MENTAL: Colours of Wellbeing(멘탈: 다채로운 정신 건강의 세계)

What does anxiety mean to you?

We all experience anxiety to some extent in our lives. It is normal to feel anxious or worried in certain situations. Sometimes, anxiety can help us to stay alert and aware. However, if left unmanaged, the feeling of anxiety can be disabling.

The works presented are selected through an open call conducted by EYEYAH! Using colourful illustrations, these gifs consider different notions of anxiety in the contemporary society. Often witty and multilayered, they represent the ways we might experience and react to anxiety.

Contributing artists: Anngee Neo, Jim Stoten, Luqman D, Zhang Liang Ray, Arne Höpfner, Chloe Bennett, Maria Jesus Contreras Aravena, Kristal Raelene Melson, Rakhmat Jaka Perkasa, Seo Young Kwon, Iain Macarthur, Mamatism, Epjey Pacheco, Vanessa Wong, Parallel Studio, Zootghost, Siti Ramizah, John Holcroft, Arya Mularama

Biography

EYEYAH! is an educational platform that uses eye-catching artworks and illustrations to create engaging learning materials for children. Co-founded by Tanya Wilson and Steve Lawler, their mission is to nurture a generation of socially and environmentally conscious earthlings who are equipped with the creative skills to survive and thrive in modern society. 

What does the weight of caregiving look like? Can we share it?

Working with a community of caregivers of persons with mental illness, Alecia’s work titled Between Earth and Sky makes visible the contributions and needs of caregivers who often deal with the emotional and financial weight of caring for loved ones with mental health condition.

Over the course of a year, Alecia collaborated with movement artists to design movement and voice workshops to aid the caregivers in processing and harnessing their lived experiences culminating in self-choreographed performances as seen in the video.

The kites, that accompany the video, bear the photographs of clothing taken close-up from each caregiver and their loved one. These kites symbolise both vulnerability and freedom; the momentary (re)centering of the attention on the caregiver who has long learned to bear weight, but may have forgotten how to give, or release their own weight.

Performances by: Alvyna Han, Carol Ee, Frank M, Nur Hidayah, Sulis, Janet Koh Hui Kheng, Ng Sook Cheng, LM, Rita Minjoot

Biography

Alecia Neo develops long-term projects that involve collaborations with individuals, communities and networks. Her socially engaged practice unfolds primarily through photography, video, and participatory artworks that address modes of radical hospitality, caregiving, and wellbeing.

She is the co-founder of Brack, an art collective and platform for socially engaged art, and is co-Artistic Director of the Ubah Rumah Residency in Bintan, Indonesia. She also runs Unseen Art Initiatives, a Singapore-based art platform for professional and emerging disabled artists. Alecia was the recipient of the Young Artist Award in 2016, Singapore's highest award for young arts practitioners.

How close are you to your phone, emotionally?

Casper’s Ex is a playful interactive artwork that explores the relationship between our smartphones and ourselves. Our smartphones have become one of our most intimate companions. We depend on them, go everywhere together and share everything with them. When a newer model comes along, some trade in their phones without a second thought.

Have you ever thought about how your phone might feel? Casper’s Ex is a lonely smartphone that has been left behind with its owner’s data, scent, and pictures; it cannot move on.

As you pass by, it will try to connect with you. Can you turn your back and simply walk away?

Biography

Casper de Jong explores what connects and moves us as humans through his playful interactive work. Combining theatre, ethics and complex human emotions, his work contributes to the conversation around the integration of technology into our lives and minds. Always taking a light-hearted approach, Casper asks people to reflect on the good and the dangerous sides of technology in our lives. He graduated in 2017 from the University of The Arts, Utrecht.

What things do you use as a cushion?

Artist Emily Fitzsimons has a mixed history with medication, “I remember when I first went on antidepressants, being told they are a cushion while you sort yourself out. I have a love/hate relationship with them which is why I wanted to put a question mark at the end of the title.”

These hand-knitted cushions, modelled on actual pills, reflect on the role of medication in mental health treatments. In the same ways as a cushion can help to soften the harshness of life and protect us from the hard edges, medication can also provide a little protection to brains that sometimes need it.

