MFA DT Major Studio2 Sping 2013Mini-Thesis Paperhttp://kwakm402.wordpress.com/http://a.parsons.edu/~kooh125/min/Final/index.html

Anezka sebek

Minsung Kwak 05.17.2013

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Abstract

My Final project title is "Talk to your Heart"

Sometimes I feel depressed or sad, I really need time to mentally process and for

collecting my thought. Like this, for stressed out people and their emotional well-being, I thought

people need something to relax their mind. I started from this thought.

First of all, I wondered how people are dealing with stress now. After researching, I

could see that many people usually do unhealthy coping behaviors with stress. Such as eating,

drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes as a stress reliever.

A lot of researches have been done to address this issue. The way to relieve stress they

said is different with people do. They much more focus on the way to mind control for a

fundamental solution to relieve stress, and said that "Do something for your inner self!"

Especially, Researchers and psychologist strongly recommend that ‘Self-talk’ and

writing a diary are the most effectual ways. That's because Self-talk can make to pull out

negative thought from inner side. Sometimes, when we have an unspeakable problem, It would

help to be able to scream out those frustrations and feeling, to expel them from our mind.

‘Writing a journal’ is also helpful for cleaning up and reorganizing thoughts. In my case, I write

my journal every day, It's really helpful at the end of my day because I can realize What caused

your stress, How I felt, both physically and emotionally and How I acted in response. I thought

these two ways can include 5R key words functions. So, I decided to put two proper ways in my

project.

Based on these ways, I tried to make a Website prototype using Voice recognition. The

title is ‘Talk to your heart’. According to mood, people can change background colors.

I used the symbolism of color; Yellow - happy / Orange - frustrated / Blue - calm, rest / Green -

peaceful / Purple - depressed / Red - passionate / Black - anger, fear.

When starting talking, all the words the words you speak will appear on the browser and

using global command, all of rendered texts from my ‘talk’ can be extracted to show on the wall

and ceiling. By using this data, I want to make that It all will be saved on the folder of web site,

so whenever you want look back your story, you can feel how your mood was and what

happened to you through this like live diary.

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Introduction

My process began by asking myself a set of questions.

“What am I interested in, and what is my bias?”

During the process it became clear that my empathy for the emotional well-being of

others has precedence in my life choices and actions. My Faith is a large component of who I

am, and it gives me the strength to push past the hardships that I incur. Faith also allows me an

outlet to pray for those around me who are struggling with any type of situation that causes

them anguish. In this I saw my bias. While I cope with struggles by looking to the inside I see

the stark contrast in those who pacify their feelings with superficial goods. Though I do love a

designer bag, I do know that it will not help me sort out any trials and tribulations that I am

having.

Those realizations brought me to my second question: What do people need to be

able to address their emotional well-being? The answer came in the form of these

two words “Space” and “Empathy”. As a person who live in this era, I have first hand knowledge

that when I feel depressed or stressed that I want go somewhere to collect my thoughts and

need time to mentally process. I feel that others share my desire for a place to relax their minds.

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Research and Art/Design Questions

I hope to prove that by creating a virtual therapeutic space that one’s stress and anxiety

will be lessened. With this in mind my research was divided into three parts. What were my

thoughts on stress, what were the prevailing facts on the study of stress, and what technology

could I use to help formulate my research into a tangible solution.

For me, stress puts my mind in an ultimate obstacle course. There are pitfalls, walls to

climb, things to push through, while all the while trying to keep my physical and mental balance.

In the midst forging ahead over the obstacles I would look to others to see if I could learn from

their coping methods. Unfortunately, they could not be my coach alongside the obstacle route,

for they were avoiding the start of the race altogether. They did this by gorging their mouths

with food, drink, smoke, any illicit substance that they desired. There was a pronounced

dichotomy in our methods, and I wanted to have a solution for all of us. It is often an elusive

task to organize one’s thoughts during times of stress. Exhaustion, depression, and fear of the

answer seem to muddle the path to clarity. Avoidance can be the best coping mechanism

during certain times, but in the end the stress will catch up and tear down the stability. This

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breakdown in mental health has tangible consequences, and I wanted to find a solution in how

to organize and in how to help facilitate the mental process, before me or my friends were too

far gone.

