Virtual Exhibition: https://mindscape.world
"Psyche", the word for "soul" and "mind" has its Greek origin meaning butterfly. Human souls, like butterflies, are born into the wormy recipient forms. We need to be dissolved and transformed before emerging to our full glory.
Mindscape is an interactive methodology and graphic mapping tool that offers an exploration into the construction of our thoughts. When we stand on top of a mountain, the landscape is expansively spread out before us: hills, valleys, rivers, and lakes... In a similar way, a “Mindscape” is a snapshot of our inner-world, providing a map in order to “see” our thinking. This method permits us to see as though we were standing outside our own thinking. Creating a Mindscape is a process of self-inquiry, a mindfulness practice that directs attention to a place of observation, a position of inner-awareness. Mindscape’s visualisation enables us to explore the relationships, patterns, and puzzles in our everyday thoughts.
As an experimental design project created as part of the Innovation Design Engineering (IDE) programme jointly taught at the Royal College of Art (RCA) and Imperial College London, its research objective was to explore the phenomenon of the mind and consciousness so as to understand larger-scale social paradigms. Human thought and perception cannot be excluded from our understanding of sociological phenomena: the fractal pattern of the mind gets amplified to create a collective consciousness of a society which we call the paradigm (Kuhn, 1962). When developing theory around large-scale phenomena- it is essential to implicate how subjective thoughts are formulated. We believe a design and method for breaking these formulations down into composite parts, playing with them, experiencing them in new ways, offers a process of self-inquiry that sits at the root for any kind of inner-integration or outward-change. We therefore advocate that the composite design of Mindscape both implicates and offers a vantage point of observation- of thought production. What happens when we shift our attention in this way? To notice- rather than simply being subject to- our construction of thought?
Mindscape takes form as both an experiential workshop that explores the method through a group process, as well as a digital tool that allows for independent practice in any setting. In an increasingly complex world, it is essential to investigate what informs our thought production in a given moment- be it our inner voice, our intuition, or our social and ideological conditioning. Since 2019, Mindscape has offered the self-inquiry experience to various individuals and social groups; we also have gone through generations of revisions and redesign tailored to the real-life practice with our audience.