emaces-christin staubo

We as designers are constantly trying to create systems that changes peoples behavior. I asked myself where can I learn more and found that religious movements are really successful at this. So this whole year I exploring the techniques of cults and also the increase in new religious movements  and what people are searching for in their life that  drives peoples incentives  to choose to live in cults.

Is a piece that takes the participants on a journey of rites of passages, design thinking and loneliness. inspired by all the loneliness that individualism has created, I wanted the users to be more aware of each others loneliness , as I believe that we are now seeking more and more connection to each-other and greater meanings of living. I see this as a trend that has lead to social networking , increase in small religious groups where there is a belief in the individual as a part of the group and a decrease in belief in traditional religions because there is no space for the individual there.

Section1:
-Pick one bead that means something to you
-Pin it to you
-Find a stranger with a different color bead
-Go to Section 2

Section 2:
-Sit down with a stranger
-Pick a card each
-Do step 1 one at a time
-Switch roles
-Do step 2 at the same time
-Describe what you made on a tag and attach it to your piece
-Take your piece with you to Section 3

Section3:
-Place your piece on the shelf with matching color as your bead
-There are only space for 4 pieces on each shelf
-Use the trash bin to make space for your piece

Madame Blavatsky lived around the 1850's, it was a time where normal people had a hard time to  was hard to distinguish super natural powers from the new technology and industrial inventions. This disillusion led to an increase in spiritual societies, where magic tricks as we call it today , was the way to talk to the spirits.
Madame was born in Russia and her history is unclear, but she lived in USA,Egypt, Europe and India . All places she was accused of fraud and therefor was "forced " to find a new market for her spirituality. The worst hit did she get in India, where she founded the Theosophical Society in Adyar ,In 1884 Hodgson wrote a 200-page report, in which Blavastky was described as one of the most gifted , ingenious and interesting impostors in history.
Her society is still in flourishing all over the world mainly in USA and India.

I created a spiritual room , where  letters are "magically" moving around the room , the light is low and perfect for tricks, the smell of incense is strong and the photo of Madame is illuminating blue to represent her piercing blue eyes.

What I want to ask with this installation is what are we really believing in and how some people selectively ignore the truth of spiritual leaders, which are using the oldest tricks in the books, to create a market place for their services.

This year I am exploring how and why  people form in cults and new religious movements. A lot of the movements are questioning the society we are living in and wants to change people's perception of the world. But is this always that smart? Reading Ibsens" Vildanden" inspired me to question if always questioning and trying to move other peoples perception is a good thing , even though they are living on a lie. More harm can be done that good sometimes.
The First aid kit explains how to make a balloon and draw your illusions on the balloon , and then you as the "savior" is going to burst that person's bubble by throwing a dart at the balloon. of course you might also hit the person and so hurt the person unnecessary , are you still willing to burst someones bubble????????? How far do you dear to go?????

The video is shot when I presented the first aid kit to my classmates, they were very eager, but grabbed an icebox lid to protect the person with the ballon on its head.  That was not the purpose of the installation, since it takes away the tension , that should force the person that throws the dart to question what he is doing instead of fooling the game......
What would you do???

In a world were everyone is fighting for getting their opinion out, only the strongest and most powerful voices get theirs out. The problem with  this is that important information , especially "Native" knowledge about the nature disappears or looses validty. But as we saw in the 2004 Tsunami, this knowledge should not be forgotten. There is a rumour that says the local gypsies had a saying that told them to seek refuge on the hills when the water disappered.  We have all seen photos of people playing on the shore in the amusement that the sea has disappeared. And when we understand how it dangerous that was, we see that we need this old knowledge to be part of our world today.

The system of Forgotten Things is a system that opens up for everyone to be able to get their opinion out to random people in random places. It works by sending your opinion to a Compassion Board, which highest goal is that they are driven by Love. They then place these opinion in random places all over our society and in all different forms.

When the receiver gets one of these opinions, they should try to understand it , but not necessary accept it. Since opinions and views are usually confined to your network , this way opinions and views of all kind can be spread anywhere. The goal is not for the receiver to accept everything , but for the receiver to understand that there is no right or wrong opinions and can there for create a better understanding of cases from a broader set of views.

The object from this world is an incident that happened in fine restaurant in San Fransisco two days ago, when the bottle of wine was poured a string of letters poured out , saying "Remember the Knowledge of the Natives". it created a big fuzz and the Newspaper wrote a long article about the the day after. Focusing on how the Native knowledge is disappearing as we believe that Technology is all that can save us.

Below you can see the exhibition as well as me testing out the different tools the Compassion Board is using.