Free Flow Seminar
Before the free flow seminar I was quite nervous, excited as well as out of my mind because of certain happenings in my life at the moment. But the nature surrounding us, the great company and finally dealing with the bachelor thesis totally changed my mood and how I perceived the world.
Especially the speed dating was quite helpful to me concerning the bachelor thesis topic. There I could pitch my topic of interest to my class mates and mentors and we discussed and it was quite nice to see how engaged everyone was and how they opened up.
Topic of interest
Death. Death has always fascinated me. What does death feel like? What comes after death? What is there to deal with when you/someone die? For me one’s own death is the most important thing in a lifetime (philosophically seen). Everyone has to die and there’s an end to a life. Each second we are alive we escape death.
As a non religious and non spiritual person, these questions aren’t that easy to answer. No book or person can answer these questions for me. There’s nothing I can hold on to because I simply have to make up my own mind and develop my own philosophy around the topic.
But in general I think death is a topic that isn’t discussed in public. We don’t learn about it at school that much — except how oh so many people died during wars, but can we really understand what that means? — and we don’t really prepare for it even tough we prepare for everything (birth, wedding, test etc.).
Ideation
During the speed dating round Edna and I discovered that our topic goes into the same direction. Therefore I found our brainstorming the most useful. We discussed about a death-box simulator where your own death would be simulated. With the experience of this death-box one could go through the process of dying and experience it and therefore question death and starting to think about it. This could open up questions like: What happens after death? Oh shit, should I plan my funeral? In case of death, do I want to get cremated or not? But it should also take away some pressure about death and transport “my/our” understanding of it; the loss of all senses and therefore the inability to experience time and space.
Therefore the purpose of the box would be to cancel out all of one’s senses such as sight (inside it’s dark), noise cancelling, no smell/taste etc. To kind of achieve sensory deprivation. This could be that if you enter the box it’s still light but shortly after the light will dim and it’s pitch black. Sooner or later the noise cancelling will start until you only hear your own heart beat and blood flow. The heartbeat slowly stops and there’s nothing to sense anymore. This will probably cause an unknown and fearful feeling and the transformation to a non-existence.
Rapid Prototype
As a rapid prototype actually went through these stages of (dis-)exploration. We asked our class and mentors to stand firm and close their eyes. In a first part we wanted them to absorb the environment without their visual sense. Instead they should listen, smell, feel. In a next step we asked them to close their eyes as well as their ears. This will make them already loose two senses and may disrupt their feeling of existence already. It’s interesting because if you close your eyes and ears you kind of hear your own blood-flow. In a third part we asked them to hum with closed eyes/ears.
Keywords
sensory deprivation
death positive
preparation
Links
https://worldbirthsanddeaths.com/
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/china-death-experience/index.html (too literal for my taste…)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4154180/VR-death-simulator-fear-dying.html (first sentence: “It could be a helping hand for the terminally ill.” Aren’t we all terminally dying????)
https://www.vox.com/2015/3/6/8156221/best-essays-death-dying
https://www.ukessays.com/essays/psychology/the-psychology-of-facing-death-psychology-essay.php (also only about when you’re ill?)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0267-0
https://www.oktodie.com/pdf/planningyourowndeath1226.pdf (death preparation
