integrate the intent smoothly in the walk- visual cues- to direct the person - yet retain the intuitiveness...

Ideas Pre-installation: Installing an actual mirror(which will look exactly like the mirror LCD inside) before the person enters in order to pre-condition the viewer. Gimmicks - Providing a coat. The person wears the coat and takes a look in the mirror before entering.

Ideas Post-installation: Getting there! something that will make the impact last from the walk even after the person has made the exit. Providing a hanger (a visual cue) for the person to remove and hang the coat?

Plan V1.0

Still deciding whether to add a visual language on the floor - 
I made a very quick walk, finalized the events that would take place in the walk (real time, delayed time, the disappearing act), printed it out on a flex so as to start visualizing in it's real scale (size of printed flex: 8 ft x 2.5 ft) actual size of the walk: 16 ft x 5 ft approximately, coded the events in processing to test the experience/impact on people. 

Tested the switch from realtime to delayed time on people. 
OBSERVATIONS: Initially it was shocking to see themselves transition from the real-time to delay-time, but eventually they became used to the impact - became more playful. Many of them kept hopping from real-time to delayed time to experience the switch at a faster pace. The impact was pretty solid and looked very interesting..

By Saturday I aim to set the space up along with the lights. Very important to see check the lighting of the space/set the mood for the experience...The amount of testing required to set up an installation just never ends. But it is also the best part because the results are never known. You never know how it may turn out to be unless and until you test it!

A rough demo

This happened two weeks ago. The Demo did give the review panel an idea of the walk with the delay but they said it wasn't enough!! so i ad to go back to my very first concept which was that, as the person goes closer to the screen(mirror) the delay starts, then the person becomes a silhouette and finally he disappears when he is closest to himself. 
I further refined and modified the concept into: there will be one entry and one exit point into the space. As the person enters, he sees himself in real time, as he goes further - the delay triggers and on his way back when he is about to exit - he turns around once more to see himself in the mirror - and he disappears...

Inspiration

Found an artist who very simply illustrates the interactions.

Projects by Anaisa Franco

Finally.. I got it..

PS3 Eye

Spent an entire day at Java testing the Eye with mac and then windows 7.. It works.. Good clarity, better than my mac internal webcam!
Made it work with the code too...
I feel i have achieved a big thing:)

Concept (Modified)

Testing the delay of 5 sec

Wondering whether to let one person or a minimum of two people into the space at a time?
It was great to capture the first reaction of people who had no idea what was going to happen on the screen.


I am just hoping the delay triggers nicely using the ultrasonic Sensor! Will put the tests up soon!!

Flowchart

Down to cracking the technical bit of the installation.. this is just for Doc.. Damn dumb post!!

Explorations(Processing)

Sorry for the colours. They totally changed while uploading on youtube. But you get the idea!

A Concept

And I am going to upload the explorations done on processing.. I recently only found a way to record in Processing without having to download any screen record software (courtesy: Urmi :))
So I can document any code that I test!

Brainstorm

I did a quick Brainstorm for ideas, more ideas.

Some interesting ideas/points came up - Stuff that makes you believe you Exist

• Mirror - Blowing on the mirror (fog)
• Shadow
• Social Identity - social documents (Id, license, voting card, any legal document )
• When you touch something - Direct stimulus
• Gravity
• Science - Theories that prove/challenge your existence
• DNA - Genes
• Internet - IP Address, Web, Social network

Designing towards creating the Experience of the installation

click to Enlarge

Attempts

I tried out the first Concept of making a Delay. It was a 10 sec delay. Was getting oriented with Processing and also exploring possibilities...  Don't know yet if it will get used.


Delay

Presentation for Review 3

Review#3 Presentation
Kumkum wanted me to present the process so far in tems of research, analysis, ideas, concepts etc.
After this Review, a lot of things in my project changed-the intent had to be redefined because i had opened up the phenomenon of the placebo effect and touched upon much larger concepts. (check presentation for the larger concepts). I had also stumbled upon a form, not he final one, but this form helped broaden the topic at first, and helped me narrow down to a focus.
After feedback from my panel, I had to narrow down the focus to 'Self' and open up the premise of belief because that would add some meat to my narrative and accordingly redefine the intent. So a lot of simultaneous work has been happening for the past two weeks.
I think I have arrived at a more fixed focus (Self) and made the connection to Belief.
I had spoken to Mr. Ravindra and he helped me structure and pin down my focus.

