Year
Pets/st
Installation
Arjun Gupta & Meher Bagchi
This project is connected to memories of insects and pets. It plays with the idea of contrasting emotions - love, fear, anxiety and curiosity. It includes audio and tactile experiences where the audience will be wearing headphones and using their hand to make way through different textures, invoking different emotions. A large part of the audio will consist of soft, calming sounds taken from natural and home-like settings, while there will be sudden, harsh sounds to ensue a sense of discomfort.
The textures will consist largely of smooth, welcoming materials. However, similar to the auditory experience, there will be some unsettling, coarse textures embedded randomly to double down on the discomfort. This will take place while the person is blindfolded (no visual input) so that the other senses are heightened.
The whole experience is based on the memory of having pet rabbits (love, care, curiosity) at the age of ten, and the memory of insects (fear, anxiety) pestering us. The soft sounds and textures denote the positive emotions involved in these events, while the surprising harsh tones denote the negativity and its sudden appearance in a child’s life.