BELONG HERE
Research & StrategyFashion Institute of Technology | NYC | 2019
Client:
Airbnb Experiences
Master Thesis Paper
Master Thesis Paper
Thesis Statement
New York City (NYC.) is a highly stimulating environment challenged by light pollution, constant noise, long commuting hours and high living costs. Research shows that the exposure to NYC, both permanent and temporary, can be fatal. In response to urban stress, people subconsciously shut down and isolate themselves.
Mindfulness, the practice of controlling one’s own attention through the attitude of curiosity, openness, and acceptance, can offer transformative moments and enable stressed New Yorkers to improve their everyday life. My research will focus on specific drama mechanisms, such as voice projection, thought tracking, tableaux vivant, role play, and object theater that create opportunities to practice urban mindfulness in NYC.
New York City (NYC.) is a highly stimulating environment challenged by light pollution, constant noise, long commuting hours and high living costs. Research shows that the exposure to NYC, both permanent and temporary, can be fatal. In response to urban stress, people subconsciously shut down and isolate themselves.
Mindfulness, the practice of controlling one’s own attention through the attitude of curiosity, openness, and acceptance, can offer transformative moments and enable stressed New Yorkers to improve their everyday life. My research will focus on specific drama mechanisms, such as voice projection, thought tracking, tableaux vivant, role play, and object theater that create opportunities to practice urban mindfulness in NYC.
Role
Research, Strategy, Prototype, Formative Evaluation
Project Status
Academic Paper
Research, Strategy, Prototype, Formative Evaluation
Project Status
Academic Paper
New York offers an intense mode of life, demanding from its residents constant alertness, from competitive professional environments to the lack of personal space in a subway car. The city encourages them to exercise a consistent and uninterrupted daily sensorial subconscious multitasking, as they are alwayson the lookout. As Georg Simmel further explains, in order to survive and deal with the environmental overstimulation, metropolitan people isolate themselves. The constant and long exposure to urban stimuli agitates the nerves of metropolitan people, who, after a while, are unable to react further and instead develop a “blasé” attitude. Simmel further states, “An incapacity thus emerges to react to new sensations with the appropriate energy. This constitutes that blasé attitude which, in fact, every metropolitan child shows when compared with children of quieter and less changeable milieus.”
If NYC is a highly stimulating environment that requires multi-tasking, how can its residents develop their emotional side and enhance their well-being?
Research shows that mindfulness, in the form of meditation and body-relaxation, can improve the multitasking performance in a high-stress information environment. Mindfulness, as the practice of controlling attention with an attitude of curiosity, openness, and acceptance, can enable stressed New Yorkers to combat their isolation and disconnection from their surroundings and improve their everyday life.
As a way of cultivating mindfulness, this project investigates how theater and drama techniques create a collective experience that encourages the audience to be emotionally involved with both the actors/subject matter and their fellow audience members/surroundings. Theater was selected as an element in alignment with the western lifestyle that can alleviate the stress of skeptical New Yorkers in a spontaneous and natural way, without the risk of being seen as “forced spirituality.” Theater benefits the audience in various ways, as a theatrical act conceptually relates to the cognitive science and affective neuroscience.
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Click for more information on the Presentation, visit V21 Artspace.
Click for more information on the Presentation, visit V21 Artspace.