Table of Emotions Experiment

ArtEZ University of the Arts

2023

To investigate the subject of symbols in space, we decided to translate the symbolic act of putting things on the table into a physical table in which emotions could be placed inside, so it would become a table that holds emotions.

We worked with miniatures because manipulating 3d miniatures of known objects allows our memories to be triggered on a deeper level. In Poetics of Space Bachelard says “Imagination in miniature is natural imagination which appears at all ages... The cleverer I am at miniaturizing the world the better I possess it.” A whole chapter is written on miniatures in Bachelard’s book. A scale drawing of a space is a miniature and a picture showing people small on a piece of paper is a miniature; we can better understand the world by making use of miniatures.

To gather data, we offered participant to access a link to a page using a QR code, a page where people could send their words, in that way, we made it interactive. We got 160 entries and very positive feedback from everyone we approached so, we came to the conclusion that this could become a method by which people could tell their stories and we as designers can discover people’s associations with objects in this way.

From 160 entries, the miniature “butterfly” was chosen by 13 different people, and they mostly had positive associations with the butterfly, the second most chosen object was the “frog”, which brought different kinds of emotions, this was interesting to discover. The miniature “orange”, for instance, was associated with calmness by 3 different people.

We as designers can translate this knowledge into spaces; perhaps the information about the oranges can become a space that smells like oranges. We wouldn’t have known this hadn’t we asked people to come together around the table, the table becomes a tool that allows the research to happen.