Storytelling the Felt-Sense- Story one: Soul is an electronic art installation that invites the audience to reflect on personal blissful moments, as well as to experience them through the lens of someone else’s subjectivity. This art piece is one of the multiple works as part of my doctoral research The Felt Sense Project, which investigates the use of the somatic technique Focusing, in conjunction with wearable technology and design to access the core of people’s aesthetic experiences.
According to the philosopher Eugene Gendlin, the felt-sense –which is used as one of the artwork’s core materials- is a collection of thoughts, memories, sensations and other manifestations expressed in an unclear, wholistic and bodily manner. When representational language is not enough to describe the complexity of certain emotions, felt-senses might become apparent to people’s consciousness.
After having worked on several Focusing-oriented workshops in design, creativity and aesthetic experiencing, hundreds of narratives describing different ways to access the felt-sense have been collected. These little fragments of subjectivities reveal intimate aspects of people’s experiences, describing their understanding of happiness as a way to access meaning. As a result, descriptions are beautifully intimate, textural and deep. Storytelling the Felt-Sense- Story one: Soul captures and interprets one of these personal stories as a material for public storytelling.
Keywords:
Soundscape. Vibratory mat. Focusing-oriented storytelling. Japanese-inspired theme
Acknowledgements
Narrative and voice by Alma Studholme
Photographs by Baki Kocaballi
Team
Claudia Núñez Pacheco: Project director: Concept, research and construction
Jorge Olivares: Artistic collaborator
Ahmad Mollahassani: Collaborator- Electronics
Claudia Núñez-Pacheco 