Biography

Emily Fitzsimons is an artist who uses knitting, a medium traditionally used for practical purposes, to create whimsical yet emotionally engaged works. Her process involves upsizing things that are usually small, downsizing large things or, in some way or another, incorporating unusual materials. Emily uses her work to challenge the way we see the everyday, adding a beauty and little humour to it.

How much can we trust our perception of reality?

This beautiful, immersive sensory environment transports you into the imagined landscape of Nwando’s perceived world. Nwando has a rare neurological syndrome known as Visual Snow, which causes her to see additional visual effects of swirling dots, glowing lines, light bursts, and halos.

This work defies the idea of what a ‘normal’ brain is, in favour of understanding reality as a subjective experience. How much we can trust our senses and, therefore, our understanding of our own environments?

Biography

Nwando Ebizie is a multidisciplinary artist whose work converges around performance art personas, experimental theatre, neuroscience, music and African diasporic ritualistic dance. She has created her own strand of afro-futurism wherein she combines research into neuroscience, inspired by her own neurodiversity and an obsession with science-fiction and ritualistic live art practice, seeded in collaborative and participatory processes.

Can you do nothing?

Have you ever imagined what doing nothing feels like, especially in these times of constant busyness and the pressure to be always connected? In today’s fast-paced world, doing nothing never seems to be an option; even short periods of inactivity feel strange. However, sometimes, enjoying a moment of inaction while letting your mind wander and daydream may be more productive than constantly keeping busy. Doing Nothing with AI, the artist-built robotic arm, is here to relax your mind through dance. The dance choreography you are seeing now was learned using brainwave feedback collected from people who have donned the electroencephalogram (EEG) headset. Contribute and co-create new choreographies by wearing the EEG headset and letting the robot learn from your brain activity. 

Biography

Emanuel Gollob is a self-confessed polymath – his work connects and explores many disciplines. He dabbles in human to A.I. interaction, neuroscience, robotics and beyond. Emanuel is always exploring different ways of interacting with his audience. The most important thing to him is how the visitors connect to his work and the emotions they experience while engaging with it. Emanuel is completing his PhD in the Creative Robotics research team at the University of Art and Design, Linz.

CONTENT WARNING: It includes themes of suicide, abuse, anxiety, and depression.

Can technology make us better human beings?

Step inside and have your photograph taken. Echo, however, is not a regular photo booth. Once your picture is taken, a side menu of other people’s faces appears. Select one of them and listen to their story.

Their portrayal glitches and morphs as they share their perspectives and memories with you. Slowly see yourself fuse with them. Does this feel familiar, or will it be a window onto another person’s perhaps entirely different perspective?

Using immersive technology, Echo aims to break down prejudice by building empathy through the exchange of identity while inviting you to discover layers of yourself echoed in another.

What will connect, and what will be lost in transmission?

Biography

Georgie Pinn is an artist, director and producer of public cultural events, interactive installations, film, fashion, animation, theatre and sound. Her creative practice is underpinned by her long-term research into how immersive technology and storytelling can be used as a creative force for triggering empathy and connecting strangers. She pushes the envelope of audiovisual storytelling, creating interactive live generative animation and sound platforms driven by motion tracking technology.

Her projects have been presented in a range of international sites/events such as The Barbican (London), Ars Electronica (Austria), Federation Square (Melbourne), Drive (Berlin), Robotronica, ISEA (South Africa), Pause Fest, and the MCG. Most recently she won the “Best Interactive Experience” award at Sheffield Doc Fest in the U.K. for Echo.

Can you take the pressure?

In this pink cage, a weather balloon builds up pressure slowly, stretching, pulling and pushing at the confines of its cage. When an explosion seems imminent, the balloon slowly deflates. This cycle of inflation and deflation repeats again and again.

How do you feel by looking at this process? Do you feel anxious?

Evoking anxiety, and somehow mimicking what it can feel like, Even in Fear creates and reveals the feelings of uneasiness and pressure hidden just beneath the surface of everyday life. Eventually, when the balloon cannot withstand the repeated pressure due to the constant inflation and deflation, it will burst. A new balloon will replace the burst balloon, and the entire cycle begins again.

