Final pop up map
In my final piece for this project, I decided to build a small popup map of Washington Square Park according to the different textures and mood they create. Our research question, derived from our first day of group visit, is to investigate on how different textures and sense of touch can affect the mood of a person. We came up with this idea because when we were walking in the park, we realised that every time we were in a different position we have different feelings. We then tried to touch different things and described how they felt like and what kind of feeling it reminded us of.
In my map, I mainly used colour and height of each texture as an indication of different mood and how intense they were. I gave the texture discovered in the park a hint of certain colours to represent the mood it gave me when I walked around the park: Red means irritation and annoyance; yellow is happiness and excitement; green represents tranquility and peacefulness; purple stands for boredom; and last but not least, brown for reminiscing and melancholic. I chose these colours as I think they can represent the mood in a clearer way. There are different height of textures on the map, this represents the intenseness of each mood, as at some point moods may be overlapping despite it is the same texture. I tried to cut out the textures in a shape that matches the ones in the map to create a popup effect. There are also extra textures such as water from the water fountain, the benches, the arch and the dogs. I made them into cut outs to give the map more varieties.
In the map, a slight pattern can be seen, from annoyance to excitement, then to calmness, boredom and finally reminiscing. This is because when I first arrived at the park, it was very sunny, everything i touched was hot and felt offensive, the rough wood bench and boiling water. I then walk into the shades and it immediately felt much better. Benches were smooth and cool, grasses were damp and the air surrounding was lukewarm, accompanied by the breeze. I felt happy and excited to continue the journey. As I walked more on the shaded path, a sense of tranquility strikes me — everything was so peaceful. Trees and rocks sits still, stable and strong, they felt cool and seems very assuring. Yet something as repetitive as this gets boring sooner or later, when I walk along the other side of the park I started feeling bored, everything I see and everything I touch seems to be less interesting. Towards the end, it almost felt a bit melancholic to walk the path that leads to the exit of the park, I start to think of past memories as I touch the fence, the trees, the grass… it all gives me a taste of past memories.
Of course, this couldn’t have happened without the help of my group members. I visited the park again on another day to collect more data with my other group members. We blindfolded each other so that we can focus on only the sense of touch, this made the emotion felt when touching certain things even stronger. This was truly a fun and inspiring project to me, as I’ve always thought emotions are rarely affected by sensations, but cognition.
