Mind + Design
“How can design inspire positive cognitive processes, such as creative thinking and feeling empathy? ”
Our conscious experiences oscillate between moments of paying attention to our perceptual environment and moments when we mind-wander. How do the digital tools we interact with come to affect not only where we focus our attention, but also our daydreams? Digital technologies facilitate connectivity, but how are they transforming our feelings of emotional connectivity, of empathy and intimacy? These are some of the questions which I explore through the framework of mind + design. The themes below demonstrate how I have applied my research expertise from working in psychology and neuroscience laboratories for over a decade to the fields of art and design.
Designing Mind-Wandering
A central theme in my work is the reciprocal relationship between our thoughts and our environment; how do embodied experiences alter our mind-wandering experiences? I examine the link between mind-wandering and creative thinking and how design elements in the built and digital space can mediate where our minds wander, and what they wonder about.
Digitalizing Intimacy
Having empathy, feeling close and intimate, are some of the fundamental tenets of humanity. Digital technology is challenging our very notion of what it means to be intimate, what it means to feel close, not only spatially, but also mentally at the psychic level. I explore how intimacy can be reimagined through the prism of current and future technologies.
Creating Madness
What does it mean to function normally? How do we delineate between madness and normalcy and what does this delineation say about the social structures we live in? To explore the concept of madness, I draw from the mechanistic and cultural discourses of “breaking down.” In particular the analogies between organisms and machines as a paradigm to examine cognitive (dis)order. As well as how artists transform and incorporate these breakdowns, failures, and feelings of madness into their creative practices.
Generative Creativity
How are creative ideas inspired? Given the rise in using machine learning in artistic practices and design, what is the role of authorship when considering the generation of a creative idea? Accordingly, this seminar was focused on the investigation into the generation of creative thought and the notion of authorship and the role perspective taking has on creative generation. Perspective taking encompassed both the human taking perspective of the algorithm and vice versa.
Embodied Design
How do spaces we interact in resonate with how we feel, how we think?
The theories of embodied cognition argue for an expansion of the notion of “mind” which at the very least includes the body, and more often includes the spaces we interact in. It is a powerful idea to consider that the way we experience the world can be altered by the spaces we inhabit. That there is a resonance between the design of the space and our thoughts, feelings and dreams. Can we consider designing a space which makes us more empathetic? Can virtual spaces mediate a transition to a “post-body” realm? This seminar is a space to ask these questions about how spaces come to design us, and then in turn how we can use design to alter our percepts. We examined topics such as the science and philosophy of embodied cognition. Explored how embodiment is implemented in art and design by experiencing artistic experiments which play with our percepts (James Turrell talk by Dr. Sharifi). We also considered the field of architecture and its role in influencing our emotions.
Exploring the X
Collaborating and perspective taking is an essential part of developing my mind + design approach. From working directly in the studios of artists, engaging with AI scientists, giving workshops and lectures to interdisciplinary audiences, I learned how to apply insights from the cognitive sciences to various art and design disciplines. The current manuscript I am working on, Exploring the X, is inspired from these intersectional knowledge transfers I have created between the arts and sciences. In particular, how to explore cognitive and emotional processes through artistic research.