Also, in terms of the form I have been doing some Explorations and getting back in touch with Processing. I made the Delay happen and also a few other fun things. (will put them up soon)

Seeing yourself Seeing

Redefining Intent

Aim of the project: To reason Why you believe what you believe?

Addressing questions like:


What is a belief?
Belief is a state of mind where an individual holds a proposition to be true.

What is the importance of belief?
What you are right now is direct result of what your beliefs are. Belief is a cognitive faculty that helps us function in life by directing your thoughts, actions and your behavior.

Why beliefs are formed?

Beliefs are among the most primitive and central of mental constructs, and yet there is little agreement as to what they are or how they should be construed. They are basic to our understanding of a wide range of central phenomena in modern psychology. 
For example our beliefs are key components of our personalities and senses of identity, and our expressions of beliefs often define us to others. Many of our reactions to others are based on our beliefs and our perceptions of theirs, and it is impossible to understand racism, prejudice, religious and national conflicts without considering disagreement in basic belief systems. We join many groups because we believe the group will support our beliefs, and our participation in groups changes many of our beliefs. 
We seek psychotherapy in our effort to change our beliefs about self and the things we hold dear. Our political and religious beliefs are central to many of us. 
Many of our behaviors, mundane and consequential, are affected by what we believe. And on it goes.

Overarching question: Why you believe what you believe?

What am I saying through my Project?
Through the simple act of breaking beliefs, I am provoking the viewer to question why beliefs should be subject to reasoning and open to correction so as to evaluate one's actions, thoughts and behavior. (so to question one's thoughts and actions in society/life.)

Bigger Questions:

1) How important is it to know your "true-self"?
2) What am I Going to gain by knowing the "true self"?


Experience:
Do you know yourself or do you believe that you know yourself?

Taking two beliefs: 1) You believe in yourself.
                                2) You believe in what you see.


(check ideas for installation in the slideshow)

Sketches after redefining intent

Sketches

Visuals/space/sketches/interactions

Initial sketches - form?

(The metaphor of mirror)

Do we need placebos to live?

They are the feel goods in our life

Human response in attaining well being – Making a person believe in deception and almost following the deception for one’s own well-being.

Appearances are often deceptive, but something needs to happen where one starts believing in the deceived towards positivity/well-being.

A mirror as a metaphor to separate you and him (inner you) because while studying the phenomenon of a placebo, one thing got confirmed that it is You who heals yourself. And all you need is that external stimulus (sugar pill in which you believe) to start the action of healing yourself

Ideas for installation

13^th August

Key words derived from the phenomenon: Broader Concepts: idea of perception, action reaction, belief, human response to (Inert) stimuli, appearances, measured and controlled deception, illusion, positive effect

Attributes of a mirror = illusion, perception, action reaction, the idea of what you see is what you believe, response to stimulus, conditioning, controlled measured deception, separate ‘You’ from ‘you’, appearance,

15^th August

Idea of action reaction – How does this fit into the framework of a placebo?

Case1-Parallel1: The idea that you are given a pill (action) and you expect the healing to happen (reaction) – placebo is the pill because you believe the pill will heal you. (Mind play because both the action and reaction is happening from the same mind)

In case 1, the pill is a medium (stimulus) for a placebo to happen whereas, in case 2, the mirror is a medium (stimulus) for a placebo to happen.

Case 2-Parallel2: The idea of action-reaction through a mirror

You look in the mirror.

You see yourself.

You do an action.

The mirror does the same thing (instant reaction). Mind is conditioned to get an instant reaction.

There is a delay of 10 sec in the reaction.

There is an immediate separation of you and him.

Now you perform an action.

The mirror performs it for you, but 10 sec later.

Your actions are in your control but yet you wait for a response. This action itself means that ‘he’ is separated from ‘you’.

The situation is such where ‘he’ is following your actions. The response follows your actions.

Through something, through color? Touch? Interaction with yourself, can “you” follow he instead…?

Why the separation of “me” and “him”?

Placebo effect is a psychological effect. The body is looking for an effect to take place. After the intake of the sugar pill, the body believes that that the sugar pill is healing it. So the healing happens, just that it is the body that heals itself, not the sugar pill.

