I’ve been looking at mental health issues and also have curiosity about the therapy art. But compared to healing, I think there is value in giving people a chance to get in touch with the feelings of a small group, even if it is an unpleasant experience.

I try to do something for the community with depression, not only the depressed mood but the patient. Since I have a close relationship with depression, the burning desire impelled me to make some stuff. 

There is a keyword in my idea, somatization, which is the expression of mental phenomena as physical (somatic) symptoms.  For a long time, two of the most painful things for many people with depression are somatization and lack of understanding from those around them. The conventional view is that depression is an emotional problem, but, the realization of the serious problem was always informed by the body’s reaction (somatization). And this kind of somatization is super hard to empathize with. 

At the same time, I also hope that this experience, it will serve as a warning for everyone to pay attention to their personal emotional state.

Clinical manifestations of somatization include palpitation, chest pain, numbness, headache, sleep problems, appetite changes, etc. Ideally, I’d like to create a device that allows people to empathize with this physical experience. But ho3w to convey it is a question that needs careful consideration. Here are some rough sketches, I don’t have a clear plan of my own.

There is a similar example I found the machine that offers stimulated experiences helps man understand what labor pain feels like.

I also understand that it is not reasonable to invite people who do not know much about somatization to participate in the discussion. Firstly, they cannot provide suggestions on the special content expression. Secondly, it is not my original intention to arouse negative emotions in others by thinking deeply about this topic. Even when I’m working on it I don’t let myself get caught up in it.

For the open call, I think it’s a good chance to think about the idea in a manageable way.

Sleeping chambers

I used the tidal data from NOAA, the water level of the specific station will control the number of lighting LEDs.

I got 6 LEDs and mapped the water level from 0 to 10 to the number of LEDs.

This week, Sim and I start to finish the fabrication and circuit. Both of us quietly liked the texture of the wood so we decide to use plywood to make a big box. Since constricted to the size of the plywood we can find, we changed it to make an imperfect cube with a longer height instead of a 14 by 14 by 14 perfect cube. 
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There are several stands inside the box for the tunnel of the kaleidoscope. The plate base which can rotate is placed in the center of the box.

After we make sure the right positions for each part, the circuit is the next work. We have to say the wires are super messy but fortunately, some of them could be blocked by the tunnel. And then we spray the inside to be dark blue.

Since the height of the box is relatively deep, it seems like FOUR hands are not enough to install the components 😂 But we did it! 

 
The base plate rotates when I blow on the sensor.

Code: here.

Sim and I try to make sure all the technical issues this week, and things go well. But we make a little change to the components we will adopt. 

Firstly, great thanks for Yeseul lending the wind sensor to us, super nice to detect data. And we try to use the air pumps but it’s super noisy! We decide to replace it with the 360 servos. The reason to use a servo is that we want to make a huge kaleidoscope in the cube, when people blow on the wind sensor the base plate will rotate by the servo. So the behavior is like playing with a hand-held kaleidoscope, which changes through rotation. 

Sketch:

We have discussed the fabrication parts and tried to collect all these materials in days and start to make the cube as soon as possible. 

Cube

Sim and I will work together on the cube, the idea is basically from the second idea I share last week. And we may still haven’t decided on the concrete output, but the user behavior will be almost like what I supposed before. We will work on the technical issues this week and the forms of outputs and fabrication may be changed by the technical conditions.

The BOM and To DO List is shown below.

 Weather as Medium 

World Skies Pink Sunset

World Skies is an interactive kinetic artwork and real-time weather data visualization created by BREAKFAST using their Flip-Disc medium. This artwork allows a collector to select any city in the world to visualize cloud cover, rainfall, and wind in real time. When someone is close and interacts with the piece, a depth sensor sees them and replaces the visualization with a reflection of themselves. The contrast of their image changes based on the current cloud cover – similar to how the sun and clouds affect your appearance when outside.

BREAKFAST is a robotic kinetic artist group focused on creating forward-looking software-and-hardware-driven artworks that connect viewers to far-away places through interactive experiences, and tell powerful stories about our rapidly-changing world.