In 2010 The American Psychological Association published a poignant article in regards

to their findings in their 2010 Stress in America survey. Among the claims were that stress

could even go so far as to be warranted as a public health crisis. They also cite in their findings

that Americans are caught in a “vicious cycle where they manage stress in unhealthy ways, and

lack of willpower and time constraints impeded their ability to make lifestyle and behavioral

changes...Stress impedes physical and emotional health and contributes to some of the leading

causes of death in this country.”

Prior to formulating a technical solution I researched what current stress management

methods were being utilized. Mind control and “doing something for your inner-self,” were the

focus of many of these stress reduction methods. After complying more research I created a

venn diagram based on the suggested solutions. The venn diagram was split into Right Brain,

Left Brain, and the overlapping of the two. In the right brain section I listed all the right brain

activities that researchers recommended, which were to meditate, think positively, write a

journal, a daily record, positive self-talk, talk to someone about your problems. The methods

that focused on the left side of the brain were only expedient solutions. Yet there were

overlapping methods that used parts of the right and left brain. Based on the research, and this

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venn diagram, mind control is the necessary function in stress relief. This is prominent theory

and is supported by the 5R method. 5R is the 5R words that are used to relieve stress and

control the mind. Reorganize, Rethink, Reduce, Relax and Release.

5R words

Reorganize: Reorganization in one physical and mental space elicits psychological stability.

Rethink: The emotional and mental baggage that is carried from past experiences impedes on

one’s future welfare. The goal is to rethink over those events in order to not let it lead the way in

future ones.

Reduce: Stress can be due to the sheer volume of things one is involved in. Avoid being

overwhelmed by reducing activities that do not bring pleasure.

Relax: Practicing clinically proven relaxation techniques, such as deep breathing or systematic

muscle relaxation, for about 20 minutes a day can help tremendously. While you won’t always

have the time to devote to these techniques on a daily basis, it is important to make relaxation a

priority.

Release: Physical activity, whether in mild, moderate, or vigorous forms helps to release the

tension associated with stress.

My technical solution would need to embody these 5R’s for the desired results of stress

management and reduction.

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Precedents

This is one of my precedents by ‘SoulPancake’. It is a new media company that seeks to

provide platforms to explore "big think" topics such as spirituality, creativity, religion, arts, and

philosophy. They have a bunch of this kind of new media works. A project ‘Zen Den’ is a special

place for stress-out people. They worked with very similar concept with mine, but different thing

is that they did not use high-technology. Even though there is no high-technology, this project

can give mental and emotional support to people in need. Nowadays, areas of art, design and

technology are working all together in human emotion.

These precedents brought me to these questions: ‘How does my project work better

than this with technology and art? ’ and I wondered whether technology will be able to help the

emotion and mind control directly rather than the practical convenience and comfort of people,

and whether Technology will be able to move the inner world of people. If possible, I think

Technology can be used as a tool of mind control and healing.

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Target Audience

Stress does not have an age limit, so neither should my audience. Yet at first I would

like for my target audience to be Millennials who live in the city. Millennials are currently at the

precipice of two worlds, the ending of their higher education, and the beginning of their career

climb. Delegating one’s time and energy to their necessary scholarly pursuits is compounded

with their reality of needing to sustain themselves in a profession. The constant bombardment

of stress has muddled their happiness, and the yearning they once had for life is an elusive

memory. Exhaustion is in their every movement and their relationships, health, and mental

state suffer. The iterations and the user experience is reviewed in my prototyping.

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Prototyping Process

My first prototype was the space incorporated with the use of Technology. I wanted to

make a place for communicating and communing with "Emotional Technology" as an interactive

installation. Of course, technology cannot have emotion, but I wanted to make the space alive.

For making this prototype, I wanted to use the sensor that can read human brainwave. By using

sensor, I thought I can get different brainwave according to people’s condition and emotion.

