Painting Your Odyssey is a narrative-based project, presented and showcased through website design and art installation format.
This is a project that focuses on the stimulation of the senses through the association of memories. It is inspired by the phenomenon called Synesthesia and explores the depth of one’s memories through the use of multiple senses, mainly: sight through colour, sound through music and touch. Memories in this project will be classified into 3 categories: high, middle and low. Different senses will then be triggered together through various stimuli to allow one to make personal and deeper associations in regards to personal memories. It is in hope that participants will get to view their personal experiences with new lenses.
To carry out this project, participants will be following an adventure of a star to help regain back its once lost memories.
You can check out the website at: paintingyourodyssey.com
Here is a video preview of the website:
Based on the 3 categories of memories, high, middle and low, there are 5 different themes: Graveyard and clown (low memories), cave (middle memories), rockets and mountains (high memories). Within each theme, there will a breakdown into 3 different types of stages.
Each of these categories have different feelings and emotions attached to them. Hence, each of the illustrations for each theme are created uniquely, according to different characteristics attached to that particular type of memory.
The illustrations also come in different colours and music to evoke different senses of emotion in participants.
Category: Low Memories
Emotions felt: Heavyheartedness, trauma, grief, confusion
Graveyard:
-sense of loss, grief, losing a loved one or something precious to you
-Does loss always only look sad? Could it also be angry, bittersweet?
Clowns:
-Fear, trauma, confusion
-Clowns represent a childhood fear that some people have. Some people see clowns as scary while others love them. What if fears/traumas are all different and unique to each person?
Category: Middle Memories
Emotions felt: Mundane, boring, routine, normalcy
The Cave:
-Showing up to do work every single day, showing persistence in the seemingly mundane
-Perhaps the most boring work is actually the most important
Category: High Memories
Emotions felt: Excitement, accomplishment, reaching your highest point, celebration
The Mountains:
-In valleys and highs, there are different emotions
-In achieving a victory and reaching the mountain peak, there are many moments where one longs to give up as well in the valleys.
-How does those emotions look like?
Rockets:
-The building of something to achieve success
-Creating something from scratch can be daunting; how does that feel and help change your lens of success when you finally reach it?
Other elements
Here are some other design elements done for this project
Map:
Used for navigation of the website
Installation elements:
These images were created to be hung on the walls of the art installation
Illustrated book:
This book was created as part of the installation experience, where participants can flip through the book to see the illustrations out in story form.
Art Installation
The Installation ran for 2 weeks at Gilman barracks. It displayed Painting Your Odyssey's website, as well as 5 sensory touch boxes that showcased how the 5 different memory themes could be felt like.
