On War and Memory

Very interesting article.

http://www.jcms-journal.com/article/view/21/21

Heartbeat Artists

Christian Boltanski's island of death

The French artist is creating an archive of heartbeats to be housed on a remote Japanese island

http://au.phaidon.com/agenda/art/events/2012/march/12/christian-boltanskis-island-of-death/

SASAKIinstallation artworks that superimpose participants' heartbeats on top of each other.http://blogs.laweekly.com/arts/2011/06/sasaki_heartbeat_artist_dwell.php

Jump to 2:49
Record audience's heartbeat as they watch imagery.
So I went through and pulled a bunch of stock footage, like hyenas eating a corpse, dogs barking at people, babies crying, larva — anything we could think of in the art department that seemed either aggressive or really, really annoying; anything that would just make you ill at ease. At the same time, Lena was like, 'Maybe one or two of them are, like, flowers in a field and oddly peaceful.'

Woman's Refuge

Motion and sound to convey how the woman is feeling.

Visual metaphor of stepping on eggshells. Grip of chair suggestive of feeling. Conveying man's reaction without ever showing his face.

Emotive Ads

Affective Empathy



mirroring the emotions you observed. we mirror an observed emotional experience, taking it on as our own

Cognitive Empathy

We feel what those proud moms are feeling because we see the Olympics through their eyes. At play is cognitive empathy – we see the world through the viewpoint of another. We actively step into the perspectives of mothers and fathers and share in their joy.





We feel connected to the work not because we see and mirror the dad’s emotions. We don’t actually see much of the dad at all. More complexly, we step inside his world. By being placed in his shoes (or his email), we feel what it’s like to be a dad. 



All have human truths it in to strike a chord. Doesn't have to be people specific to the audience (the audience can empathise through assumption/we want to put ourselves in the center of everything).

Really good article on Empathy in Advertising.

Visionaire Taste—Tasting pictures

Visual and taste combined.
IFF creates flavours, given on gel strips.

O Caps—Scented Lights

Coloured bulb covers that release a scent.

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/iluminated-pacmans-the-o-cap

How does war feel?

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/01/21/soldiers-the-war-within/

From ‘Weeping tears of blood’: Exploring
Italian soldiers’ emotions in the First
World War
Vanda Wilcox


Soldiers, both men and women, often keep their deepest struggles in waging war to themselves. But as a public, we, too, need to know how war feels, for war’s residue should not just be a soldier’s private burden. It ought to be something that we, who do not don the uniform, recognize and understand as well.

fear, horror, anger, grief and shame

as well as love, friendship, loyalty, even excitement

emotion as including not only ‘feelings’ (the subjective interior reaction component)
but also the process of situational appraisal, judging events or objects; physiological

responses such as heightened heart-rate, sweating or tears; and some kind of communication of both reaction and intent such as facial or verbal expression (including in writing)

men found it risky (as well as potentially embarrassing)

to express emotions openly under this disciplinary regime

A final consideration on sources is the psychological difficulty,

perhaps even impossibility, of accurately turning emotion into a narrative.

Contemporary notions of masculinity based on courage, determination, virility, were
similarly important in legitimising certain forms of emotional expression, while
undermining those that seemed weak or effeminate. As in other societies, manliness and
patriotism required emotional control, suppressing the outward expression of fear or distress\\

express their fears in a variety of ways, using familiar mental markers of
civilian life to communicate their feelings through evocative metaphors. Men ‘bled like
goat[s]’ or else advanced enthusiastically ‘like goats going after salt’ (Revelli 1977, 101,
255); one compared himself to a huntsman pursuing the Austrians for sport, while another
used familiar images to describe unfamiliar scenery: ‘our artillery has been aiming their fire
at the Podgora [mountain] for two months and they have plucked it like a chicken’ (Bellosi

and Savini 2002, 377, 404).

bodily manifestations of feeling
mentioned in the written record, including reports of trembling legs and hands, and above

all of tears.

