A proposal for in interactive installation that sonifies public’s mental states
What it the overarching area of research?
This research aims to investigate the way that emotions and mental states can be expressed through art in order to raise awareness over mental health issues.
Getting inspired by two installation based on the public’s mental state contribution, I imagined creating an audio-interactive installation that that represents the mental state of the visitors.
Choosing among a variety of emotions, participants can experience the alteration of the sonic installation according to their mental state expression.
What are the key questions or queries you will address?
Through the process of this research as an artist, I will examine the way we can sonify emotions in the best way that sound can be relate to an notion like mental state.
How we can use affective computing in order to retrieve emotions as a form of data for the sonification process(Picard,R.2000).
Examine the difference between sonification and composition and how this effect the afterward perception of the installation’s concept by the visitors (Winters and Wanderley,2014).
How we can use computer vision through the scope of feminist technoscience in a way that subverts the original capitalistic purpose of technology in a way that positively effects the community.
Why are you motivated to undertake this project?
According to The Office for National Statistics Psychiatric Morbidity report (2001) the number of mental health issues in London are significant as “ 1 in 6 adults experience mental ill health at any given time”(London.gov.uk.2019). A lot of artists have addressed this issue on their art in order to raise the awareness to the audience or even to help people with mental health as a form of art therapy( Margrove, Pope, and Mark,2013). My motivation is to explore how computational art can express this problem and be part of the improvement of our society.
What theoretical frameworks will you use in your work to guide you?
Taking as a base the fact that the area of research is based on the relation of emotions and sound, I am going to use post-phenomenology as a theoretical framework to guide me. According to Rosenberger and Verbeek, this theory “investigate technology” in our case computer vision and sonification, “focusing on the various ways in which technology help shape relations between human beings and the world”, in our case between humans and their mental health (Rosenberger and Verbeek, 2015).
At the same time as principal of post phenomenology I will use as a starting point the use of computer vision and sonification and the documentation of my artifact in order to bring new ideas on the way that humans can be aware of mental health issues and seek for help is they need it.
In addition, I will use feminist technoscience for the use of reconfiguration of the technology of computer vision. To be more specific, I aim to approach computer vision as a technology that serves the communities need of expression and awareness regarding he mental health issue (Suchman, 2009) .
What theoretical frameworks will you use in the analysis of your project?
I am going to use material semiotics theory for helping me with the structure of my research and the construction of my artefact.
I am going to use the a series of questions in order to structure my research but also analyse the documentation and draft my conclusions. n n n n n
What is going on here // An interactive installation about mental health in London
Which are the agents implied?// Visitors of exhibition, London citizens
Where?//London, St Johns Hatcham
When?//2019
Semiotics-materialities://shapes-emotions, sound, interactivity
Your entanglement with the scene// (to be researched)
Can a pattern be identified here// (to be researched)
How will you document your project?
For the needs of archiving and documentation of my project I will film and record the day of the exhibition and after that, I will create a time-lapse video. Along with the video I will recompose in shorten version the sonification of the emotions taking into account the changes according to the interaction.
A future ambition for this project is to transform this installation into a web-based interactive platform. This will start already with the creation of a cite that will accommodate the documentation of the installation.
Timeline for project milestones
References
“CAG Button Wall.” Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. Accessed February 24, 2019.https://www.contemporaryartgallery.ca/events/cag-button-wall/.
London.gov.uk. (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/gla_migrate_files_destination/Mental%20health%20report.pdf [Accessed 24 Feb. 2019].
Margrove, K., Pope, J. and Mark, G. (2013). An exploration of artists' perspectives of participatory arts and health projects for people with mental health needs. Public Health, 127(12), pp.1105-1110.
Picard, R. (2000). Affective computing. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT.
Rgd.ca. (2019). Not Myself Today Campaign by Blok Design | RGD. [online] Available at: https://www.rgd.ca/2012/06/01/not-myself-today-campaign-by-blok-design.php [Accessed 24 Feb. 2019].
Rosenberger, R. and Verbeek, P. (2015). Postphenomenological investigations.
Suchman, L. (2009). Human-machine reconfigurations. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Winters, R. and Wanderley, M. (2014). Sonification of Emotion: Strategies and results from the intersection with music. Organised Sound, 19(01), pp.60-69.
Annotated Bibliography
Hermann, T., Hunt, A., & Neuhoff, J. (2011). The sonification handbook. Berlin: Logos Verlag.
This book contains technical information about sonification , the technique that transmutes data into sound. Sonification is an interdisciplinary field as it used in a big range of applications. For this reason, in this book, the authors display and analyze all these fields among these, Interactive Sonification which refers to the practice of sonification while humans can interact and alter the data.
Paul, C. (2015). Digital art (Third ed., World of art).
Christine Paul collected different forms of digital art and presented them in categories in this book. Along with that, she presented a short history of the computational art. Finally she also present different themes of digital art. This book is a guidance and source of inspiration for digital artists as it contains plenty of examples.
Harré, R., & Parrott, W. (1996). The emotions : Social, cultural and biological dimensions. London ; Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.
This book is a guide to emotions’ exploration. The authors engaged with the emotions as part of a social control but also examine the neural nature of them trying in the way to build this gap between the neuroscience and cultural phycology. This book is developed in three parts that analyze these ideas of emotions as part of culture and as part of our selves. In this way it present various of emotions in relation with certain behaviors and roles.
Christina Karpodini, London, February 2019