The process of healing itself – to translate this process into a space, the illusion that ‘you’ are separate from ‘me’. It is a self-generated process, which means the action and the reaction, are both generated in the body itself. And the body is actually healing itself sub-consciously.

Now in order to think in terms of a space the first idea was to separate the subconscious and the conscious i.e ‘he’ and ‘me’ respectively. Start a dialogue between ‘he’ and ‘me’.

17^{th August}

As Triveni said, “understanding the cause and effect equation”

Bringing about a receptive state of mind.

Ways of going ahead..getting unstuck.

--WATCH--ASK
---------TRY

Certain unanswered questions - kind of sorted.

After talking to people i inferred that there are essentially Three conditions for a placebo to happen:

1. Expectancy effect

2. Classical conditioning

3. Motivation

Interpretations of a placebo

“Perceiving a reality but questioning that reality, whether it is real or pretentious” - Nupur

“Placebo – something not real, pretends to be something and poses itself to be real…End result – a placebo takes place.” – Mr. Ravindra

3 questions to be addressed, which will eventually give, rise to the form:

1) Placebo addressing what? – Stress related problems and people (defining the audience/context)

What’s ironic about a placebo is that, it is something not real, but makes people believe it is real. And this effect is one of the most exploited in therapy.

2) The Form is going to be the link that makes the placebo happen

Using art in therapy as a resource – may understand how art therapy (color, image, construction of an image, as an experience) is used in a more scientific way to understand how imagery can trigger off my own form, which is going attempt a placebo.

My placebo is going to address stress.

So, according to the three conditions mentioned above, I need to create a condition (stress related) where the need to address it will arise, creating a condition for a placebo to take place.

How is the problem of stress addressed in art therapy?

What is that a person is made to talk, draw, think, act?

How is the person made to express his/her stress?

3) What does the form do?

Help me use my learning and constraints in an efficient manner to meet the goal of creating a placebo.

Make people believe their stress is gone by creating an illusion.

The big question: Why am I doing this? Using my learning of art, design, space, and electronics in a very therapeutic approach to create an installation on placebo?

My constraints:

Color

Image/constructed image

Light

Touch (may be)

Premise: Art in therapy

1. What is art in therapy?

2. How is it used?

3. How can color be used to tap into the subconscious. Application?

4. How is stress handled in art therapy?

5. What are the ways /devices to express stress in art therapy?

6. When and how use of / need to construct of image in order to express one’s feeling?

7. Do patients construct the images?

8. The therapist who shows pictures to understand their state of mind? Either way,

9. How can Color be used to control mood/build up to expect an emotion? (climax music?)

10. How/in what ways a patient’s state of being is identified?

11. While practicing art in therapy– looking at color, image construction.

12. What are the ways in which color be used as stress management/relief?

The ExtraRoom, a space to achieve psychological alterations

Extra Room from Bernd Hopfengaertner on Vimeo.

A very very interesting project at Design Interactions Summer show was ExtraRoom by Gunnar Green (in collaboration with Bernhard Hopfengaertner). Directly influenced by the 50s and '60s experiments, ExtraRoom puts the sensory deprivation practice in a near futuristic scenario, when mind reading technologies are in common use and thoughts are not private anymore.

What would happen if your thoughts became directly accessible to others? What would happen to your innermost desires and believes? Would you still be you?

Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain with music | Video on TED.com

Conversations

Conversational data gathered and consolidated. (Understanding belief: what it is? Where all does it occur? How it occurs? How people perceive and respond to it?)

People spoken to :

An astrologer, a homeopath, a transactional psychotherapist

---------------------------------------------

On 23^rd July : A chat with Venkat Shastri – Astrologer, Yelahanka New Town

What is your education?

A retired government servant. Attended college PUC (Intermediate college)

What is your profession?

Now, after retirement “in order to kill time” he took up his family tradition profession of astrological forecasting – to predict if possibly the question thrown at him will be possible or not.

For how many years have you been doing this?

Since 1952 till date

Who taught him to do this?

A two day workshop from his guru in order to understand what exactly one needs to do this and there onwards he has self-learning from books and learning from much wiser (older experienced pple) and now what counts the most is his experience, knowledge and his faith in god.