. ‘Often we look one another in the face seeing each other shattered with hunger and sleep – tears fill our eyes, crying like babies’, wrote an infantryman to his fiance ́ e in April 1916 (Procacci 2000, 425).

fear was not necessarily at its most intense during combat itself but was exacerbated by immobility: long hours in the trenches, especially under bombardment, left men with plenty of time to reflect and think about the future, whereas during assaults or the mental concentration of some activity there was no time to focus on danger or feel one’s terror 

 Men slept ‘underground like toads’ or ‘inside the ground like animals’ (Bellosi and Savini 2002, 245, 398) and compared themselves to foxes and moles living in lairs: men felt reduced to the level of beasts, dehumanised not by the mechanical, industrialised features of the war so much as its primitive aspects. Since life in the trenches was literally delimited by walls of earth, mud or stones, these came to define both physical and mental horizons

‘entombed’: burial alive was a recognised psychological obsession for soldiers in modern war

Some felt as if death was not just on its way but had already taken them, as another infantryman reported: ‘In the trenches during a bombardment you think of nothing – I can’t even think about my wife and children . . . it’s as though I was already dead’

a lonely death far from home and friends, with none of the idealised consolations of heroism or comradeship

At night I can’t sleep because my whole body is shaking with nerves and the beat of my heart: no no no. There are all those dead, who will never go home again; or those who return without their legs, without their eyes, and will never see the sun again. Isn’t it true? Tell me I’m right, I know I’m right to weep. (Spitzer 1976, 126)

traumatic requirement to kill, which most acutely embodied the transformation in status and identity from civilian to military life. 

 ‘the pain of loss threatens to be rationalized away’ (Roper 2009, 26–27

Sneezing bus stop

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/talktome/objects/146208/

Digital Wall senses your presence

EV NT interactive poster wall concept from Aleksandrium on Vimeo.

Magnum 5 senses

Videos

Coheed and Cambria - Number City from Dropbear on Vimeo.

More feedback. Moving forward

Agree with comments that these installations were too literal and were too far removed from TA's everyday to evoke the emotion I wanted.

No point showing them what war was like, they don't know how to relate to that anyway. Show them something they DO know how to relate to. (This sounds so obvious; it baffles how my mind hasn't clarified it until now).

• Develop the storytelling around it to make me engage with it. Story for empathy.
• You need an AHA moment. One that makes the TA go "fuuuckkk..."
• 2 courses on meal/cracker told a story.
• Modern day "holy shit—currently too literal.
• eg. meal in army: cans and sachets—put the whole lot together and mix it. Make TA think why would you do that?
• TA comes across it, something happened elsewhere. eg. line up at MAWSA for free lunch, and given gloop. Or looks delicious and tastes like nothing.
• Then connect that experience to the exhibition. Make TA think "Shit, that was interesting. I want to experience more like it".
• eg. Movie theatre, lights out. Sound: loud beating of heart, for 5 minutes. Evoke, waiting and anxiety.
• These have to come from real stories. eg. the anticipation of a wife as she awaits her husband's return. Or a soldier who never saw his child being born and now he's 5 years old. Sound: baby crying.
• What are the contemporary sounds that make us feel anxious? Eg. sirens
• Crying at war was contagious.
• Wrap up tone must be pragmatic. The emotion comes from the experience.
• WHAT ARE ALL THE THINGS GOING THROUGH THEIR HEADS? eg. the waiting, how am I going to die. If it went quiet, that meant the shell was above them.\
• How do you show them?

Where to from here:

1. What are all the things going on through their heads?

2. How are you going to show them?

3. How are you going to tell them what it means?

Interim Feedback

Installations need much more context to challenge the TA norms or everyday, they need to act as conduits to know more, drive them to the knowledge/exhibition at TP. They seem a tad 'easy/literal' at this stage. What is it that you want them to experience, what is on offer? Food and body installations to underwhelming, no surprise yet. Sound has potential but what is the insight/takeaway? Smell too easy and the corpse idea is too literal. It could just be about offensive smells and how re recoil

Public/Art/Urban Intervention

Art intervention is an interaction with a previously existing artwork, audience or venue/space. It has the auspice of conceptual art and is commonly a form of performance art. It is associated with the Viennese Actionists, the Dada movement and Neo-Dadaists. It has also been made much use of by the Stuckists to affect perceptions of other artwork which they oppose, and as a protest against an existing intervention.

