Fiction and Reality
Exercise 1: 20 ways of description
In the left column I put all the post-its describing different qualities of fictions. In the middle are statements related to reality and on the right I put examples where fictions intersect with reality in different fields. For me the three most interesting statements from this post it wall are:
- Fictional experiences are as valuable/educational as personal experiences
- Reality is a construct of fictional reflections (seeing fictions as mirrors for our society)
- theoretical models based on statistics (e.g. in economics) influence on how we act in the present . These predictions (can also be called fictions) are never likely to happen but are often still treated as an inescapable truth.
Exercise 2: Topic Area
To create my topic canvas I used the tool figma:
For me the three most important dimensions of my topic area are:
- Immersion: Here I want to create an experience that absorbes the user into a different world (fiction). His perception space should overlap the fiction
- mind-bending: The project should have different layers of complexity. Which the user can discover over time. It should perhaps contain some sort of plot twist
- crossmedia: The project should take place within different media (e. g. twitter, insta, tv, newspaper, projection, drawings, actors)
Exercise 3: Design Area
digital board
Exchange with others on topic area
Because of the many overlaps in my topic with others. I had several great dicussions with other students. Furthermore I am also interested in working as a group on the BA project. With Sonjoi and Yami as a group of three we had the most similar ideas. That is why we decided to do the Exercise 4 on finding forms of manifestations together. Here some keyword from the exercise:
- Immersive Simulation with actors
- Social Experiments
- Social dynamics in online tool experiment
- mystery puzzle
manipulative - goat cafe (installation)
- Sell/Buy your Identity
- Consciousness deplacement
- Redefine yourself
Personal Adaption
Performance - survival kit für kultur
- “into the wild” perspective in a city(social circle, stereotyps)
Finding a group
Over the weekend I decided for myself to work in a group and not alone because I noticed that while working on my won I realy missed the discussions to find ideas and make decisions. While working alone I often forget to realy questining my own ideas. Like described before I found the most overlapping ideas in the gruop of Yami and Sonjoi. That is why we asked the mentors if we could work together. We aslo thought alot about our intereste and contribution for this BA project. Here are some of my reflexions:
I am interested in observing and document social interactions.
To helps cope with the overload of our environment our brain is wired to bundle information together and put everything into different categories. This categorization helps us to orientated yourself in our environment and find our position in society. Stereotypes and biases are a product from our natural way of thinking.
Overtime our categories can stop evolving and remain the same pushing us into our comfort zone. I think it is impossible and against human nature to completely dissolve categorized thinking (“schubladen denken”) but I think it is important to constantly reevaluate and expand our categories in order to evolve as individual and as a society.
I want to expose people to unexpected situations, pushing them out of their comfort zone. I want to do that by inserting a fiction into their reality. The fiction should be stage as a real life simulation perhaps similar to the method “invisible theatre”. Where theater happens in unexpected places like the shopping mall, public library, town square… people witnessing the scripted scenes are not aware that it is staged. The most important component of the real life simulation is for me the human to human interaction. I think a lot of people are stuck in their head through this simulation they will accept inwardly and focus outwardly. Similar to cognitive therapy used to treat social phobia. Also perhaps when people are expose to unknown, new situations their reactions tend to be more honest, natural because they can not predict the situation very well and adapt their façade to the situation.
I believe that thoughts, feelings and behavior are very much interconnected. Through the real life simulation I hope to provoke feelings and kicking off thinking processes. Therefore also influencing behavior.
identifying and changing unhelpful or inaccurate thinking, problematic behavior, and distressing emotional responses
I do think Switzerland is a great place to live in. A lot of things are working really good. I also think that living in Switzerland often also allows you to live a rather comfortable live. But I also experience that a comfortable live makes it easy for yourself to avoid confrontation and avoiding new situations leading to you getting stuck in one mindset. Getting comfortable in your zone also makes it easier for you to build your façade as a protection wall towards the outside. People from different cultural backgrounds often perceive swiss people as rather closed, cold, sticking to them self and harder to approach.
Due to the Covid situation we have less exposure towards social interactions and gatherings. Therefore we might need to relearn social interactions.