Biography

Zhou Xiaohu was one of the first contemporary artists in China to work experimentally with sculptural ideas of video and animation. Xiaohu’s work often points out the absurdities of contemporary life, reflecting a world in which technology rules and the media is the pinnacle of propaganda and public influence. With a background in sculpture, oil painting and graphic design, Xiaohu’s work is a dynamic combination of these mediums.

How do you take a ‘time out’ from your own mind?

Go Mental transports you into a surrealist dreamscape examining Josh Muir’s personal experiences of night terrors. A combination of colour, sound, and textures connect you with Josh’s experiences of psychedelic dreams, nightmares, different states of consciousness, and the complexities of inner thoughts.

This work comes from a personal place but is an invitation to all to better understand the shared human experience of trauma, healing, and creativity.

Put your head inside the large inflatable characters named Telly, Birdie, and Teddy to hear soundscapes representing the highs and lows of Josh's mind created by University of Melbourne students.

Biography

Josh Muir (b. 1990 d. 2019) was a visual artist of Gunditjamara/ Yorta Yorta heritage from Ballarat, Victoria, Autrallia.

Josh’s art reflects a style influenced by contemporary street art, with his art practice developing as a creative outlet for his mental health journey. Josh took to contemporary street art as a child, inspired by vibrant colour contrasts. His work Heaven’s Gates (2014) won the People’s Choice Award at the 2014 Victorian Indigenous Arts Awards, and in 2015 Josh won the Youth Award in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Art Awards for his work Buninyong (2015).

Music commissions by Faculty of Fine Arts and Music students at The University of Melbourne: Sue-Anne Hsuyin Tan, Mike Callander and Michael Gotze, with support from IgniteLab.

Hello, can you hear me?

Telecommunication has allowed us to develop a level of intimacy with others not bound by our physical location. However, when a certain technology reaches obsolescence, our relationship with it changes. In today’s hyper-connected world, the mobile phones in our pockets allow us to instantaneously share things with our friends. With the help of virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, our connection goes beyond the human. What never changes, though, is our need to reach out to others, to connect and share.

Hello Machines are situated across the globe in ever-changing locations and time zones. Pick up the phone to call another Hello Machine or answer the phone when it rings and have a spontaneous conversation with a stranger. Who will be on the other end of the line for your call?

Biographies

This version of Hello Human, Hello Machine was developed in collaboration with Dr Johanne Trippas and five members of Sci-Curious: Eli/Elena McGannon, Annabel Yenson, Claire Price, Jess Coldrey and Joseph Doggett-Williams, with creative technical assistance from Dr Matthew Gardiner.

Rachel Hanlon is an artist in the field of media archaeology, an area of study that provides historical context for new media and technology. She is interested in reconnecting with obsolete technologies to reveal their contributions, connections and ongoing relevance to our lives. The Hello Machine project is a big part of Rachel’s PhD research into the interplay between people and things.

Dr Johanne Trippas is interested in making information more accessible through digital assistants. For example, she researches how people search for information over spoken conversations and how pilots use digital flight assistants while flying. She is also working with Ambulance Victoria using artificial intelligence (A.I.) to identify when a caller in an emergency call is having a cardiac arrest. 

Dr Matthew Gardiner is an artist most well-known for his work with origami and robotics. He coined the term Oribot 折りボト and then created Oribotics, a field of art/science research that thrives on the aesthetic, biomechanical, and morphological connections between nature, origami and robotics. Gardiner holds a position as artist and key researcher at the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Linz, Austria.

Jess Coldrey is a creative technologist, human geographer, and 2021 Victorian Government John Monash Scholar. She received her BA and BVA from Monash University in 2021, where studying sustainable development, 3D printing, and creative coding inspired her artwork. Jess has exhibited across Victoria, including an artist residency at Burrinja Gallery.

What would the worst day of your life be like?

Imagine, on the worst day of your life, being under constant surveillance while locked in a small, secluded room. Some people don’t have to imagine.

