APD Week 9: Play and Material

Theme: Play and Material

Context: When we talk about "Material", the first thing come into head might be the texture of things, some recgoniazable pattern, certain color for certain things, or as what was presented on class, about material or things themselves, about touching or a more physical experience. Besides that, I think material has a much greater expansion into other senses, for example, we may know a object with knowing how it looks and touches, but when it is envolved with listening, smell taste, and we shift the expectation of getting the concept of an object into a more mixed subject, for example, narration, how could that work?

Thus this case, I did something that is more related to words; or should I say, I do not know how to phrase it. I tried to incorporate smell, taste and sound from a movie, trying to guide participants into thinking about the narration or stuff---- in this case, the easiest way to piece things together.

Thinking about it as a game, it's kind of open ended: people watching those who suffer(not really) seems to be the fun part of this "installation", while the rest is more about people cluelessly trying to figure out what does the clip show.

Method: I edit out a clip from an Italian movie, having the participant look at the begining, then ask them to put on an eye patch with strong herbal aroma, listen through the rest of the clip, during which I feed them a Sichuan pepper corn, which creates a strong numbling sensation in the mouth.

Response: I video taped the participants, edited out a video, during which I figure out some resonance between the clip, which was supposingly a tribute to Charles Chaplin, and the way people respond to my questions. But I don't know what. 

Reflection: I don't think the project is successful. The narrative part is pretty biased and things do not work out as they are not designed for a broader group of audience, who may or may not intepret the things as I might do. That also shows a certain degree of lacking of thought, that I do not see a clear connection between the clip and the sensations I chose.