Experimental Design
Giorgiana Theiler
Giorgiana Theiler is a South African, Italian artist currently living and raised in Zurich Switzerland. She has a BA in Communication Design with a pathway in Photography. Her interests started focusing on mental health and well-being and how art has the capability of transforming, healing and strengthening the world around us.
While working she ask's herself how can she enhance personal well-being through digital technology and lately during this pandemic how can her work have an experience without having to touch everything around them and have more of a perosnal experience. She also has interst in Abstract Expressionism and her influences come from Gerard Richter, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.
During the lockdown with Coronavirus Giorgiana started exploring her present living circumstances and how she manages her own well-being. One way she has been doing that is through hypnotherapy. Normally hypnotherapy would be face to face but she had been doing it through Zoom. Once finished with the sessions she had recreated her own rooms digitally through a website called ‘livingspaces’ this was a way of bringing the real to the digital and being able to showcase it to the audience. While recreating the rooms where she had experienced hypnotherapy during lockdown the main theory that she draw's on is the theory of emotional geography which has its roots in how do spatial dynamics affect healing encounters.
Emotional geography is a term coined by Bondi (2007) to describe ‘the spatial and contextual factors that affect emotional states’. Emotional geography features ‘a common concern with the spatiality and temporality of emotions, with the way they coalesce around and within certain places’ (J. Davidson et al. 2007). I have used this theory to explore therapeutic places and spaces with particular attention to hypnotherapy rooms.
Pour et al. (2013) shows how rules and convention based approaches to the interior architecture of healing spaces, including hospitals and other clinical settings, does not go far enough towards the goal of improving health outcomes. They argue for an enhanced and designedly consideration of patient needs in spatial organisation and arrangement. Jordan and Marshall (2010) state that ‘the more traditional room is set up, controlled and ‘owned’ by the therapist. The therapist’s room can be seen to be a space imbued with emotional geography and being in this space forms a sense of being cut off from the real world. Schweitzer et al. (2004) show how ‘giving patients an opportunity to be able to personalise their environment by bringing comfortable items from home may give patients a sense of control and familiarity.’
In this project, which responds directly to the current virus lockdown conditions, she has explored emotional geography to question the design of hypnotherapy spaces and pose the following questions.
Why do digital treatment spaces look like one to one copies of real spaces?
Why are they not more contested?
Participant 1
Participant 2
Participant 3
Participant 4
Participant 5
This project was conducted with people that are familiar with hypnotherapists the research has the potential to inform her about the participants. This project can come to life on an online platform, as well as in the welcome collection or the science gallery.
Through her theoretical research, she found that the participants were influenced by the rooms in which their therapy sessions were held in. She then collaborated with 5 different participants and asked them to create their own treatment room. She equipped her 5 participants with the same design tools that she recreated her own rooms with. She then gave them the chance to design their own treatment space for themselves. After them having done this, it revealed the nature of the possible outcomes were constrained by the tools they were given using ‘livingspaces’.
Medium:
Online website created
Participant 1 — Okay. So my ideal hypnosis experience would be, uh, starting on top of a mountain, either in Switzerland, but in summer and a warm place like the Alps in summer or, uh, uh, you know, Nepal or somewhere in Asia, but in summer, warm starting off at the top of the mountain and then sort of slowly floating down. And controlling the speed of, of that while hearing, say the hypnotherapist, just like floating down from a, from a mountain down to like over Lake hovering over a Lake, you know, as a final destination as the Lake.
Participant 2 — So, thinking of my perfect dream, or I would look like, but probably with no aliens or something like that. Um, so I would say when I would step into this room, I would love to be in a place which would be super quiet. And you have birds flying around and beautiful green cut grass, which you can see. Actually when you step into the door, you will have a view over the ocean and the land and the landscape, and it will be a place of peace. And, um, there was just like a tree, a place where you can lay on a very comfy chair or a sofa or something like that. Everything would be in like this, just natural tones of colors or Brown, gray, green, whatever. And uh, yeah, how it's how it's movie called, uh, um, the newest Harry Potter, um, where you actually step into this small thing and you're like, in a completely different world. And I imagined like something like that.
Participant 3 — I think it would be nice for the hypnosis room to be in the air. Um, anti-gravity like floating zen, garden vibes, um, like plants of Bonsai floating around me so I can just stare at them and feel peaceful while I might be sitting on something fluffy. Um, like a King size bed, Like fluffy, if that makes sense.
Participant 4 — So for my hypnosis room, I would love to like be in like a glass, like house and, but this glass house, like around surrounding it is like beautiful forest and a beautiful waterfall. And I'm like. Lots of light and like, I feel as if I'm outside and then like big white cultures that I can like lie on and they're super comfortable. It's like being on a marshmallow and then like lots of beautiful flowers like surrounding me, like lots of like blossom trees and just trees with back, lots of color. And, um. Yeah. What else? Yeah. I just think like really calming colors, like clean colors, like nothing and like very, just like relaxing and quiet and like good singing. I'm in the forest and I'm super bright, like not a dark forest, but like a super bright forest and I'm, yeah.
Participant 5 — Okay. So my hypnosis room, my dream hypnosis room, if I could have anything, would be, Uhm, sitting right next to a Lake on the yoga mat, maybe like on a decking. Um, really quiet. No one around. Um, blue skies, lovely weather, just, yeah. Nature, the Lake. and Relaxation.
Medium:
Online website created
Participant 2
Participant 3
Further research would be in the direction of VR. The next step would be to translate the final image into VR and inducing hypnotherapy in these personalised rendered environments. Then conduct a hypnosis session to then be able to do some qualitative studies to see how, when you create your own hypnosis environment how it will effect the person.