Intervention can also refer to art which enters a situation outside the art world in an attempt to change the existing conditions there. For example, intervention art may attempt to change economic or political situations, or may attempt to make people aware of a condition that they previously had no knowledge of. Since these goals mean that intervention art necessarily addresses and engages with the public, some artists call their work “public interventions”.

Although intervention by its very nature carries an implication of subversion, it is now accepted as a legitimate form of art and is often carried out with the endorsement of those in positions of authority over the artwork, audience or venue/space to be intervened in. However, unendorsed (i.e. illicit) interventions are common and lead to debate as to the distinction between art and vandalism. By definition it is a challenge, or at the very least a comment, related to the earlier work or the theme of that work, or to the expectations of a particular audience, and more likely to fulfil that function to its full potential when it is unilateral, although in these instances, it is almost certain that it will be viewed by authorities as unwelcome, if not vandalism, and not art.

—Wikipedia.

"Of course attitudes and habits, thinking patterns and value standards can be marginally influenced through forms. The whole advertising field is sustained by this thesis"—Worchen Klauser

"Action Art also made a significant contribution to the developments leading to Activism. Originally conceived as cathartic satisfaction of the individual's unfulfilled drives and a liberation of the subject from the bonds of convention"
Harsher tone? It's not okay to play ignorant. Soldiers your age went off to war. 


http://hyeinlee.blogspot.co.nz/2011/05/outside-planter-boxes-public.html

http://upsetsy-betsy.blogspot.co.nz/2010/10/public-intervention-art.html

http://public-intervention.blogspot.co.nz/

Erwin Wurm

Feedback from Euan.

• Can you latch your message on to existing examples of smell, noise etc.
• Does it have to be a stand alone installation?
• Look at public intervention
• What are the key things to help people understand to contextualise exhibit at Te Papa? Help them walk a few footsteps in soldiers' shoes, with an obvious link back to the exhibition.
• Your work needs to function as a reminder and a motivator.
• Make sure you know what you want people to think and do after the experience. Clear and defined SMP and CTA.
• Think strategically, what could you do to go in your portfolio. Do creative executions, not just documentation of creative executions (when referring to documentation video).

Things to do next/conceptualise:

• Brainstorm alternative executions
• Write SMP again and again.
• How do I link the contemporary lifestyle with the exhibition? Do I slip something in with coffee or something that serves as a reminder and a motivator.
• Installation is a little too removed from target audience. Most might wander around it instead of engage with it. How do I ensure the engagement by latching on to something they already do—but presenting it from a different perspective? Make them think about their lives and the connection to soldiers. Maybe emphasise the same age in soldiers.

The Art of Scent—MAD Museum NY.

Audience puts their head into recesses in the wall where a motion sensor releases a scent that lasts for 4 seconds. 

In the next room, the audience is allowed to take strips of paper and dip them into wells of fragrance as a takeaway memento.

A book to guide the audience through the fragrant experience.

Fancy takeaway mementos for lucky audiences.

Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik — Curry everything and the world

Smell, and colour of curry. Curry perfume, curry powder walls, curry colour maps.

Eye Scream

Edible Ink & paper

Copy on stick samples

Samples easy to grab on trays.

Curry powder on wall.

Chocolate wrapper and curry powder.

Interim Presentation

Went terribly. I think I had a heart attack right after it. Feeling discouraged.

3 minutes was not enough as I didn't have the time to fully edit and reflect on the work I had done to concisely express myself.

I'm having doubts as whether my work will make sense to anyone but me. According to Euan, it's time to start writing some stories and copy. and stop focussing so much on playing with the senses.

It makes sense. Of course I'm not going to throw an audience into an experience without explaining the connection to them. It just has to be done early (ie. now), so that others can understand why I am doing what I am.

---

I am creating a communications campaign that utilises all five senses to engage young and disconnected New Zealanders with Anzac history.

My project with be the hypothetical campaign for the (very real) experiential Weta Workshop Anzacs exhibition in Te Papa.

I intend on creating 3 installations that focus on the feelings evoked within soldiers at Gallipoli. The audience will receive a takeaway memento, which serves as a call to action and also so they can share the experience with others.

SMP