Process 2.7 Post-Crit

This post is more of a broader scope of critique, whereas the previous post-crit post focused on the St. Cecilia reference.

Some of the most noted aspects of our piece at critique involved the experience of the viewer interacting with the piece, which was essentially a main focus of our piece (the experience). People really found our mechanized heartbeat to be really surprising and spot on for the feel, rate, and sound of it. They found the beat really added to the comforting and nurturing aspect of it.

Another noted response was that it was quite comfortable physically to lay within our installation with the body pillow. Most laid with the body pillow and rested their head on the breasts/around that area, and some laid directly on top of the body pillow, but all in all the overall response was that people were engaged with the piece and were drawn to laying within it.

As for technically, we are completely at a loss why our light aspect was working the day before and was not working the day of critique. There is a video of the fully functional light/sensor in an earlier post. As seen in that video, the light dims and brightens in the same rhythmic pattern of the stepper motor heartbeat in our piece. This conceptually reinforces the soothing, comforting effect of the heartbeat, but translates it into an added visual element.

Then when the person activates the sensor, our comforting piece brightens momentarily to acknowledge the connection between comforter (no pun intended) and comforted and then resumes the soothing fade in and out. With the light put inside the bedding of the pillow and our rose colored filter, the dimming was certainly more subtle than it being out, but when it lit up when the sensor was activated, that's when I noticed it ended up working when people were interacting with it.

That aforementioned connection is something interesting to think about conceptually, as it's a singular type of moment in time where both the comforted and comforter are (for lack of better word) comfortable enough with each other, emotionally, to where they can share this quiet intimate moment; all the while they can lay there and block out or let go of all the stressors and extraneous thoughts within that sphere of the connection. Then, after that connection is broken, the two release the previous physical bond and continue about their way. Sort of reminds me of thinking about the dynamics of an embrace as well.

Moreover, to take that intimacy and transfer it to an inanimate object, the body pillow, creates this novel dynamic. Because it isn't just a body pillow with a "heartbeat," it also has breasts underneath the case, which look or feeling-wise is parallel to that of breasts under a shirt. The body pillow is adult length and the width is similar enough to some female frames that it easily and uncannily becomes this abstracted torso (which Katerie also mentioned in crit). And as we have thought about before, body pillows are used for comforting adults. It's meant to evoke another person, and is easily cuddled with and probably does provide comfort to people outside of the scope of the art world.

It seemed natural to play upon this comforting aspect, but to artistically develop it with the different added elements, to create a piece that makes people think about what it means to feel unexpectedly comforted (with the heartbeat and feel of laying on the breasts), how it feels to be comforted, but also on display (within the art setting people are always watching how you interact with pieces, and also plays into the final setting of our piece), and how is it to be comforted by, in essence, a pseudo-female form, which you know isn't real, but gives off the impressions of characteristics of the real.

Originally we wanted a cream/off white colored body pillow case to discern it from the sheets and to be reminiscent of skin color, but after critique, some new ideas were to have everything white, or to even hide the pillow under the sheets so that the viewers feel it as this weird sort of "bump in the bed." With the latter suggestion, it would act even more as evoking another human form, like when someone else is in a bed with you.