Psychasthenia Studio

http://psychasthenia-studio.com

Psychasthenia Studio is the name of the art collective led by Joyce Rudinsky and myself.We produce game-based installation artwork that explores themes related to identity, culture, and technology in the contemporary age.

 

Pyschasthenia [1] (2011)

This project first opened at the CHAT festival in February 2010 as an experiment led by collaborators Joyce Rudinsky from UNC and myself. Our goal is to explore the use of a game engine, Unity, as a platform artistic production, and as an experiment in collaborative authorship. While both of us work on all aspects of the project, my primary role is in developing the narrative components of the project, and conducting research on historical approaches to the condition and what we call the possible “palliative measures” achievable.

Overiew
‘Psychasthenia’ is an immersive artwork and psychological diagnostic environment. Therapeutic clients plug into the system’s sensors and navigate an expressive exterior space that changes according to their actions and responses to multimodal stimuli. The system’s media elements and user experiences are inspired by historical and contemporary diagnostic literature of the psychasthenic psychological disorder, which is characterized by phobias, obsessions, compulsions, or excessive anxiety. The experience of voyaging through the system reveals the unique character of the client’s inherent pathology and its lived expression, culminating in a summary diagnosis to carry back into daily life and interactions.

Psychasthenia 2 (2013)

http://psychasthenia-studio.com/psychasthenia2.html
The second version of the project developed some our core ideas further, but shifted from the diagnostic to the “treatment” stage of the purported illness. We dove deeper into the literature of the field and structured the treatment plan on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The user’s experience culminates in Self-Actualization, guided by Dr. Carl Abraham throughout the experience. This project was selected for and shown in the Santa Fe Currents International New Media Festival in June 2013, well at London’s Waterman’s Gallery in November 2013, at HASTAC in Peru, the International Digital Media and Arts Association’s IDEAS_14 in Orem, UT in 2014, and the [RE]Gen New Media Festival. Paramount Theater in Burlington, NC in 2015.

Overview

Psychasthenia 2 is an interactive artwork that explores the culture of psychological diagnosis and treatment within the context of a highly mediated consumer culture that often produces the ills it purports to treat. The term psychasthenia itself is an antiquated diagnosis given to patients who exhibit fear, anxiety, compulsion, and other related – and ubiquitous – ills characteristic of contemporary life. In this game engine based piece we ask how might we conceptualize our inner lives as a game in which lived experience is understood as a series of “levels” to be achieved, playing on the recent media popularity of “gamification” as a life strategy. Each game level represents a different stage in the user’s psycho-social development, and presents a challenge based on Maslow’s original hierarchy of needs – as translated into a discrete, achievable in-game goal. Shopping for self-help books, religious icons, and pharmaceuticals, for example, invokes the ways in which our palliative measures can themselves create financially ruinous results. Other levels similarly challenge and confound the user. Throughout the “treatment” process, the user is guided by the sardonic Dr. Carl Abraham. Dr. Carl offers access to his records room filed with historical research on the psychasthenic condition, administers psychological tests confirming the (inevitable) diagnoses , and most importantly, admonishes the patient who might dare to think they are making significant personal progress in what is ultimately a closed and self-perpetuating therapeutic system.

InnerSpace Adventure (2013)

This project is an augmented reality/mobile installation that was part of the Art2View AR gallery ArtSpace Media Lounge at the College Art Association in New York City. Our project took a text-adventure game and overlaid it as an AR experience focused on life as a conference-goer at the NY Hilton.

Psychasthenia 3 (2016)

We are hard at work on Psychasthenia 3, tentatively subtitled “Dupes,” which we plan to release in Fall of 2016. This project explores the externalization of identity and concepts of success through HR quizzes, data feeds, and other technology-mediated experiences of the self – including surprising interpersonal encounters with archetypal figures who represent modern-day Tarot.

 

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