The Encounter
The team of ‘The Encounter’ collaborated with respondents of a sheltered workshop. Their Probes were unfinished cartoons of everyday situations; a feelings clock; a map to visualize their workplace and an assignment to describe their ideal job. Although these Probes were more exploratory, the team explicitly started analysing returns to find practical design solutions to be used in the sheltered workshop. During the analyses however students felt this wasn’t a suitable approach for exploring new possibilities.
The team chose a particular experience they had with the respondents as a starting point for their project. They translated their own fears and lack of knowledge about psychiatry and schizophrenia into an interactive video installation that tells the story of their first encounter with the respondents. In contrast to their uncertainty and concerns about the encounter the team met a group of relaxed respondents that appreciated humor. The public has to approach it to trigger more content and thereby experience litteraly the difficult path of their encounter.
A project by Simon Bollen, Tine Deckers, Stefan Habets, David Maesen, Chris Muller, Danilo Pilotto, Marcel van Spijk
