Ideas

Here are some ideas we came up with for a possible dark object.

1. Staring Eye

2. Breathless Mask

3. Anxiety Toilet

4. Sweaty Palms Glove

5. Cold Sweater

How does your audience experience your project?   

Our Anxiety Toilet will be a live size installation where the audience gets to physically be in the space and interact with the various elements that create a sense of anxiety.

Is it for a single person to engage with your project or for multiple participants concurrently? 

Our project is only for a single person to engage with at a time.

What is the interaction or situation you are creating for your audience? 

We are trying to simulate a sensorial experience of how one would feel under anxiety. Our experience will be created with various interactive elements that will be triggered upon the audience’s interaction with the objects in the toilet. For example, upon closing the door to the toilet, the light will start flashing and turning red. As the participant sits on the toilet bowl, it will trigger a sound of heavy breathing and heartbeats. Lastly, touching the toilet roll will cause it to start erratically unrolling itself making a mess in the toilet. These sensorial elements are designed to enhance the feeling of anxiety in a small space.

What is the intention of this interaction? 

Our intention of this experimental interaction is to highlight the rampant amount of people suffering from anxiety in recent years due to external factors such as rising stress level. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in 13 globally suffers from anxiety. The WHO reports that anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorders worldwide.

As a dark object, rather than aiming to help those who suffer from anxiety, our projects aim to rampant the simulated effects and feeling of anxiety. Our sensorial experience makes use of various senses that get triggered during an anxiety effect, hearing, breathing, sight and touch. 

We chose a toilet set up as the space for our project as many who suffer from anxiety often have the urge to go to the toilet, both to use it and as a safe space when in public. Thus, we are redesigning a regular toilet cubicle to change from “safe haven” to an “anxiety nightmare” upon interaction.