Project 4 – Evocative Objects

The idea of our evocative object came from a BMI machine.

The crux of our project was to allow for the audience to be able to interact with the art piece and have a feel of what it’s like to be in the mind of a person with an eating disorder, and we targeted it at people who suffer from anorexia and bulimia. The core issue with these 2 eating disorders is that they stem from an insecurity of a person’s body image, and our project aims to shed light on the pain and thought process behind a person with eating disorders.

The structure is a dome-like as shown in the image above with opaque walls and a roof. Inside there will be 14 panels that look like BMI machines that lay on the floor, and each one will light up to be a different colour when stepped on. As an audience steps on a certain panel, their attention will be drawn to a screen that will be mounted on the wall of the dome due to a frame of the same colour appearing on the screen. From there an audio clip will play of a voice that represents a thought in the head of a person with an eating disorder; it could be of a family member or of a friend or even of the person himself/herself.

The idea of this project is to raise awareness for the problems that people with eating disorders face, which primarily stems from the lack of understanding and empathy for their situation. Through a dark dome with lighted panels we hope to be able to simulate what it’s like in someone’s mind while playing with the audience’s sense of hearing and sight to be able to paint an immersive picture of the amount of social pressure that a person with an eating disorder puts himself or herself under.

Above are some examples of the sound clips that we thought would have been fitting for our project. The first clip is an internal voice talking to himself and having negative thoughts about his body image. The second one aims to imitate an asian parent telling his child to eat less and go outside and play more often.

Above is an example of what a lighted panel could look like.

Overall I quite enjoyed the project and it allowed for us to be able to really explore our options without having to worry about costs or other factors regarding implementation of the object.