sinestesia
the sinestesia installation
the blue project foundation, barcelona, 2016
the perception and wait
our perception of how time works is something science still hasn’t successfully resolved. even the concept of time itself is hard to understand. nobody perceives abstractions in the same way and we felt the need to talk about it. we used wait as the base point for this piece.
the space
a psychological experiment
the neuroscientist David Eagleman experimented with people bungee jumping the equivalent of a 15th floor. the participants estimated the time their fall had lasted; the result was that they perceived the fall to last three times longer than it actually was. some strong emotions produced in that kind of stressful situation can make us perceive a different flow of time.
the experience
the influence of color
color is known to change people’s perception of time. in order to verify this hypothesis, we took two colors, red and blue, the effects of which are meant to be psychologically opposed. the warmth and oppression of red versus the coldness and amplitude of blue.
in video
the final results
structure & operation
the foundation of the piece is a rectangular wooden box. the roof of the box hides a set of LED lights that change randomly between red and blue. when a person enters the space they find two buttons: start / stop. when they push start, it starts a time counter projected outside the box, and the light turns blue or red. then the person waits. when they feel they’ve been inside for two minutes they push the stop button and proceed to the exit to find the real time spent projected in front of them. once outside, the participants could write their time and how they felt about the experience on the wall of the box, to compare their results with those of other people.
the process
project credits
this project was possible thanks to the collaboration of the programmers Helena Bantulà and Guillem Galimany.
other information
sinestesia was displayed at the Blue Project Foundation from the 22nd to 29th of April on occasion of the Passe/Impasse exposition.