For my MA project, I am planning to design an interactive installation that explores the relationship between machines and human ritual. The installation will create a kind of “pseudo-spiritual” space in which a visitor is invited to sit down and interact with a mechanical display. The machine collect physiological signals such as heart rate, heart-rate variability, respiration, or skin conductance. These signals will become part of a ritualistic interaction involving guided breathing, a magic performance, and spiritual discourse. The key idea is to use magic to obscure the mechanical nature of the machine, and then use ritual to obscure the magic itself. The visitor may feel that the machine is discovering something about them, while the system is actually interpreting physiological data through computational models. I am interested in how scientific-looking data, algorithms, and machines can acquire a kind of authority similar to that traditionally associated with spiritual rituals. I’m also thinking about to develop the installation as a research project, using the collected data to explore physiological modeling, human-machine interaction, and the psychological effects of ritual and suggestion.
Two projects from the MA showcase booklet particularly stood out to me: Josh Kelly’s P.E.T. Sounds: Presence, Experience & Transcendence in Music and Ketterick Waddell’s What Do You Know From Funny?. Both projects use a personal or embodied experience as a starting point and transform it into a larger exploration of meaning, identity, and human connection.
Kelly uses podcasting, autoethnography, interviews, and philosophical reflection to investigate how music can create social bonds and give meaning to memory and experiences of transformation. Waddell similarly combines personal narrative with media, performance, and theory, but uses stand-up comedy to explore identity, oppression, emotional expression, and healing.
I find their combination of personal experience and broader theoretical questions really relevant to my idea. Their works make me think about the importance of choosing a form that is inseparable from the question being asked. Rather than simply presenting my research about technology and ritual, I want the installation itself to function as an experience of those ideas: the visitor should physically participate in a ritual, encounter the apparent authority of a machine, and only gradually become aware of the ambiguity between technology, interaction, and belief. This make me think of the final project a complete media experience with its own narrative, atmosphere, and critical dimension.