For my thesis, I was intending of working on a sculpture that explored collective pain, this is the rough sketch:
Essentially, 1) people write out their pain and silver lining, put it into the pill capsule. 2) Then, they put the “pill” into the mouth. 3) As the “pill” enters the body, the organs start to feel “pain” - heart beating super fast, lungs breathing a lot faster, stomach getting queazy. 4) On the screen, it will prompt the user to put their hand on the heart and when the user does that, a “pill” will be released from the flap. 5) When the user takes the pill, the organs become more relaxed as the “pain” is shared with someone else.
For the portrait assignment, I wanted to work on aspects for my thesis project but on a smaller scale. Hence, I decided to do a portrait video sculpture of my anxiety (or anxiety in general works too).
For the digital side, I used Cinema 4D (for the first time) and made these animations myself:
Anxious to Calm
Calm to Anxious
Calm (will be looped)
Anxious (will be looped)
Then, I put them into p5js and basically used the touch feature to create the touch the heart interaction. I also used a timer to trigger the different videos. (Moving forward though, I will moving to Unity to be able to manipulate more things and have more control and stability)
For the fabrication side, I decided to make a duct tape dress form to truly represent my anxiety and also to have the flexibility of being able to open the sculpture (have the inside hollow compared to buying one) and install the screen inside it.
After installing the screen inside, I put a black mesh dress over it to make it look like a dress. (feedback from class: looks too much like a dress form, reconsider form)
I will be continuing to explore the form and fabricating something more reliable and sustainable.