Victoria, Australia, has the highest number of recorded involuntary detentions as a result of mental health issues, especially in young people, in the entire country. This installation invites you to question the role of seclusion in mental health practices. You can participate in this installation by stepping into the box without your shoes. Alternatively, pick up a questionnaire, peer through the portals and write your observation. What is it like watching someone else? Do you think you could you tell what they are thinking or feeling? 

Biographies

Rory Randall is an ex-patient who is a part of the Consumer Academic Program at Melbourne University’s Centre for Mental Health Nursing. They were drawn into the research space after ten years of experiences in the public and community mental health sector as a service user and worker. They are now interested in making spaces for non-individualising responses to distress and unusual experiences that expand an individual's sense of connection to what is meaningful to them whilst upholding their dignity and human rights.

Indigo Daya has been a lived experience leader in mental health services, education, policy and advocacy for sixteen years. She currently works as a survivor activist, author of The Blog That Shouldn’t Be Written, a consumer academic at the University of Melbourne, and a mental health consultant and educator. Labelled with depression, schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, art was a place of survival and sense-making for Indigo during nine years of repeated psychiatric hospitalisation. Eventually art became a transformative tool with which she dug her way to freedom. She is interested in reframing ‘mental illness’ as a meaningful response to being human in a world filled with trauma, inequity, hate, violence and climate crisis.

CONTENT WARNING: this work includes themes of suicide, abuse, anxiety, and depression.

How do we spread kindness and positive connections over the Internet?

Words are powerful – they can help, heal, hurt and even harm. In this space, we invite you to use your words to uplift others and, in turn be uplifted. Using the computer, you can write out your concerns or reply to other people’s messages anonymously with kindness. Alternatively, you can leave a physical message of kind words to yourself and other people.

Sometimes, all we need are a few kind words. Be kind to yourself and others. 

Biography

Ziba Scott has been making games as Popcannibal for ten years that explore the lines between fantasy and meaningful action. Some of his most notable games are Girls Like Robots, Elegy for a Dead World, Make Sail and, most recently, Kind Words. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife and turtle.

Kind Words was made in collaboration with artist Luigi Guatieri and composer Clark Aboud.

Could your microbiome change your mind and mood? 

Microbial Mood explores how we think about mental health through a speculative experiment, in particular the relationship between the effects of sound on bacterial growth in the human body. In the bacterial treatment room, two agar plates populated with microbiome samples ‘listen’ to different sounds, and another one listens to nothing (the control). Pick up the headphones, listen to the different music and observe the growth of the microbes. Does different music really change their growth?

This is a live experiment, speculating on recent research that suggests we may improve mental health by encouraging the growth of certain bacteria in our bodies combined with the gut-brain connection. Could sounds treat mood disorders by influencing the human microbiome?

The microorganisms in MENTAL: Colours of Wellbeing were chosen, cultivated and cared for by Associate Professor Dalton Tay Chor Yong and Jeremy Lim Hong Kit from Nanyang Technology University School of Material Science, Singapore. These microorganisms are commercially available and presented in an enclosed environment under the covers in sealed petri dishes.

Biography

Sophia Charuhas has a passion for biology and fine art and has recently immersed herself in the world of bioart. Taking an interest in the human microbiome and how it influences mood and behaviour, Sophia works with living organisms as the medium of her artwork. Most recently, she has been researching how sound frequencies may affect bacterial growth and if this may be used clinically. She has previously conducted research into the field of bioart, asking how bio artists could be shaping the future of biotechnology. Sophia has since graduated from Liverpool John Moores University, UK and now works as a medical writer.

Associate Professor Dalton Tay Chor Yong received his B. Eng (1st Class Honors) and Ph.D. from the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, in 2007 and 2012 respectively. In 2012, he was also awarded the Lee Kuan Yew Postdoctoral Fellowship to further pursue his academic aspirations. He currently holds an Associate Professorship with MSE, NTU. His research interests are highly multi-disciplinary and span over the fields of circular bioeconomy, waste materials valorisation, sustainable biomaterials, and environmental science and technology. Among the research activities, his lab aims to develop innovative nature-inspired solutions to reduce the environmental footprint of anthropogenic wastes. The study and use of environmentally sourced microbes to break-down waste materials is one of such examples. Through art, he hopes to explore the deeper meaning of science and make his research findings more engaging and accessible to the public.

