Minutes of the (Third) Meeting

Minutes of the (Third) Meeting

Date: August 13, 2009
Time: 2:25 pm to 3:15 pm

Faculty members present: Kripa, Raghu

• How can you develop an obsession to your advantage?
• How will you limit the accessibility of the final product?
• You could use yourself as an example and tell the others about how you are living with it and how you are also one of them leading a normal life. This will be like a reassurance for them and it will also make them feel like they are not the only ones. It could be just a matter of fact saying that this is how you live. But it will have to be expressive and empathising; and not textual and sympathising.
• What do obsessed people do to calm themselves down (some kind of surface or material that makes them relax)? What makes them feel good?
• Don’t suggest a medicine or cure.
• Look for a pattern from your interviews and meeting with obsessed people. Do the obsessions come up because of the upbringing of the person (gets cultivated through childhood like the way compassion is according to Nigel Spivey) or is it hereditary? Does it come through genes?
• You could also collect reactions of normal people on the experiments you conduct for obsessed people.
• Define the target audience. People like you who have the same degree of obsession or lesser, who are obsessed but know that they can control it and people who are obsessed but do not want to accept it.
• Which form will be most suitable for such people?
• Reference: Triumph of the Will (Movie) by Leni Riefenstahl – obsession with order and geometry in the army.

Note: The experiences of the patient I met haven’t affected me. Instead they have made me understand how important it is for me to do this project because only when one has been through it and come out of it can he/she tell the others that it is not so bad. This is why I am doing this project. Because obsessed people can trust in me and I can build up an individual relationship with them as a human being and reach out to a thousand others like me as a visual artist.

To do:

• You must keep meeting obsessed people: different age groups and different degrees. Get more case studies.
• Work on the form along with the research. Think of what is most suitable in communicating what needs to be said.
• Think of more experiments and how they can add to the final form.