A law that provides everyone with the meditation tool. All institutions must provide the time and space to let you practice these meditation moments.
The tools i will be using to translate this law are shells. To make the wires not be too visible i want to either braid the wires in the same colours as the latex shells, put beads on the wires or cover them in silicone so it looks a bit like water.
When we started with electronics it all felt really intimidating. Coding was not my strongest suit. More coding and with actual electronics added to this, did not sound any easier. After playing around with different types of sensors, understanding how to find ways to get the code and the electronics to work it wasn’t that scary anymore. Quite early on in one of Marijn’s classes I tried out as many different sensors as I possibly could to get a feel of how to implement them in art works. The technical part went well.
Working with Notions has been great (I now use it for all classes)! Since I’m pretty chaotic, this helped me create overview of the feedback I got, the code I wrote/found and the artists we talked about. The page has turned into an archive of the semester. It is great to get inspiration from existing artists/works or earlier feedback I got.
I am having a bit of a hard time looking back on where the project started and where it is now. The law started with an idea that is almost nowhere to be found in the end result.
The project I made had some issues with being translated to an artwork that made sense to an audience. It combined too many different topics, and it lacked a concise story. I tried to do different things with the onboarding, seeing if it would change the impact of the work when presented. In the end I think simplifying it, really helped it translate better into the real world – the one outside of my head.
Adding the story on the government papers already seemed to make it tie together a bit more, but it still misses elements of the experience part. Playing around with this, I found it very hard to not give up on the idea and start all over again with a new law. Doing this, for me, would be like running away from trying something I haven’t done before, from finding a creative solution to my translation problem.
At some point I think I could have pushed myself a bit more to commit to the world building, especially since this is something I really enjoy in art. This being the first time I worked with worldbuilding and onboarding in a physical way instead of on paper, it was bound to be a bit of struggle with a learning curve. I now know I need to set my fears and worries aside and try to present something as soon as possible to see how it translates and how it is perceived. This way I can play around with the concept and create something that works. I also learned that a work can not have too many layers because it will be impossible to follow for an outsider. Sometimes taking something away (like the visuals of the code), brings more attention to the actual point of the work.
I am having a bit of a hard time looking back on where the project started and where it is now. The law started with an idea that is almost nowhere to be found in the end result.
The past year has been very high paced, and it was more often than not, hard for me to clear my mind. With this law I wanted to look into the meditative part of religion and how to use it to my advantage, quiet time - time to get bored and to let my thoughts simmer a bit. Me being quiet seemed a bit unrealistic.
This led me to thinking of the meditative part of going to the mosque. 5 times a day you hear the azan; you look around you and go to the nearest mosque. When you arrive, you wash yourself:
3 times your hands, 3 times your mouth, 3 times your nose, 3 times your face, 3 times your arms, 1 time your head, 1 time your ears and 3 times your feet.
The feeling of the cold water on your skin. You walk into the musalla (prayer hall), even though everyone has washed themselves, it always smells a bit like a gym hall. You pick a spot to stand and say your prayers as you follow the movements of the salat (prayer). Hands folded on your belly, the hands move to your knees, and you bow. Your knees touch the ground; your head touches the ground. Repeating the patterns of the salat while saying a prayer in your head or softly whispering the words. Every time you get to pick different surahs (prayers) but usually people go for the same few, the shortest ones. On Friday, after the prayer, it is tradition to go out with your friends or family to eat and drink something (taste).
The pattern of this ritual reminded me of the 5 senses exercise (aka the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique) where you name: