Hi everyone,
I for one, would really appreciate a sharing of our experiences around the
exhibition of physiologically responsive artworks, and observations of
audience response and interaction.
There are a number of issues that Iım working through in my own practice
relating to
1) My responsibility/commitment to audiences to provide some basic but not
easily grasped psychophysiological factsı about what is being measured;
2) What these signal and changes can mean; and
3) Ways of engaging with the work (how to compare, contrast etc. with a
psycho-physiologically responsive system, that can between 5 and 10 minutes
to fully respond to a change in intentional focus/nervus state orientation.
RESPONSIBILITY: ADVOCACY & HEALTH PROMOTION
Some of you would be appalled that I should be concerned with this, but Iım
very firmly committed to this aspect of the work in my own exhibitions.
The works can and do provide a point of entry for people into what can often
be long neglected aspects of their health and selfhood, or alternately just
a very gentle and curious experience of reflecting on something youıd never
really given much thought to but is obviously quite fundamental to the
quality and extent of our being alive (i.e. Breath, heart, nervous system
etc).
Iım very committed to supporting audiences through these reflective
processes, and when I present the work as a form of relational practiceı
(i.e. Iım onsite with the work all day) its a real pleasure to see how these
dialogues develop and evolve.
The harder part is in the development of the printed and/or audio-visual
materials that can succinctly describe what the work is responding to (in my
case psycho-physiolgically mediated changes in Heart Rate Variability
[HRV] patterning).
Hereıs a link to a regularly cited text on the subject:
http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/93/5/1043
As you can see, its actually a rather complex phenomenon and it would be a
gross distortion to say that an analysis of HRV patterning can ³tell if your
happy, sad, or angry² as many punters (and artists and curators) want it to.
Most visitors to my installations have never even heard of heart rate
variability and have assumed that a healthy heart is one that ticks with
the regularity of a metronome (which would in fact mean you where not very
well at all) - let alone how these variations in heart rate can be
influenced through breathing and nervous state arousal.
If part of our work is to extend understanding and awareness of issues and
events in the world around us/within us, there must be a way of promoting an
understanding of some of the BASIC science that is underpinning our work
with these signals/patterns, whilst still preserving the ARTWORKS capacity
for facilitating stimulating aesthetic experiences and personal reflections.
Alternately I am also very sympathetic to the presentation of totally
mysterious interaction that provide no background information at all but
this type of work in my view, demands a much longer exhibition period long
enough to allow a local community to generate their own understandings and
traditions of interaction, and to evolve their experience of the work over
several repeat visits: in their lifetime they will have been looking at
paintings and sculptures since childhood, but this work demands a totally
new form of engagement and exploration and this takes time and practice.
WHAT THESE SIGNALS MEANı
This brings me to the issue of reduction, that has already been raised by a
number of other participants in this discussion:
its misleading to reduce emotions to electronically recordable physiological
data.
What most physiologically responsive works are responding to are changes in
autonomic nervous system balance changes in the balance between the
sympathetic (fight-flight) and parasympathetic (rest-digest) responses.
See: Giorgio Recordati, 2002 ²A thermodynamic model of the sympathetic and
parasympathetic nervous systems²
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1566-0702(02)00260-6
Simply looking very closely at some object or being curious, or excited
about what you are seeing may be enough to stimulate a sympathetic nervous
system response this can then become a challenge/opportunity for audiences
to engage with, but in my experience, audience do need to be challenged to
move beyond superficial assessments ³ooh that means your really angry even
though you say youıre not². For me its an opportunity to engage audiences in
more up to date discussions around body-mind interactions, and un-hinge
certain pre-conceived /tacit understandings around embodiment and
psychophysiology.
There is so much rich territory here, connecting psychophysiology,
phenomenology, perceptual psychology etc. it would be a shame not to provide
audiences (i.e. A definition inclusive of people who donıt hold degreeıs in
contemporary art, psychology or medicine/nursing) with at least some points
of entry into these discussions.
But the time and space available in an artı exhibition is extremely limited
(more so than a contemporary museum display?)
Maybe I just need to meet a good interpretive display design and copywriting
team (your suggestions welcome here!)
WAYS OF ENGAGING WITH THE WORK ³HOW TO USE, SEE, LISTEN²
I know there is a lot of resistance to this idea of telling people HOW to
engage with a work, but as I have said before, many people simply have no
prior experiences to draw upon when they are presented with a
physiologically focused human computer interactions it takes time to
orientate oneself within such systems just like any other new ability we
learn in life (think of infant development or your earliest recollection of
looking at a pictureı etc.). The purpose of interpretive aids is to
accelerate this process of orientation and embodiment (this is about/of my
heart, and my nervous system responses etc.) If youıve never learnt to
playfully modulate your own nervous system responses, your going to meed
some extra time. Biofeedback signals tend to operate along a collection of
axes that provide the trainee with information about their movement along
certain pathways so that for example an increase in heart rate become
apparent as a change in the colour of an object from blue to orange etc. The
real challenge is to hold people in the work long enough for these axes to
become apparent, and ultimately traversable (i.e. explorable).
As I said before, certain processes reveal trends in nervous system
orientation that can take up to 10 minutes to become fully manifest this
is a real change from an interaction design perspective but also a
potential resource as it will have required the participant to have been
engaged with the work for 8 minutes longer than they otherwise may have. In
my own work, interaction is stationary so if I can get them past the 5-10
minute mark, Iıve also succeeded in facilitating at least a version of
stillness, that in itself can be a powerful/revealing experience for some
people.
Thatıs all for now, next up, Iıll share with you all a summary of the types
of comments/responses I have gathered from audiences in my works over the
past few years, and some of the more mundane (but vital) issues Iıve
encountered with sensor design, ergonomics etc.
Cheers and happy new year!
George Poonkhin Khut, DCA (University of Western Sydney)
Mobile 0417 566 425 (International 61 417 566 425)
E-mail [log in to unmask]
URL http://www.georgekhut.com/
73 Edward Street
Darlington, NSW 2008
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