Project 3: Social-Ecological Space and Materiality – Performative Object
Theodore Richards
Lost Through the Eyes, 12/19/2015
1.5ft x 1.5ft x 1ft
Fabric, Wire, Cardboard Virtual Reality Headset, iPhone, Thread, String
Site: Double Payphone Between 17th St & 18th St on 5th Ave.
12/19/2015 – 1:15-1:45PM
Pay phones are ignored, unwanted, and unused. These factors have caused depression and loneliness in the pay phone. Therefore, in order to empathize with the pay phone, I have created a mask that isolates me from the rest of the world and, through virtual reality, allows me to see the world from the pay phone’s perspective: a dark, rainy, and lonely version of what is actually occurring. However, from the outside, the viewer will not be able to tell what’s wrong with me or what I am doing. I will just seem odd. I performed by guiding myself around the payphone in an attempt to protect it, using only touch and my previous knowledge of the space. I also inserted money into the payphone in an attempt to use it: the connection it is seeking.
This video is a brief compilation of the performance by myself and also Jo Shin, who was willing to also try and empathize with the pay phone.
Below is a screenshot of what the scene inside the virtual reality headset looked like.
I purposefully made the object to seem mysterious and nondescript. I wanted people to not be sure what it was because depression is often noticed but not fully recognized. However, I still wanted it to serve a clear function once on, which I believe I accomplished. I was a little nervous about performing in public because I wasn’t sure how people would react or how I would react to their reactions. But there was no one who actually stopped to say anything. And because I couldn’t see people looking at me, there was almost no interaction from my side, except when someone walked close to me and I could feel their presence.
Like I mentioned, no one actually stopped to question what I was doing. Only about half of the people looked at me for any extended amount of time, and only a handful slowed down to look. I didn’t expect people to react this way. I though some people would ask what we were doing. But the fact that they didn’t furthers the metaphor of depression and how people notice something is wrong but don’t spend enough time to understand it.
I wouldn’t change how I made or performed the object because I think the outcome fit perfectly with my concept, and the payphone got used.
