For the first class, Ed has asked us to bring a project idea to present to the class.
I've had this idea mulling about in my head concerns empathy building.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy
My vision is to stimulate and motive a virtual interactive dialogue that occurs between a participant and a projected doppleganger within an immersive interactive installation that reads physiological empathetic responses.
What is the physicality of installation? The participant enters a completely surrounding domed igloo type space that simulates sky, light wind, smell of nature and lays down among cushions.
Upon entering a virtual doppelganger of another ethnicity (for the first stage we will is Romi physical traits) appears and speaks to you. It engages the participant into a dialogue that stimulates empathy. Such as.."I am you, you are me." "Your history is Our history".
My ideas for the space is related and inspired by to a completely panoramic painting "The Battle of Borodino" that I saw in Moscow in 1984. The painting depicts the defeat of Napoleon in Russia in 1812 and was created in 1912 by Franz Roubaut, academician of painting (1856, Odessa - 1928, Munich). First, it is completely enclosing 360 degrees above and below. The ground between the observer and the painting had real objects that blend into a diorama.
While the participant is listening, in this "box", there will be some sort of sensing device that reads if the participant has reacted with empathy.
What are the potential problems?
Being called a racist! As Laila told me as soon as I shared my idea, I have to be careful with my language. How do speak about eugenics without a bias of a superiority stature but instead keep the VD of another ethnicity at a level playing field.
The dialogue is where these finer points will be most glaring if done incorrectly and staying out of creating the "Other" but staying in the "Us". THe problem of the "other". One solution may be to set the context found at the following site:
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/report.html
This site is my specific mitchondrial marker human migration route. This is the history of my ancestors from 70,000 years ago.
How to pick up the empathetic physical reaction? In other words, how does body express itself physiologically when an empathetic reaction occurred? Some possibilities may be phermone reaction (air detective device), eye dilation, brain wave frequency change or blood pressure change. The best that I have found so far would be is to somehow read when activity in the brain's inferior frontal gyrus (pars opercularis) is stimulated with probably some kind of brainwave electroencephalogram (EEG) reader cap to monitor brain wave activity with computerized technology.
How does the virtual doppelganger understand what the participant has said and then react appropriately?
What is a doppelganger? A doppelganger is literally translated from German as "doublewalker", or someone who walk as another person does. The word is also used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection.
I want to induce the reflection of what would it be like to of another ethnicity and therefore society and culture while gathering data on how to record, monitor and stimulate empathy.
Luc Chourchesne http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Courchesne has worked very similar installations with both round projections and interactivity trying to induce a participant to engage the virtual people or get a virtual girl to go on a date. He has not as far as I know worked specifically on manioulating the participnat into an empathetic physiological response. http://www.fondation-langlois.org/
I will begin with the face to morph into a Romi face. This way I can still include the Romi music.
An Interactive and Immersive Installation for Building Empathy. Definition of Empathy: Empathy (from the Greek εμπάθεια, "physical affection, partiality") one's ability to recognize, perceive and feel directly the emotion of another.
The American Heritage Dictionary
1. Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives. 2. The attribution of one’s own feelings to an object.
Definition: The essential meaning of the German word is "doublewalker", someone who is walking the same way as another person does. The word is also used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection.
Virtual Doppelganger of Another Ethnicity such as the Romi. A map would have to be created of the Participant’s face after scanning for the morphing the face into a Romi.
The doppelganger would mimic some of the participant’s personal skull physiologies and scanning that translate these characteristics into another ethnic appearance .
This is the Crux of the problem of how to stimulate empathy.
After a question and answer period, the VD of another Ethnicity will tell the participant information from the area they come from.
Video tagging for VD to speak after spoken triggers of the participant.
http://www.korsakow.com/
The participant leaves the igloo with a changed perspective, information and compassion. Definition of compassion: type of behavior which seeks to benefit others by reducing their suffering. Data has been gathered on how much empathy has been created.
Conversing with Virtual Doppelganger. Morphing participant in “real” time into Romi physical attributes. Recording, Monitoring and Collecting Data of Empathetic Response with non-evasive apparatus. Projecting and creating a real completely encompassing World with sensual stimuli.
Today I spoke with our new Director. She gave me many good questions and ways of thinking for my project.
My main intention is to create art that inspire Empathy. As Maggie Morse told me last summer, my work is also around the problem of the "other" especially in documentaries. Do an in-depth ehtnographic study of a conceptually based experience of the "othering" of the other.
She recommended the morphing not be based in the problematic arena of face scanning, but have the morphing changing and taking on the characteristics of many traces. This way the Virtual Doppelganger of Another Ethnicity is in constant flux.
After the experience, outside the igloo, I can have various installations of the peoples cultures and ethnicities of the various people involved in the morphing.
Also, taking Aristotle's idea that empathy is gauged by the feeling that you would decide the same as the "other", present to the participant a scenario that they then have to choose. Make it a game scenario and dependent upon the decision the participant makes, they get something.
She also recommended trying to with the National Geographic Genome Study and possibly try to make that a part of the compassion element.
On another note; she recommended Zizek's book about Lacan and film: http://www.amazon.com/Looking-Awry-Introduction-Jacques-through/dp/0262240319/ref=sr_1_1/102-4562914-6536929?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191990685&sr=8-1
Another place she suggested I go was to the Mongrels Art Collective Early Web based download the game "Natural Selection". http://www.mongrel.org.uk/?q=naturalselection
Some more research has led me to mirror neurons:
Vittorio Gallese's "Intentional Attunement. The Mirror Neuron system and its role in interpersonal relations" (with discussion): <http://www.interdisciplines.org/mirror/papers/1>
Speculation from V.S. Ramachandran, "Mirror neurosns and imitation learning as the driving force behind 'the great leap forward' in human evolution": <http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html>
PBS video on mirror neurons: <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/01.html>
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