Grief is a project that explores the influence that the digital and the physical have on each other, as well as the opportunities that the overlapping of these two worlds creates with the underlying goal of representing or accessing human emotion.
- How can we use digital space to create a greater impact on the way we relate to physical spaces?
- How can we use digital space as an augmented layer to send a message that has a different meaning to the one we are used to?
These are the two questions with which we started this project in which we sought to give a new meaning to the feeling of grief through the use of a digital space created in Cinema4D and adapted to a physical space as well.
Grief
Grief was born as a project in which we sought to represent the feeling of grief through a digital space that would allow those who experienced it to find new meaning in that emotion.
The Process
Our starting point was looking for the formal definition of the word grief.
However, the definition was not close enough to what grief and all that it entails meant for us.
So we decided to research and understand others’ experiences but also our own to find the meaning of the word beyond its definition, and this is what we found:
As we researched we also found how relevant is a topic as this in our current context because:
- There is a feeling of collective displacement as we have been taken away from the way of doing and living since the pandemic started, constantly adapting to new rules.
- The long term impact of continuous lockdowns and social distancing is paying a toll on our mental health.
- As mental health is becoming less of a tabu, we are looking for new perspectives on grief and trying to find meaning.
In order to create our digital space, we did some brainstorming on core concepts that could relate to our research and group conversations. We looked for visuals and sounds that represented them.
Since grief is a process and everyone goes through a different one, we first thought about natural processes such as Melting Glaciers, where we researched more about the lagoon in Iceland and the never-ending change and transformation of water or seasons.
We thought about the contrast between death and life, dark and light, grief and meaning.
Then we thought about visuals, and we came up with private spaces or churches. We looked further into understanding what they looked like, what was the type of lighting, to then come up with the color palette.
Regarding the sound, we imagined a silent and atmospheric background sound. And we included some poems.
With all of these resources we build a mood board and a color palette.
Our Mood board and Color Palette
As you can see here, we included visual elements such as clouds, fog, ice and darkness. In the videos we can hear the ice cracking and melting and feel the atmosphere.
Slowly we have the transition from darkness to light, which represents the grieving process.
As we learned from our exploration phase, we never leave the pain behind, but move forward with it, so we have also added some Japanese KINTSUGI art, in which the broken is repaired with gold, as in a healing process. That’s how we came up with our colour palette.
The Transition from darkness to light. Dark to gold. Contrast from dark to light. Death to life.
What really motivated us to create a prototype for a space around the topic of grief?
Grief is a very complex feeling but very relevant to all.
- We all experience grief constantly and in many ways:
- We let go of old versions of ourselves, as we evolve and grow.
- We say goodbye to cities, homes, loved places, friends, and family.
- We grieve all the time.
- It is also a process that involves many emotions at a time, and each of us experiences in a very unique way.
- Additionally, in a context as the one we are living today, as we are bombarded with conflicts around the world, negative news and violence also sets us into a constant process of grieving.
The Emotions Translator
We asked ourselves: how can we help people to turn grief into meaning?
We came up with “The Emotions Translator”, an installation that aims to help people navigate grief and health while in this space.
This space is built upon the concept of grief. It aims to help individuals navigate their grieving processes and find meaning while doing this. The central figure in the prototype, a rounded shape broken into pieces, is intended to represent grief by both showing the diversity of emotions that people experience along this process, and by also relating to the idea that when we experience suffering we find ourselves broken into pieces. The transition in the color of the light goes from darkness (dark blues) to light (yellow), ending up with a golden light that depicts healing, the same as gold does in the Japanese concept of Kintsugi, where it is used to put the pieces back together. At the same time, it highlights the cracks of what was damaged.
Implementation of The Emotions Translator in a Physical Space
We are thinking of building our floating sphere (which will initially be blue in colour and in pieces) to be hung in a dark room with a glass floor and water underneath.
The idea is to have a panel underneath the floating sphere where people can write or say out loud what they are grieving for.
Once the panel receives the information, the floating sphere will start to change colour to yellow (representing the grieving and healing process).
Daniela Bautista
Laura Escobar