Topic Area as a Group:
Our topic for the BA project can be summarized as the question about identity. By identity we mean identity of individuals and cultures(group of individual bonding over common interests). We are very much interested in the different components of identity. Does fiction co-construct our identity? Is this why we perceive someone as fake or authentic and how we maintain our facades? Identity is a complex construct and influenced by many factors. We all interact differently with each person showing different facades of our self. Social interaction have a big influence on our identities/facades especially if is a clash between tow extremely different cultures.
My contribution:
I see my contribution especially in finding methods of immersion to artificially insert a fiction into reality. I strongly believe that our own identity and culture is imbued by fictions. What is real, authentic what a façade? By artificially inserting a fiction you can shift somebodies reality and therefore also affecting their feelings, thoughts and behaviors.
Example methods for such immersions are:
Mimikri Theatre: https://www.theaterneumarkt.ch/2020/11/03/mimikry-wellness-retrotopia/
Invisible Theatre: https://sites.google.com/site/boaltpjctsd13/invisible-theatre
Fictional objects: https://interactiondesign.zhdk.ch/en/projects/amt-fuer-kleinstdelikte/
Sonjoi’s contribution:
Since I started with the topic of authenticity, I’m very interested in finding out how and where this phenomenon makes people feel that something is real or how it creates a reality. I would find it very exciting to investigate authenticity on the basis of different identities and cultures. It is also important for me that the topic has a philosophical background that can be viewed in different ways. I don’t want to impose an opinion on anyone with this work.
Yami’s contribution:
My focus is on social phenomena, whether from a structural, psychological, philosophical, artistic or abstract perspective. I am interested in how an individual creates his identity and what influences the environment brings. One method of examining this more closely would be to explore the “facade” (Which can also be called a fictive bubble) of individuals. Because depending on how much this is lived out, the identity of the individual changes. The following questions come to mind in this topic area: How is our perception influenced? How do we deal with influences? What makes us as individuals perceive experiences differently? What happens when two polarizing individuals meet?
Self Experiment
As a first self experiment we wanted to try wearing an outfit out of the normal context and them document how it made us feel. The experiment was inspired by the work of Cindy Sherman where she made portraits of herself posing in different outfits, playing with the notion of stereotypes. In this experiment I wore myhorse riding outfit and Yami and Sonjoi wore my Kickboxing outfit for a day at school.
As an experiment I was wearing my horse riding outfit to school. And also letting my other two team members wearing my kickboxing outfit at school. Before deciding on an outfit to wear I was inspecting my wardrobe at home. There were a lot of outfits and clothing pieces that I would associate with a specific activity, occasion, social environment, memory or feeling. Like for example: A skirt I vividly remember purchasing with a good friend during a trip, dancing clothes I only wear for my ballet classes, a long dress I bought for my Matura degree ceremony, some simple and elegant dresses I only wear for family dinners at a good restaurant etc.
When I was leaving the house with the horse riding outfit my family immediately asked if I was going riding today. When I answered with no they wanted to have an explanation on why I was wearing this outfit.
In a public space on my way to school I felt more conscious about my actions. Especially the gloves made my much more aware on how I was holding things. Because of them I also did not read anything on my phone. But still the outfit was familiar to my so I did not feel to awkward. The outfit also made my feel a specific way. For example when I am riding a horse I am much taller then the people on foot I encounter so I feel much more sublime. Only wearing the outfit with out doing the activity to some extend also provoked the same feeling. Further more the shoes have a small heel and are louder when I walk this also made me feel more elegant and conscious about the way I walk.
For me I felt much more anxious to wear the outfit in an environment where people know me than one with strangers. Because there I thought it would get noticed more because they normally don’t see my in this outfit. Noticing the outfit and not knowing the reason why I was wearing it I was a bit afraid that they would think I was silly to wear it. But the more I interacted with the people the more I got aware of the fact that my outfit did not stand out as much as I thought (self perception vs perception of others) I think it also helped that my other two team members who wore my boxing outfit stud out more. Also most of them did not know how a riding outfit looks like so perhaps for them it looked like a normal street wear outfit.
While handing out my kickboxing outfit to the others I noticed how my brain got slightly confused. Sometimes for a short period of time my brain perceived the person wearing my clothes as myself. Kind of similar to what you experience when looking at yourself in the mirror. Even if I am not wearing the outfit it is still somehow part of me. Kind of a extension or manifestation of my consciousness. It was also kind of wired to see how others thought that the boxing outfit belong to my team members and not me. For my brain this did not make any sense.