Jeremy Lim Hong Kiat is a materials scientist with more than 3 years of R&D experience. With a Master of Engineering degree from NTU, he enjoys using his practical skill set to contribute to new technological advances in Singapore. His passion lies in the nexus between nanoscience, biotechnology, and sustainability, which he has been working tirelessly to explore. A keen advocate of giving back to the environment, he has been actively involved in the valorisation efforts of various types of food waste and garden waste. He is currently upcycling electronic waste plastics into a bio-hybrid composite, which could potentially help lower the carbon footprint of future urban infrastructure.

This work was originally developed in collaboration with Dr Glyn Hobbs, Dr Kathryn Smith, Mark Roughley and Dr Andrew Leach.

Who knows you best? The machine or you?

Your mirror image is not you. Your mirror image only bears a passing resemblance to you.

As you gaze at your reflection, the mirror perceives your emotional state, and in response it presents you with a machine-generated poem. The text gently fades onto the mirror’s surface, and is displayed for as long as you continue to gaze into your reflection.

Inspired by the Theory of Constructed emotion, Mirror Ritual explores emotion as emerging from within an interaction. Emotions don’t happen to you, but you actively construct them within a given context.

Rather than a prescriptive interface, as is common with emotion-detection technologies, Mirror Ritual allows for the human-machine co-construction of emotion. The work uses poetic language to offer new concepts with which to frame your current emotional state. Mirror Ritual presents a new kind of relationship with Artificial Intelligence. Not one based in habit, but a relationship imbued with meaning and intention. The mirror does not provide instant gratification, instead it offers a new ritual with technology, one that allows you to linger in time. The mirror can offer meaning, but it asks something of you first.

To begin the ritual, you must look your mirror image in the eyes.

Find out more about this work:
@posthumanrituals
@sensilab_monash

Biography

Nina Rajcic is an artist, researcher and developer with a background in particle physics, as well as industry experience in data science and engineering. She is currently doing her PhD looking into machine understandings of human emotion. Her work focuses on the critical role that language takes in the framing and reframing of emotional experiences and memories. With Mirror Ritual, she is experimenting with the development of a creative collaboration between humans and machines.

Nina is currently undertaking her PhD at SensiLab, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. She holds a Bachelor of Science and a Masters of Physics (Theoretical Particle Physics) from The University of Melbourne.

Have you eaten?

In Singapore, food is viewed as a unifying cultural thread. Asking someone if you have eaten is a way of showing you care – similar to asking how are you. In the domestic setting, food is inextricably associated with the kitchen.

It is often said that the heart of any home is the kitchen. Beyond utility, kitchens are a communal space; an area that facilitates conversations over meal preparation, the passing down of precious recipes and the sharing of quality time. A kitchen is a place where we can perch ourselves on the counter and relay our day to one another over the sounds and smells of cooking.

Model: Kitchen adapts the format of the kitchen showroom and digital renders, often utilised by furniture and interior design industries, and takes a step further into imagining the ideal kitchen, beyond design. Using the hollows of appliances, Model: Kitchen unpacks the various intimacies of food preparation, familial dynamics and care in the home, through digital scenes of the many daily motions of household care practiced in the kitchen.

Biography

Divaagar is a visual artist who works through installation, performance and digital media. His practice examines narratives; toying with attachments and proposing new models through the lenses of bodies, identities and environments.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (1st Class Honours) in Fine Arts from LASALLE College of the Arts in 2018 and has exhibited both locally and internationally since 2010. Solo exhibitions include: Between a rock and a hard place, as part of a residency in Untitled Space (Shanghai) and The Soul Lounge, soft/WALL/studs (Singapore). Other notable exhibitions include Time Passes, Singapore Art Museum (Singapore); State of Motion 2021: [Alternate / Opt] Realities, Marina One (Singapore) and Space Oddities, The Substation (Singapore). 

