Salient Findings 1. Loneliness is not merely a mental or internal phenomenon, it is highly physical, externalized, and visceral During our research in social isolation, we found out that the feeling of loneliness and isolation is not only a negative emotion buried in one’s heart but also a feeling that one would like to vent physically. The main reason is that loneliness manifests situationally in a particular space and time. For example, in our cultural probe research, the four participants illustrated their loneliness by taking photos of static objects around them. In Figure 1, the participants were able to associate loneliness to physical single items in their surroundings that they could “relate” to.
Figure 3: Three separate participants associate their loneliness with similar depictions
This suggests that loneliness potentially has also something to do with one’s spatiotemporal experience and is not just a feeling occurring in the mind. Another piece of evidence that suggests the same things is the frequent use of tactile and descriptive words such as “deep”, “dark”, “smell”, “silence”, etc. in the “Small Poems” cultural probe.
Figure 4: Small Poems
SD5527 Graduate Studio I
Studying Internet-related social isolation and pressure in adults
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