Experiment 003/2009: The colour of curiosity

Tractie foto's 27 okt 014Just a short post to talk about a next step in experiment 003/2009.  I added a new element, something that would make traces, that would show the traces of the people that have interacted with this environment before.

I made a cone of candle-wax that I put on a small pedestall, I taped an electric paint remover to a post and made the paint remover voice-controlled. So that,  if you talk or blow into the microphone, the blower starts and melts the wax. This way, what you do leaves a trace for the next person to see and add his/her bit to.

I wasn’t totally pleased with the setup. It is a prototype, looks aren’t important at this stage, so the crummy setup doesn’t bother me. It is the fact that you blow but don’t get to feel a response, you only see it. The fact that your breath gets multiplied – after all, no one of us can melt wax with our own breath – wasn’t as exiting as I thought it would be. Maybe a more spectacular setup would help, using red wax for instance, with its overtones of blood. Maybe a really huge mound of wax. Anyway, to be continued.

I also tried out how the setup works when the voice is translated into vibrations. This certainly has possibilities: you step up a little onto al small platform over which a microphone is hung from the ceiling. When you talk into the microphone, the platform vibrates & you feel this through your feet. The feeling is actually rather neat, and surprising too, even the ears feel the hum.  Hard to explain this thing, you have to really feel it. If it’s hard to explain, does that mean that I am getting close?

Funny thing is: Adults always ask ‘What is this thing for?’ Kids just go on the platform and play around – the more kids, the more fun. Reminds me of an experiment Peter Cochrane describes (108 Tips for Time Travellers, page 16): “In a recent experiment I laid out 10 top-end computers with CD capability and observed 200 senior managers and how they interacted with them. The majority just looked on and only a few plucked up courage to sit down and play. But to a man and woman they all reacted in the same way. They sat down, and asked, ‘What do I do?’. Interestingly, the same experiment with 5-year-old children did not invoke the same response. None of the children would just watch; they all wanted hands-on experience, and none asked, ‘What do I do?’. They just did.”

Need to think about a colour for the platform. What colour is the colour of curiosity? Checked this on Wiki but – very unusual – it gives no answer. Took me a while, but finally found a site that gives a colour for ‘curiosity’ – and one that I sort of instinctively understand. Cannot be red (violence), cannot be yellow (envy), cannot be blue (calm), cannot be green (environmental), cannot be purple (the colour of cardinals) but can be violet (spirituality = curiosity, open-mindedness?)

Violet/ paars
Colour of curiosity, spirituality and creative forces. Helps the mind to become flexible and helps when setting up a partnership. Purple stones are: amethist, purple fluorite.

This gives direction, but there are still a lot of shades of violet.  So: to be continued.

Untitled-2 copy