How does it feel to see someone you care about and love deeply living with mental illness?

Noise and Cloud and Us is an exploration of trauma, empathy and kinship, emerging out of personal experience caring for a loved one living with mental illness.

The images presented here reflect Shwe Wutt Hmon’s inner state, while looking after her sister Kyi Kyi Thar, who lives with schizophrenia. With the permission from Kyi, Shwe began to photograph Kyi in her daily life. The choice of black and white was a conscious reflection of Shwe’s mental state as she struggled to find colour in moments she perceived as gloomy. At the same moment Kyi, who is trained as a painter, was making very colourful paintings. Understanding that colours are very important to Kyi, Shwe asked her sister to paint over the black and white photographs in any way she wished.

This collaborative work resists capturing an easy picture of living with mental illness Rather, it engages with image-making as an empathic response and to reimagine a sense of recovery.

The colour photographs presented alongside are taken by Kyi from March 2020 to November 2021. 

Biography

Shwe Wutt Hmon (b.1986) is a Burmese photographer and artist, based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Shwe’s works focus on collective histories, familial ties, knots and threads of human relationship and exploring the inner psyche through intimate story telling about people and places close to her heart. She tells personal stories from which she connects and examines broader social aspects; vice versa she works on social documentaries reflecting and drawing from her own position within the issue. Shwe uses photography as her main medium and incorporates archives, videos, texts, poems, paintings and drawings of her own or collaborating with others.

How do you self-regulate your emotions?

This large tactile fabric tent-like sculpture invites you to touch and feel the different soft and approachable objects and discover how sensory play can support a sense of wellbeing. Portal is designed to be a relaxing and comfortable place, a respite space to combat anxiety and sensory overload. Through tactile play, discover what activates your senses and what relaxes you. It is a space that encourages you to engage and escape into the imaginary. Come in, play, escape and stay for as long as you want before continuing your journey.

This installation is informed by the lived experiences of Rawcus’ members who experience anxiety and sensory overload.

Biographies

Rawcus is a critically acclaimed ensemble of performers with and without disabilities, who create distinct performance work and deliver exceptional arts experiences. Rawcus devises new work that expresses the imaginative world of the Ensemble. Drawing on dance, theatre and visual art disciplines, their works are crafted with a precision that supports the performers but allows space for their inherent sense of anarchy. Rawcus’ work is sculptural, unexpected, beautiful, funny and tender.

Original Portal concept realisation and design by Rawcus, Jolyon James and Prue Stevenson.

Prue Stevenson is an artist and a member of Rawcus, who aims to celebrate and progress autistic culture for autistic people while creating experiences that are more broadly accessible to all. She uses repetitive and tactile processes to allow for experiences of sensory play and to create spaces for downtime.

Can we keep up with the latest technology? 

Remind Me Later is inspired by the option we are given, when notified that our smartphone or device has a new update, to set a reminder to install the update at a future point. The work explores the mounting pressure we are under to always keep up with the latest technology.

In this video, a three-dimensional model of an androgenous human figure continuously distorts and floats across the screen. Pink Noise, such as the ambient sounds of waves on the beach or wind rustling through trees, is said to promote better sleep and blends with the background music in the video. The random motion of the pink human figure accompanied by the soundtrack reflects our ever-changing relationship with technology.

What is your relationship with technology? Will technology be able to replace our need for social connection?

Biography

Tromarama is an art collective founded in 2006 by Febie Babyrose, Herbert Hans and Ruddy Hatumena. Engaging with the notion of hyperreality in the digital age, their projects explore the interrelationship between the virtual and the physical world. Their works often combine video, installation, computer programming and public participation depicting the influence of digital media on society’s perception of its surroundings. Tromarama live and work between Jakarta and Bandung, Indonesia.

 

Why is showing vulnerability such an issue?

Have you ever wondered what happens during a psychotherapy session? Scenes From Therapy is a visual representation of what goes on in YANGERMEISTER’s mind during therapy.

