The counter and questionnaire already work – people are having some insights in just 60 seconds. My challenge now is what can be done to invite deeper enquiry.
How do I create conditions that drop people into a different space, where they’re more likely to notice the conditioned thoughts they’re having?
Sensory reduction
- Earplugs – removes ambient exhibition noise, forces inward attention
- Eye mask – total visual removal, just you and your thoughts
- Both together – full sensory withdrawal for 60 seconds
Space
- Partition / booth – like a passport photo booth, a simple enclosure that separates from the exhibition. Low cost, easy to build, immediately signals “step inside”
- Curtain – Betty’s suggestion. Can be suspended from ceiling, creates a soft boundary
- Facing a blank wall – simplest version. Participant turns away from the room
- Focal point / bindu – a visual to hold their gaze/attention whilst counting
Sensory addition
- Headphones with ambient sound – forest, rain, white noise. Test to see if this changes what people notice?
- Incense or scent – does smell create a different quality of attention? Hard to do in a show setting without causing some disruption…
- Holding a different object – a stone, a piece of fabric, nothing at all. Does an object in hand change the experience?
Duration / format
- Two rounds – 60 seconds in open space, then 60 seconds in the booth. The same person but with different conditions. They compare their own data.
- Eyes open vs eyes closed – simple instruction change, with potentially big shift
- Standing vs sitting – does the body’s position change what the mind does?
Framing
- No instructions visible beforehand – someone verbally guides them in
- A single word on the wall inside the booth instead of the full question
Crit group discussion notes
In yesterday’s remote group session I had 35 minutes to share my current challenges with Ben L and Sofi. Vocalising it and having a healthy discussion helped clarify my thinking and the path forward.
Beyond the senses – If I’m pointing to something beyond the senses, why would I utilise the five senses to do that? This reframed the whole conversation. It’s about creating conditions that take people inward, not giving them more to look at. Keeping things minimal isn’t a limitation – it’s consistent with what the work is actually asking of people.
Direct experience vs aesthetics – I flagged the core tension: “It’s toeing the line between direct experience and art.” My instinct is to keep the presentation pared back – inspired by Ostrowski’s approach: “I strive to trigger the greatest possible emotional affects with the least possible means.”
Ben challenged this, arguing that something visually stimulating would draw more people in. The aesthetics are a way of reaching more people.
This is unresolved. The only way to know is to test different conditions and see what actually changes the experience. Ie. Try with visuals, try the collective data, try a stripped back version.
Individual to collective – How the project could move from one person’s experience to collective data. Scaling up to something like 180 Studios where you look up and see aggregated responses – “the emotional state of the room based on what they clicked and how they clicked.”
Documentation – Sofi suggested thinking about how to document the experiments at the show, possibly with a VHS camera.
Next steps
- Finalise ways to reduce sensory input at the show – earplugs, enclosure, partition – and test how these change the experience.
- Run the interim show as a live experiment – try different conditions across the three days and compare participant responses.
- Explore how response data could become a visual or spatial element. Research data visualisation approaches post-show.
- Plan what to capture at the show – participant reactions, the space, the accumulation of responses over time.