Who gives him the answers to the questions asked to him?

He uses the calender – the Panchanga which has all the dates from 1782 till date for answers. But he also spoke of this ‘connection with God’ where he said a lot of answers are given to him by God. This connection he attains through deep meditation.

Points through Chit Chat: He said that a lot of methods exist in the world if one is seeking for answers. One of the methods he believes in and has faith in is praying to God.

God here may refer to a spiritual connection.

His methods are godly approved, not science approved.

Possible placebo? The story goes like this: A doctor came to him once and he was wearing rings and he complained about the sleeplessness and a severe headache. The astrologer asked him to remove a particular ring and asked him to sit calmly for ten minutes. After 10 min, he doctor replied that he was feeling much better.

Stones usually carry a cosmic energy which may clash with one’s own energy resulting in certain disturbances in the body.

OBSERVATION/Inferences:

In this case, it was more like the doctor was expected to feel better/relief after removing the ring and the result was positive.

Understanding belief

20^th July

Importance of understanding the idea of belief-how is it defined/how people react/respond. Understanding this might give a clue as to how a placebo takes place/manifests itself at a later stage.

Placebo is a manifestation of belief, therefore understanding placebo as a mechanism in everyday life.Speculation on how belief occurs in different contexts? (Spiritual, social, psychological, philosophical levels)

As per the talks, it is easier to map the where all belief occurs.

• After the talking to the astrologer, one observation was that when belief is seen as a spiritual occurrence.
• A strong and conscious belief is seen in God. (his connection to God through meditation).
• From the story he told, it was easy to infer how he uses the 'expectancy technique' which takes place as a placebo effect.

After talking to the homeopath, belief was a motivational push to 'vital force' to bring about a placebo effect.

• Homeopathy is a topic of controversy. Since there is no such plausible evidence, many in the western culture have termed it as a pseudoscience.

• Acceptance of homeopathy in Indian culture (analogy of a duck to water): Indian culture has an inherent metaphysical backing which makes it easier for the Indians to accept homeopathy due to the philosophical attribute attached to it

Vital force=Mind

Mind over body equation

• Possible placebo: Positive energy in the form of motivation acts as a placebo (theory # 3)

As a homeopath, empathetic role-playing to bring about awareness of the problem/relation between disease, illness and circumstance.

When this awareness is brought, the patients themselves come up with solutions. (Possible placebo?)

To create a receptive state of mind = understanding the cause and effect equation + indicative medicines.

Observation/Conclusion: All people need sometimes is a motivation/external push to the vital force present within for a placebo effect to take place.

Shows the mind over body control through a placebo, which could be a psychological state of mind. (diagram: head & body)

25^th july/almost the 26^th morning 1.06AM

It has been a week

the progress goes like this:

From thought of confusion to certain clarity

I have already spoken to two people and hopefully will be talking to the third person tomorrow. The earlier two people I spoke to were an astrologer and a homeopath.

I have to still write down the conversation I had with them to see how people abundantly practice placebo(the power of belief) through their profession. In their own respective ways they both use belief and faith either in god or in the medicines prescribed to formulate solutions/answers to questions by giving hope that everything will be okay.

I have to still consolidate the conversation and the research in terms of ideas of possible outcomes and ideas for my own installation.

Exercises like the Rorschach inkblots, similar to this exercise I have to ask Anna Chandy(T.A) if she can suggest a few more. I have to also look up transactional therapy games? – both reading and Youtube.

Placebo in everyday life

Placebo buttons are buttons that actually do nothing except give the user an illusion of control.

The advent of computer-controlled traffic signals make thewalk buttons at pedestrian crossings on heavily trafficked streets obsolete. By the late 1980s, most (but not all) walk buttons in New York City have been deactivated yet people push them anyhow, either in ignorance, out of habit, or in the off chance the buttons did work.

Many large office buildings also have dummy thermostats to give office workers the illusion of control. Some even go as far as installing white-noise generators to mimic the hum of fans after the HVAC system is shut off.

The same goes for the close button in elevators. Most elevators built or installed since the early 1990s don’t have close buttons that work, unless you have a fireman’s key. People do push them anyhow, because the fact that the door eventually closes reinforces their belief that the button works.