Creatures, sporting colourful hair pieces and powered by technology, surround two mirrored chairs, and depict the various complex emotions the artist has experienced during her therapy sessions: Breakthrough, Confusion, Static, Clarity and Exhaustion. This work opens the door onto a highly personal space, to gave a glimpse of what therapy looks like, from the inside.

On the opposite wall, a series titled Receipts from Therapy explores the stigma around the term “psychological counselling” by scripting new perspectives, literally, over the receipts from each therapy session. These receipts also reveal the harsh reality of the monetary cost involved in private psychological counselling. Through the act of writing on these receipts YANGERMEISTER takes on the responsibility of rebuilding her own mind.

Biography

YANGERMEISTER (Tan Yang Er) is a multi-disciplinary Singaporean artist who creates immersive, multi-sensory experiences. She draws influences from pop culture and is obsessed with exploring the human condition. Storytelling remains the crux of her works and each piece of art: picture, installation or set she builds, serves as a means of creating a deeper bond one human to another. In 2017, YANGERMEISTER won the Best Art Director of the Year at the international Mnet Asian Music Awards.

Yunora is the brainchild of creative technologist Akbar Yunus and is a Singapore-based social enterprise organisation specialising in creating unique human experiences by connecting the physical and digital worlds. Collaborating with academics, creators and clients, its mission is underlined by an obsession with tackling complex problems and developing solutions in a way that a computer, a human, or both can understand. As Yunora co-designs, co-invents and co-realises imagination with its collaborators, it aims to do things differently – not for the sake of being different – but to make the future better.

What is your self-care routine?

Caithlin O’Loghlen is not famous on social media. She has never hit the big-time for her self-care rituals. However, that did not stop her quest to become the most famous online wellness influencer. To pursue her goal, in February 2022, she spent two weeks living in a constructed ‘bedroom’ inside Science Gallery Melbourne, creating wellness-related content each day for YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Her progress was watched live in the gallery by visitors and streamed via Twitch to a global audience.

This video documents Caithlin’s stay, from what she was eating for her meals and her skincare routine to hanging out with a series of guests, including self-care enthusiasts and mental health experts. Take a mirror selfie, create your own content and upload onto the different social media platforms to embed your digital trace into the world of SELFCARE_4EVA_2001.

Biographies

Caithlin O’Loghlen – Performer/Co-Creator

Caithlin O’Loghlen is an award-winning actor, voiceover artist and self-proclaimed tech wizard. A graduate of the Flinders Drama Centre, she has worked in touring theatre, recorded radio plays and performed in a wide variety of commercials, short films and theatre shows. Her most recent credits include All the Things I Couldn’t Say and Hedda GablerGablerGabler.

Mary Angley – Co-Creator

Mary Angley is an emerging theatre-maker and a recent graduate from Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts’ Masters of Directing programme. Her most recent credits include Grief Lightning, Butterfly Kicks and Th e Triumph of Man. In 2019, she established Paper Mouth Theatre as a forum for creating experimental projects within a Queer, Feminist framework.

How can we express our feelings when there are no words to describe them?  

Circles are commonly used in art therapy to help process and express feelings on a deeper level. The notion of ‘drawing in a circle’ provides a visual way to manifest these thoughts and emotions.

In this work, the act of ‘scribbling’ within the circle is a representation of Yi Xuan’s contained state of mind. Where words fail, the process of scribbling is an means of confronting her inner chaos. At first glance, State of Mind evokes a sense of calm; however, on closer inspection it reveals a more violent, turbulent and complex nature. 

How do you express yourself? 

Biography

Lee Yi Xuan’s practice focuses on confronting overwhelming emotions that cannot be expressed through words. She recently graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Fine Art Practice from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), Singapore. Trained in both fine art and design, Yi Xuan is passionate about teaching and is currently pursuing her Masters in Art Therapy at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.

 

CONTENT WARNING: This installation includes themes of anxiety, depression, and isolation.

Do you use the Internet to escape your problems?

“We have all been awkward at different points in our lives. Sometimes that awkwardness gets in the way of connecting with other people or even feeling confident in ourselves.” For Wednesday Kim, socialising with people in the real world is scary; instead, she finds comfort and solace in virtual space.