After researching, I found some examples of the brainwave machine used for reading people's

emotion but that is only used for showing the stage of human feelings with making some sound

or visual graphics for meditation. Also I found some games controlled by movement of

brainwave for entertainment. But my purpose is different with that way. I do not want to show

the emotion as it is but want to make responding to people’s emotion. For example, If I feel

depressed, the space will make some reaction to make my feeling better with making light, color,

sound, air, mood or atmosphere to heal and console my mind, to make my feeling relaxed after

reading my emotion. The point is that the movement of technology will mimic the movement of

nature and living things. So, It is like synesthetic and multi-sensory space and mind healing

place at the same time. With spatial color psychology theory (color psychology, color therapy),

I can suggests that through the utilization of colors and space, various psychological effects

such as calmness, alertness, and even fear can be accomplished. It seems like the space

understand person's feeling. I thought this is kind of a communion among human, technology

that resembles the nature. That’s why I say this is communication with "Emotional Technology".

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But the problem is that human emotion is hard to analyze because it depends on each of

their personality and their situation. So it is difficult to affect each person’s mind only using light,

color or atmosphere with technology due to there are many differences with the each person

who accept feelings from the space.

So I need to find wanted to the most effective ways to manage stress to find a solution in

how to help facilitate the mental process. After looking at the some effective ways to reduce

stress, I chose these two ways based on research. Especially, Researchers and psychologist

strongly recommend that ‘Self-talk’ and writing a diary are the most effectual ways. That's

because Self-talk can make to pull out negative thought from inner side. Sometimes, when we

have an unspeakable problem, It would help to be able to scream out those frustrations and

feeling, to expel them from our mind.

‘Writing a journal’ is also helpful for cleaning up and reorganizing thoughts. In my case, I

write my journal every day, It's really helpful at the end of my day because I can realize What

caused your stress, How I felt, both physically and emotionally and How I acted in response. I

thought these two ways can include 5R key words functions. So, I decided to put two proper

ways in my project.

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After this process, I moved on to the second prototype iteration. I focused on self-

talking and healing on this time. During brainstorming, I wanted to visualize my frustrated,

depressed, or stressed thoughts on the stage. Therefore I could organize my mind with this

installation. I created two functions. The first one is reorganizing my mind and thoughts during

Self-talking, and then writing a journal. The second function is erasing and forgetting burdened

thoughts that I expressed. People have bad memories that they want to erase. If they try not to

get over their bad memories, they will continue to get more frustration which is the cause of

depression, emotional disturbances and so on.

These are my illustration for the stage. I lay down and relax physically and emotionally.

"I'm depressed today because…." I try to write diary using my voice and this can be my self- talk

at the same time. At that time, the space react about my talking with color which makes me feel

better. When I speak strong and loud or soft and slow according to emotion, lighting colors and

size of sentences will be changed. It seems as the space are hearing what I'm talking. While I

talk the unspeakable events, stress is released and the sentences I told are recorded on all

walls and ceilings. After finishing talking in the space, I can see what I told throw the whole wall.

When I read back my story, I can reorganize my thought. The next step is erasing burdened

thoughts I expressed. If you feel better and ready to let your records go to waste, then push the

erase button before you leave the space. Everything is erased and you can feel refresh.

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This is not actually cleared from my memory but visually, I think I can feel refresh, and

also I can make a promise to myself that I will erase my stress and bad feelings by seeing the

clean walls.

And this is a video clip I made for this prototype.

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With this second idea, for the technical part, I had questions about my projects. While I

explored technologies being used in different fields, I found that speech recognition best suited

for my purpose. For the first time, I tried to do test for writing a journal using my voice using

voice to text converter. And I added emotions I made to express my feeling and also put small

screen at the left low part to record my face expression. When I said same sentences using

self-talk in English and Korean, my voice is converted to text quite accurately at that time. So, I

thought I can use this technology with projectors for the space.

In this progress, as you can see, at first, my intentions were to make a physical space

were one could go to help relieve stress and to reorganize their thoughts. The more I

contemplated the idea of a real space I came to the realization that it would in fact be more

restrictive than helpful. So in the third prototype iteration, I changed my idea from making

space to making device. Because stress does not have concrete boundaries, so neither should

my remedy, I needed my project to be able to be used anywhere, any space and anytime.

Among those many technologies, I decided to work based on web coding (Html, CSS,

Javascript, Ajax, MongoDB). There are several possible ways for functions I want to make. But,

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why I want to make it as a Website is that, as I mentioned, I wanted to make tool accessible for

people all over the world. When people open the website, they can use this project anywhere.

