Peer Crit Post, Feedback, Idea Generation

My issue is looking at the body in relation to art. Focusing on how interactivity and visual learning aids a persons understanding of a topic. Incorporating interactivity into art, making the audience more aware of their body and what it's doing would allow the audience to understand the art more.

I've looked into the Fluxus movement as well as some of Yoko Ono's works and began developing these ideas of providing prompts to make the audience more aware of their body, allowing them to interact with the art more. 

Example: A book that provides prompts for the audience to follow, final prompt is to turn the page, the following image is a repeat of what they should be able to see if they were looking through the book (hope that makes sense)

Another test was using foiling where a person's hands would touch the page of a book, wanting to bring the audience's attention back to their body (obviously I can't foil now).

It's still in the early stages, any advice/critiques/references you think I should look at would be great!

Questions:

What other ways do you think this could be achieved? Website, galleries etc (stuff that I can do from home would be idea due to the current situation). 

Wanting to see if people feel like their body explores art in a passive way.

Have there been any exhibitions, books, films, etc that made you more aware of your body and how it was interacting with the art? 

Feedback:

Tasha - Could you look into things like yoga (poses, routines, breathing patterns) and the element of flow within your body because that mind - body connection is (to me) very much a art form in the sense its something you learn to master and helps ground you. These things could be represented in a similar sense to your other experiments, maybe its how much you indent a surface, or the depth of a movement (like holding a book how much pressure you put on is how many pages you indent/cut through? if that makes sense)

I think through a book or something physical would work well because I think being able to feel it and the different elements will help peoples body connect to art in a literal sense maybe?

- Thinking about marks being made on objects you interact with. This idea of noticing the body and its impact on art perhaps.
- The idea of indentation on pages could be hard to create, how else could this be done? Think back to thermocromic paper etc. 

Peggy - I feel like emotion is a really strong one that ties your body to art well. For example getting emotional at a certain photograph which triggers memories or feelings. Also film, I'm very self aware when watching thrillers or horror films: my heart rate goes up, I want to look away, things like that. I definitely think experiences and immersive aspects are good to explore as you're more likely to be self aware in these situations, as it involves your whole body rather than just looking.

- Peggy mentions more immersive experiences, I started to think about this when looking at people in galleries, how they exist in that space. This could be an area to go in, looking more at the small differences.
- How could these interactions be highlighted?
- What is the most appropriate medium? Book, screen, installation, exhibition?

Emily - I think you should definitely carry on looking into a website now that you can’t necessarily make the book?  Like you said maybe it could be very interactive with the prompts you suggested for the book, (what you would see on the other side of the screen instead of the other side of the book)? Or it could act like a catalogue and you could use it as a place to record all the ways people interact with different items? you could look into the different ways of how you record the information and that itself could become interactive?

- Think about this idea of what would you see on the other side of the screen. Does it need to be super realistic, or could it explore something with more creativity and imagination?
- The idea of a catalogue is nice, thinking about collecting information on how we interact with different art/design works. How does this differ with types of books? How could this be explored?

Rosie - Maybe looking at how the emotional relation to physical design can be translated digitally? You could look at how people engage with different types of books, how they treat these different types, like do people tend to be "rougher" with zines because they use lower paper quality, etc, do people put more care on books with hardcovers?

- Similar thoughts to Emily's comment, looking into different book types, zines, cook books, novels etc. How could this be brought back to emotion?

Ideas from Feedback:

• Look into the way people treat different books (cook books, magazines, newspapers, novels, textbooks etc), how people interact with film/tv, websites etc. Document this with photography. (This could be film photography maybe, then could document the process of developing it)
• How can we incorporate our bodies in a more sensory way into art/design. Look into the thermochromic paper/ink and see where this could come in. 
• Develop a 'catalogue' of documention, different ways people interact with different art forms. 

What do I like the most?

- Really like the idea of documenting how people interact with different media. Film photography, maybe this could become part of the online catalogue?

- Test developing physical catalogue of documentation, photos from friends of people in galleries already. Aiming to bring awareness of the body back to the audience. 

- I think  having a catalogue of people interacting with galleries would be most suited to being displayed almost as a guide for attending a gallery. I feel in this context it would be most effective. Then if it is presenting a book then it should be of how people interact with publications. 

- Maybe I develop a series of publications, aiming to bring attention to the body and then photograph people using these publications and translate it to an online catalogue or a physical one.