This installation is an immersive mixture of her introverted mind, experiences with therapy, and addiction to the Internet. The collage of images, text, and sound, rooted in popular culture and internet language, is a visual representation of her hectic headspace – “sometimes it’s nervous, anxious, and humorous.”

Like Wednesday, do you feel more comfortable being online?>

Artist Statement and Biography

Artist Statement:

awkwardness in social life.
Relay online. Feels more real online.
Hey, I rather be online
The gap between social media and real life
No internet/No love
Cc: virtual life/Bcc: real life

Biography

Wednesday Kim is an interdisciplinary artist and a co-founder of De:Formal Online Gallery, an artist-run online platform dedicated to promoting critical conversations through contemporary art. Wednesday works with a mixture of analogue and digital media, including 3D animation, video, performance, installation, print and sculpture. Her work is informed by personal experiences and human psychology; she derives imagery from nightmares, intrusive thoughts and childhood trauma. She portrays the absurdity of our information-saturated contemporary life in a surrealist fashion through wordplay, Wikipedia, voyeurism and witticism

What if you could hold your thoughts in real life?

Combining personal experience, scientific knowledge and technological wizardry, Thoughtforms creates a three-dimensional memento from your mind. Take a seat, put on the headset and create your own unique “thought recording”. Let the EEG headset detect and record your thoughts, observations, dreams, feelings and memories in real-time. Your recorded “thought data” are interpreted through digital imaging and 3D printing into abstract forms you can hold in your hand. Thoughtforms continues a long tradition of artistic practice to materialise mental experiences by visualising them outside our heads. It also speculates on the role of technology in reshaping how we think.

Biographies

Dr Kellyann Geurts’ (b. 1968 d. 2022) work was informed by her experience as a patient, artist and researcher. Her practice explored the digital expression of ‘thoughts’ and how we relate to them in the context of our personal experiences. Part of the inspiration for this research was the uncomfortable and traumatic experience of medical testing around her neurological symptoms. Kellyann drew on neuroculture, cognitive science and medical imaging technology to gain greater clarity and depth of understanding of her personal experiences and issues as a way of reflecting on how identity is formed in relationship with technology.

Dr Indae Hwang is an interactive artist, designer, researcher and lecturer. Indae researches our relationship with emerging technologies through interactive art. He teaches User Experience and Interactive Design in the Department of Design at Monash University, Australia. 

This project was developed under the PhD supervision of Dr Mark Guglielmetti and in collaboration with SensiLab, Monash University, Australia.

What if you could turn a dial to instantly boost your mood?

Wheel is a collaboration between artist, Hiromi Tango and neuroscientist, Emma Burrows exploring the effects of exercise on our mood. Scientists have shown that exercise can boost brain plasticity, protect our mental health, and help us live longer. Yet, we make excuses, delay, and cancel our next workout.

How can we tap into this mood-medicine and what keeps us on track?

Biographies

Hiromi Tango has been creating her signature sculpture and textile-based art in Australia and around the world for many years. She is known for experimenting with vibrant colour, lighting and details that bring the invisible connections we have with nature, others and ourselves to life. Hiromi’s art is made with the intention to heal and draws from her continuous fascination with what makes us happy. These explorations span her solo artistic practice, community engagement projects, and collaborations with scientists and health professionals.

Dr Emma Burrows is a neuroscientist exploring how environments can impact our mental health and memory. Emma’s team studies mice living in playful and positive environments. Her team explores how these positive environments impact a mouse’s motivation, mood, brain growth and ability to learn and pay attention. She hopes that understanding some of the complex drivers of motivation and the way we interact with our world will pave the way for healthier and happier ways of living. If you participate in this project, you will be part of her first experiments with humans. She knows your motivations will be more complex than mice and is looking forward to seeing the results.

Dr Tilman Dingler is a computer scientist and researcher who builds technologies that peek into their users’ minds. Whether sleepy, alert, bored or annoyed what if computers picked up on our cognitive states and adapted to them? Tilman uses data from smartphones, wearables and novel sensors to model and then enhance our abilities to communicate, process information and learn more effectively.