Blurring the boundaries between self and others, between man and mother.
TIME:
12 weeks
TEAM:
Solo + Ocean
TOOLS:
TouchDesigner
Arduino
Rhino 3D
Illustrator
Photoshop
Foveate
Premier
This project was my senior capstone, which meant I placed a lot of pressure on myself before it even came to be. I had a note on my phone a year before the semester even started trying to come up with potential research themes to structure my project around. How could I best summarize my entire Bachelors Degree into one project? How could I do myself justice while also creating a well researched project to launch myself into a highly competitive design industry?
Before the semester started, there were a few experiences that helped guide me to this concept.
3. A book ending up in my lap - BioDesign by William Myers
The first two experiences turned me inward - to empathy, to consciousness, to love, to caring about water in a way that felt much larger than myself. Of all the emotions I felt, I simply didn't know how to turn them into something or some product. In what ways could I translate all of those feelings to someone else? I don't want to simply relay these stories to an audience, I want them to feel.
The third experience made me hyper-focused on the idea of collaborating with nature. In my eyes, collaborating with a natural process seemed to give that natural process a sense of agency or identity in a way that I couldn't. Crediting another larger than life system was a form of making it into an artist, a being with control. If this other life force told their story, it'd be much more meaningful than me telling it.
CONCEPT:
To create of facilitate a (re)connection to human beings, their inner selves, the beings around them and the water that sustains them. Hopefully somehow incorporating concepts of BioDesign within it.
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PROCESS:
The concept wasn't obvious to me at first. I spent the first month of the studio reading anything I could about water, specifically the connection between femininity / motherhood / pregnancy and water. This cultural piece really drew me in.
Yet in the end, he finds that he can be far less confident in his assertion of uniqueness. For when he looks back at his memories, he finds that they are composed of associations, of presences, in which others are undeniably present: "it is not life that I look back upon; I am not one person; I am many people; I do not altogether know who I am -- Jinny, Susan, Nevilles, Rhoda or Louis; or how to distinguish my life from theirs."
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
This concept of everyone being everyone else is one that is echoed within the Orca whale culture. I found it extremely poetic and beautiful.
TEXTS/MEDIA THAT GUIDED MY WORK:
Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology by Astrida Neimanis
Wild Blue Media by Melody Jue
Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning by Karen Barad
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Blackfish film directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
7 Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
GUIDING FRAMEWORK:
The Krebs Cycle of Creativity by Neri Oxman (with a slight modification I added in blue.)
Why did I add culture to this framework?
There's value in researching and understanding existing beliefs / standpoints outside of the scope of Western science and quantitative forms of analysis. There is wisdom and empathy in the stories we tell each other, those cannot be overlooked.
There's value in researching and understanding existing beliefs / standpoints outside of the scope of Western science and quantitative forms of analysis. There is wisdom and empathy in the stories we tell each other, those cannot be overlooked.
I knew that I wanted my project to contain the other aspects of the framework below.
LOST AT (CEREBRAL) SEA:
I found myself reading so much content about water that I became lost on where to go next. I was a little too deep in the intellectualizing part of the process and I felt frustrated and a little bit stumped. At this point I shift gears into making and exploring what some sort of product could look like. At this point I told myself I couldn't read another word.
BIOFEEDBACK EXPLORATIONS:
IF OCEAN IS TO WAVES, HUMAN IS TO _____
Given that I knew I wanted to incorporate a natural system, I took to the waves and water. I tried finding a similarity within the human body that could serve as a similarity between our own bodies to the largest body of water. I settled on heartbeats.
I ordered a Pulse Sensor that was compatible with my Arduino Uno and began playing around with it!
Arduino Physical Prototype
DIGITAL TRANSLATIONS:
With the Arduino up and running and properly gathering user heartbeat data, I decided to take this data and translate it into something new. I had been very curious about a software named TouchDesigner and found a tutorial on plugging in Arduino data to inform / generate the visuals. Below is my first attempt at translating user data into visuals.
TouchDesigner Digital Prototype
HEARTBEATS PROJECTED ON MIST?
At this point I still wasn't sure where I wanted the project to go. I would have loved to play upon the transformative nature of water in the form of projections on a screen of dew or mist. Water takes on many forms and goes through high pressure transformations and so do humans! I took inspiration from this and this but ultimately decided that the physically building and transporting it just wouldn't work for me.
A DIGITAL EXPERIENCE?
I decided that for the sake of transportation, digital would have to be the way to go. But I hated the idea of a fully digital experience like a website or app, I don't think the sense of awe comes across in a fully digital experience.
IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE
I opted for an experience that utilizes user heartbeat data and translates that into large, immersive visuals projected on the surrounding walls.
I played around with other TouchDesigner variations of what the visuals could look like in the video below.
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FINAL PRESENTATION:
RESEARCH
DEVELOPMENT
PRODUCT
FINAL TOUCHDESIGNER VISUALIZATION:
A working prototype was live during the final presentation, with only one projector and one heartbeat sensor. My professor was kind enough to offer her pulse for the sake of the demonstration. It was an incredible experience to see everyone immersed in this thing I built!
CONCLUSIONS:
This project was challenging in the sense it it continually revealed itself to me until the very end. I went into the semester knowing I wanted this project to somehow be about water and came out with a pretty satisfying end product / experience that brings about emotions of inspiration and awe.
I wanted to push myself this semester and can successfully say that I did that. I learned a new software (TouchDesigner) from scratch and was able to flex my knowledge of a bunch of other softwares / methods of building I had gathered throughout my Bachelors degree.
A small detail which was very special to me was sneaking in a few easter eggs in the form of graphics from other studio courses. Graphic elements from all of my other studio courses found their way into this last presentation. The female silhouettes being an echo from my very first design project ever. The clouds were taken from my second studio project, the methods of 3D modeling and that specific type of exporting taken from my third studio project, the consideration and empathy towards nonhuman taken from this project and the arduino graphics and the skillset overall taken from this studio project. The portrait illustration on the final Thank You page coming from this project, the illustration created by my best friend. Lastly, my work with A Thousand Faces coincided with this capstone project, the conversations we had thoroughly inspiring me to push forward.
I feel like I was able to properly wrap up all of my experiences in the Multi-Disciplinary program in a way that felt authentic. Thank you to everyone who helped inspire me on my journey. And on that note, I graduated! I can happily say that this is a project I'm proud of, not only for the concept or materials produced but also as a form of self reflection, meditation and as a reflection of my academic journey.
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After the semester ended, I found this poem by Gabi Abrão in Notes on Shapeshifting that embodied some of the sentiments in my project:
I am amazed that every hurt has led me here. I am amazed that every blessing has led me here. The body! Every single day! I am alive with the many worlds I can create for myself.
A life is not ruled by response or reaction... Zoom out and see the vibrant flow, the circulation, the spooky righteousness... The way blood rushes to the sensation of heat on the skin. Circulation is my god, and the ritual of worship in service to this god is the body's steady, automated blood flow. A vessel, a channel, opening and closing to demands both real and imagined all at once. We are eternity, contained.
A life is not ruled by response or reaction... Zoom out and see the vibrant flow, the circulation, the spooky righteousness... The way blood rushes to the sensation of heat on the skin. Circulation is my god, and the ritual of worship in service to this god is the body's steady, automated blood flow. A vessel, a channel, opening and closing to demands both real and imagined all at once. We are eternity, contained.
NEXT STEPS:
I want this project to be actualized in a museum exhibition or installation context. The next step is bringing it to life.
SPRING 2023
SENIOR CAPSTONE STUDIO
PROFESSOR NICOLE PORTER,
