MANIPULATION
Source of energy
Self generated electricity is compared with externally supplied electricity.
ART AND EMPIRICAL AESTHETICS · PROPOSED EXPERIMENT
Sustainable
Reflecting
Can the feeling of having caused an artwork to come alive make its meaning more personal?
This is a planned participatory sculpture and controlled study. Visitors create the electricity that activates a mobile work made from reflective discarded materials. The experiment asks what changes when a person is the cause of the aesthetic event.
Read the study design ↓
THE QUESTION
Does bodily contribution change how an artwork is felt, remembered and carried forward?
Most sustainable messages ask people to imagine a consequence. Sustainable Reflecting makes a small consequence present. A visitor gives effort. Energy appears. Light moves through discarded material. The work becomes a situation in which action and outcome are linked.
THE EXPERIMENTAL IDEA
Same artwork.
Different cause.
The installation is designed as a research environment. Its visible output remains the same. The visitor either generates the electricity themselves or sees the same output powered externally.
- 01Encounter
A mobile sculpture made from reflective discarded material is waiting in the space.
- 02Condition
The visitor creates the electricity, or the work is activated by an external source.
- 03Output
Movement, light and duration are held as constant as possible across conditions.
- 04Reflection
A short prompt may invite attention to energy, materials and everyday choices.
PLANNED STUDY DESIGN
A focused comparison, not a claim that art automatically changes people.
SECOND FACTOR
Moment of reflection
A brief guided prompt is compared with an open encounter.
CONTROL
Aesthetic output
The sculpture, light, movement, sound and encounter time are kept comparable.
OUTCOMES
What will be measured
Perceived agency, personal relevance, aesthetic meaning, sustainability reflection and one defined behavioural choice.
The proposed design is a 2 × 2 study. It can begin as a pilot installation and be refined with a research partner before data collection.
WHY THIS IS WORTH TESTING
Art can make causality visible. Psychology can test what that visibility does.
The study brings together work on embodied action, agency, empirical aesthetics and environmental psychology. It does not assume that participation is meaningful by itself. Instead, it asks whether a specific causal role changes the visitor’s experience.
Reflective waste is not a decorative metaphor here. The material directs light back into the room, while the visitor’s own effort makes that light possible. This creates a concrete link between resource, body and consequence.
Research context includes empirical aesthetics, agency research and sustainability related behaviour. A detailed proposal, measures and analysis plan are available for discussion.
CONSTRUCTION IN FOUR UNIVERSES
Four material worlds. One mobile creature.
The sculpture is built as four connected universes. Each grows from a different kind of discarded material and gives light a different character. The dragon moves between them, joining the worlds without making them identical.
CD universe
Old discs become an iridescent creature and a field of changing colour.
Mirror universe
Broken mirror fragments catch the visitor, the room and moving light.
Prism universe
Prismatic material will split the light into colour and cast it back into the space.
Material image comingReserved for your prism photographs
Projector and found parts
Destroyed projectors, small fragments and unexpected materials form a more unruly universe.
NEXT CONSTRUCTION DRAWING
Energy route and movement sketch
The electricity and movement drawing will follow.
Electricity and movement drawing will follow
INVITATION TO COLLABORATE
Looking for a laboratory, institution or residency to build and test the first version.
I am looking for partners in empirical aesthetics, cognitive psychology, environmental psychology and neuroscience. The next step is to refine the mechanism, build the energy system and host a pilot study.
Request the research proposal ↗