Imagine having shared with someone a feeling of eternity, a feeling undefined, a moment… undone. And all of this happening just with a minute of gazing into a stranger’s eyes.
Thought provoking, isn’t it? This excerpt was a short breif of a performance given by Artist Marina Abramovic. In this piece, she sits across a table calmly and strangers are allowed to sit in front of her. Here, at this point they are simply looking into each others eyes. The deepest of emotions these people are feeling inside of themselves somehow seem to reflect in Marina’s eyes and look back at them. This zone of silence and chaos sent shivers through my spine making me realise how there is so much even in empty spaces and events. As a human being, it is our perception and interpretation that can bring change in emotions and situations.
Now coming down to the problems of ones perception, I watched Kartikeya Tutwala’s Tedx Talk about the farming community and his attempt to help them sustain. He approached a bunch of farmers residing in Vidharba with an opinion to begin organic farming. What he realises is that he is currently communicating his ideas of improved farming to ‘the last generation of farmers’ he says. He mentions himself standing with a farmer talking about better quality of land, seeds and so on while the farmer is lost in thoughts of how he will be feeding his family this month.
The talk explains how we may have our own perceptions towards things and events but the problem we think exsists might not even be as big of an issue from the first person’s perspective. So it is essential to put ourselves in the situatiuon of the body who we are trying to provide design solutions to. Yes, our perceptions as designers do matter but the interpretation must firmly be based on the requirement of the user of the solution we are willing to develop.
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