Also, there is another possibility. If I make this using web coding, I can develop this from

web to app. Upon researching my options I became informed on the projector for the iPhone.

This small attachment, which is thought to become a prevalent accessory, would enable my

project to come into fruition. If I could make my project applicable to the requirements of the

projector it would allow for an infinite amount of users to utilize this technology. I need to

explain why I want to project the visual Image onto the wall and ceilings again. In a simplistic

explanation, I had to consider about was how we process the detected words with speech

recognition in order to "expel" the stress and "reorganize" thought. I thought real-time visual

feedback would help you feel like you actually expelled it. Also, it can support you to be

objective. By the real-time feedback, you can make your thoughts clear. If you think a certain

problem over and over again, you will realize that the matter you are thinking now is what you

already gave a thought. In addition, by adding some visual effects on the projection, it can

appeal more effectively with big scene. In the future, If the visual effects and projection

technique be more stronger than now, we can feel like we are in the different space.

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Based on these ideas, I tried to make a Website prototype using Voice recognition. The

title is ‘Talk to your heart’. According to mood, people can change background colors.

I used the symbolism of color; Yellow - happy / Orange - frustrated / Blue - calm, rest / Green -

peaceful / Purple - depressed / Red - passionate / Black - anger, fear.

When starting talking, all the words the words you speak will appear on the browser and

using global command, all of rendered texts from my ‘talk’ can be extracted to show on the wall

and ceiling. By using this data, I want to make that It all will be saved on the folder of web site,

so whenever you want look back your story, you can feel how your mood was and what

happened to you through this like live diary.

As I mentioned before, at the first time i made my first voice diary, it worked perfectly

with my talking. But now, I found a problem with this. Sometimes, it converts my voice to text

very oddly depending on my pronunciation. So, when I see this situation on the screen, It is not

help to relieve stress, rather even I feel so much depressed because of my pronunciation. I think

you understand I’m trying to be sarcastic. It is definitely helpful to make people laugh because it

it quite hilarious. Therefore, I got another idea for further iteration; I would like to make this site

for people to laugh while they are expressing their negative emotion. Also, on my original

purpose, I will try to change typeface so that it adapts to your mood as you speaking. Also,

computer detects higher stress level, and when you speak a certain word, it will use a more

relaxing font.

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Conclusion

The third iteration is the fruition of my research and prototypes. Even though Speech

recognition systems have yet to be perfected, many of tech industry mentioned the infinite

potential of Voice Recognition. So, I wanted to have experience and tried to work with this

system. Through the perfection of projection methods and voice recognition software, the

intended user will be able to seek solace and have the necessary tools for stress maintenance

only a finger tap away. In order to gain the momentum needed in marketing the final project it

would be beneficial for it to be viewed at Trade Shows and Tech Conferences, but in the end I

want this technology that can have such a profound positive impact on one’s personal mental

health, to be integrated into the daily lives of many.

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References

1. Stress Less, Live More:

How Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Can Help You Live a Busy Yet Balanced Life.

/ By Richard Blonna, Ed.D. (author)

2. American Psychological Association / / Posted on Novermeber 9, 2010, Survey Raises concern about Health Impact of Stress on Children and Families, http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2010/11/stress-in-america.aspx

3. NASDAQ / The Future of Computers: Voice Recognition / Posted on December 02, 2012, by Benzinga http://www.nasdaq.com/article/the-future-of-computers-voice-recognition-cm194835#ixzz2TYtsCFsv

4. USA TODAY / The State of stress in America / Posted on January 30, 2013, by Sharon Jayson http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/06/stress-psychology-millennials-

depression/1878295/

5. Help guide / Stress management / Posted on March 2013, by Melinda Smith, M.A. and Robert Segal, M.A. http://www.helpguide.org/mental/stress_management_relief_coping.htm

6. How Colors Affect Feelings / By Rosemary Sadez Friedmann http://www.hgtv.com/decorating/how-colors-affect-feelings/index.html

7. Symbolism colors / Posted on September 07, 2001 http://www.three-musketeers.net/mike/colors.html