The GUT
"HAVE YOU EVER HAD A POWERFUL GUT FEELING ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU DIDN'T PAYATTENTION TO IT, AND YOU WERE SORRY AFTERWARDS?” GABOR MATÉ
This Autumn, artist and designer Pod Bluman will invite the public to participate in The Gut, an interactive experience that explores pathways of connection between human beings. Informed by a three-decades long design practice specialising in the use of technologies to design complicated and hybrid systems, and a recently completed MRes exploring the impact of awe and
immersion in public art at the Royal College of Art, Bluman has created an agile audio-visual environment that reacts to participants’ behaviour, and builds upon the human instinct to build relationships, often manifested as a gut feeling.
Today, digital platforms and personal devices have created a paradox that sees us at once better and
worse connected – with a greater number of connections of deteriorating quality. Despite encouraging openness and sharing, which often results in what could be considered over-exposure,
social media in particular create a wall behind which we can hide – from where we can curate heavily edited, only partially true, representations of ourselves. Bluman confronts this paradox, challenging us to be vulnerable and open when face to face with
someone and somewhere new, and using this immersive environment to encourage people to express themselves in an intuitive and perhaps vulnerable way, bypassing self-curation and self-censorship.
“Most people believe that vulnerability is weakness, but really vulnerability is courage...(it) is the
birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.” Dr. Brené Brown
Visitors to the experience will be paired with a stranger and, on entering The Gut, will be asked a
series of questions to be answered using movement and gesture, rather than words. Their reactions
will be instantaneously translated into a series of audio and visual representations that immerse the
participants ‘within’ their own instinctive, emotional experience - not only reflecting but enhancing it,
creating a feeling of awe that research shows makes people notably pro-social and fosters
relationships.
“Suddenly, you're in a room with a stranger. And you're reaching out to each other across the
colour and the sound and It feels like, alright, yeah, well we're in this together now.” Visitor to
experience prototype
With The Gut, Bluman hopes to use awe and immersion to create an environment that helps peoplemtranscend the everyday, to become more receptive to new ideas, to focus less on themselves and feel part of a larger whole – and says, “I want people to leave feeling connected, understood, seen.”
I Am Your Mirror
a collaboration with
Ruth Mariner
Pagan Dorgan
Professor James Kilner
I Am Your Mirror is an interactive multimedia installation using creative technology & movement to activate our
mirror neurons — the part of the brain that enables us to intuitively understand the emotional states of
ourselves and others, helping us feel seen, heard and connected.
Working with a theatre director, choreographer, neuroscientist and creative technologist, we are running a pilot workshop to help us develop a work of ‘neuroart’ — an artistic experience that changes the body, brain, and
behaviour in ways that enhance emotional health and wellbeing.
MASS
a collaboration with
Barney Kass
The creation of MASS has been inspired by, amongst other things, what the creators see as a lack of innovation in the space of live performance They are asking themselves these questions:
Does the role of a performer need to be so rigid?
Why does the performer need to feel so ‘precious’ about their work?
What would it look and feel like if the audience could really collaborate with both the artist and each other to generate something new?
Our mission is to foster unity and acceptance through interactive art experiences
Awe Lab 3.0
a collaboration with
Eva Kukar
We believe that awe, i.e. a response to things that are perceived as vast and overwhelming and that alter the way we understand the world” (Keltner & Haidt 2003), is an incredibly powerful emotion and that its use as an agent of behaviour change is largely unrecognized.
How does experiencing awe affect behaviour? What opportunities for a new model of design for behaviour change lie at the heart of awe, wonder and transcendence? In this workshop, we will be exploring awe as an agent of behaviour change. We invite the DRS community to collectively explore what is known about the experience of awe and how it strengthens community relations, thus improving wellbeing and the emotional and empathic cohesion of people in society. As a participant, you will be looking at how we can harness the power of positive emotions and apply it to current and future social and environmental challenges through the lens of design. To further explore this potential, our group will share, gather data and subsequently map and visualize our experience of awe.
Our motivation draws from developing practical strategies that address the big challenges in society and our environment. In our research practice, we’ve identified awe as uniquely positioned in relation to collective wellbeing, mental health and behaviour change.
