Give Nuance a Try!

Humans have a tendency to remain within community groups with a similar worldview. We rarely ask the opinions of strangers when developing our political orientations, leading to bias and closed-mindedness. Interpersonal political discourse is often hindered by immediate polarization. Each party feels it necessary to take a position in agreement with or in opposition to their communicative partner. Opinions and experiences are placed within black and white binary systems, in which the belief that one thing is true means anything else must be false. There is always one single correct answer and one way to win an argument. 

Often, campaign pins play a part in constructing these harmful binaries: they are there to make a statement, not prompt a nuanced, empathetic discussion. A political pin is there to support a single candidate, a single viewpoint, or a single issue. Through the use of lenticular lenses, Give Nuance a Try! aims to make room for a more nuanced discussion of seemingly contradictory and yet also true statements. Lenticular lenses allow for two ideas to exist within the same physical space. While from certain angles only one statement is visible, there are other angles where the ideas coexist and must be related to each other beyond binary agreement vs. rejection.

The Venting Booth was also designed to encourage participation and open discourse. The Venting Booth is modeled off of a voting booth but is recreated at a height that allows for frustrated voters to scream, plead, or whisper into the booth's sound-dampening interior. Just like the voting booth, the Venting Booth is a place of secretive personal expression within a larger public space. The intention of this interactive sculpture was to encourage therapeutic personal expression through interaction with the body, both socially and physically.

In the first interactive iteration of the Venting Booth, I took it and two accompanying signs to a polling location in Providence on Election Day 2018. I asked voters to vent whatever they felt they needed to get off of their chest. Vents ranged from quiet reflections to screaming "Fuck Trump!" at the top of their lungs on the steps of the polling location. "I Vented" stickers were passed out to each participant after they cast their vent, marking them as members of a small community of other participants.

The second iteration of the Venting Booth took place in the gallery during the FUSED Show. To account for the busy, socially invasive atmosphere of the gallery, I included a ballot system. If participants found themselves too nervous to scream their vents, they could instead cast their Official Ventation in private written form and take an "I Vented" sticker after their participation. A wide array of political and apolitical vents were recorded which shed some light on how necessary the ability to vent may be for a healthy democracy.

The series, Zeitgeist: National Mood Rings, is also intended as an accessible way of expressing political viewpoints, but in a more blunt format. This series of heat-sensitive rings borrows from the forms of historic poison rings and cheap mall mood rings in order to represent the national mood. While their acerbic messages are concealed when unworn, the wearer’s body heat reveals a national mood when the ring is worn. "Let’s try anarchy," they suggest, and while we are at it, "eat the rich" too.