Brief: Design an experience that explores the nature of consciousness
Teammates: Tracie, Zain, Yuki, Lili, Yitong
Design methods: artefact analysis, storytelling
"Consciousness refers to your individual awareness of your unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, and environment. Your consciousness is your awareness of yourself and the world around you. This awareness is subjective and unique to you."
Ideations
We have two main directions upon this subject :
1. Consciousness changes the way we perceive this world.
When it comes to consciousness, the first thing occurred to my mind is how our consciousness makes something into truth, even there is no physical thing is happening. Our mind will convince us to believe those things may not exist in the physical world. Take ghosts as an example, after you watched a horror movie, everything seems not right in your room, your mind will let you picture lots of stuff may not exist in your room, you will become suspicious, is there anything hidden in the closet?
Cléo from 5 to 7 is a 1962 French Left Bank film by Agnès Varda.
It is the story of a pop singer who has been given a dark medical diagnosis, which she waits to confirm throughout the length of the film. Before that, the diviner said she would develop stomach cancer. As Richard Roud has said “Little is omitted, there are no ellipses. The streets and cafes of Paris, the taxis and the cinema are seen as they really are and as they appear through the eyes of a woman who is tracked by death.” The film’s power derives from its insistence that the objective and the subjective should be forced to coexist.
There is no physical thing can prove Cloe got cancer, just a trigger toled by the fortune teller, but affect how Cleo perceiver this world. this highly conforms our idea.
2. Consciousness can take over all the senses.
Senses and consciousness are interplayed with each other. In most of the occasions, our consciousness was determined by the outside world, for example, when there is raining, you may feel cold, then you put your cloth on, you smell something good, then you feel like hungry, then you
That means your subconscious already admitted this kind of willing, your body is more willing to complete it.
Research methods
storytelling: We started our storytelling right after we got ideation, we choose three people from China and another three from other countries,
we mainly asked the following three questions :
1. Do you have something beliefs which have no reasons and why?
2. What things or object will you more willing to believe?
3. How those beliefs define your behaviours in a specific moment?
After did storytellings of all the volunteers, we visualized those into a form which is directly related to consciousness. Figuring out there are
Artefact analysis:
The Chinese are known for their mysticism and their ability to tell the future in a variety of ways, using different materials that hold some semblance of importance for them. One of these ways involves the use of what is called Chinese fortune sticks. The Chinese used these fortune sticks for many centuries, using it to calm troubled souls by seeking advice regarding the many difficult situations.
So as “TAROT” which is wildly used in western countries, Chinese fortune sticks
In China, those could be easy obtained in Buddhist temples. However, we are located in London now, it's not easy to find a Chinese temple. Fortunately, there is a bubble tea store has a similar thing in the store, it is not so serious as the traditional ones, they convert it into an entertainment installation. So we went there to start our artefact analysis.
We analysed it from following aspects：
Emotion: Confused, expectation
Values: vary from people
Prior experience: recommended by friends, social media, background
Form language featrues： material(wood, paper), colour (make people feel ritual), shape(box, stick bar)
Aesthetic qualities: mysterious and ritual
Usefulness: shakeable and readable
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