Emotional Sickness Bag Report

The Emotional Sickness Bag: Cartharsis Therapy Simon Bong

Inca Siojo

Eileen Lin

Tim Au

Naz Parivar

School of Interactive Arts and Technology Simon Fraser University Surrey 250 -13450 102 Avenue Surrey, BC V3T 0A3 CANADA phone: +1 778.782.7474 fax: +1 778.782.7488

ABSTRACT

The following paper discusses the idea, concept and research surrounding the project entitled Emotional Sickness Bag, an interactive project/object that utilizes and manipulates sound as input and feedback. First, the paper gives an overview of the meaning of catharsis and the way that it is used as part of psychotherapy process. It briefly discusses the positive and negative implications of catharsis and the different forms that it can take. Then, we examine the use of catharsis in different fields outside the psychological realm such as interactive arts and how technological advances have changed the ways that catharsis are practiced. Subsequently, we explore the aesthetic and technical aspects of the artifact as well as a clear analysis of similar projects that both informed and inspired this interactive piece. The paper also gives an overview of how sound can be used as a tool to alter emotions and as a method for people to release their feelings and emotions. In conclusion, we discuss the findings through the user studies, present the documentation of the user experiences with the Emotional Sickness Bag, and also potential future iterations based on the user test findings.

Keywords

affective computing, catharsis, psychotherapy, purging, emotion, embodiment, expression, communication, sensor technology, interactivity, MAX/MSP

1. INTRODUCTION

When King Oedipus blinds himself at the end of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy ‘Oedipus Rex’, because of the guilt of committing incest and the emptiness he experiences due to the loss of his beloved mother, it is said that the act of blinding himself is an instance of catharsis. Not only does the character in the play experience a purification of intense emotions but at the same time, the audience also experiences an emotional cleansing after Oedipus commits such an unexpected act. Catharsis refers to the

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purging of emotions through acts of expressing one’s feelings especially in exaggerated and unexpected ways such as shouting, crying, laughing, dancing and other ways of emotional release (Heron, 1998, p. 12-14). The practice is commonly used in psychosomatic therapy to help people who are mentally affected by stress of everyday lives or suffering from traumatic disorder (Kettles, 1994).

Although its effectiveness as a positive therapeutic method has been a controversial debate among researchers who studied the practice (Powell, 2010), there is a general consensus that the interpretation of the meaning of catharsis is consistently changing over time and becoming a mainstream practice outside the clinical field.

Our project, the Emotional Sickness Bag, explores the notion of the catharsis in an interactive context. We want to bridge the gap between technology and human emotions by creating an artifact that allow users to interact with in an embodied way. Our goal is to examine the cathartic experience that the artifact affords and whether it has the ability to influence behavioral changes within the users. We also want to document the level of embodiment that users experience while interacting with the artifact. Kettles (1994) notes that “in human potential or encounter work, catharsis provides a relatively easy and reliable way to produce a peak experience, a period of self-transcendence or a discharge of those emotions” (p. 2). This is the basis of the concept and serves as a research objective for our project.

2. BACKGROUND 2.1 Stress and catharsis in humans

Humans are emotional animals and we actively seek out different ways to express our feelings and emotions. We also experience the world by ways of associating our emotions with specific events in our lives. The most common methods that we express our emotions are through our body movements, (i.e. dancing, jumping and kicking), and also through our ability to convey our feelings verbally, (i.e. shouting, shrieking and laughing). Humans’ behaviors are directly affected by our emotions and the amount of frustration and stress that we accumulate on a day-to-day basis.

Therefore, it is important to find proven, therapeutic ways to relieve our pent-up anger and frustration and serve as a healing ritual for our mental well-being (Kettles, 2010). Because we live in a technologically advanced age, more humans become inclined to retreat to their digital devices to alleviate their stress, whether it may be television, their cell phones, or video games. However, they are also suppressing any extreme bodily or verbal instinctual

urges for catharsis that goes against societal values. These methods are not the best way to address emotional build-up, which is why we chose to create an interactive object that provides a cathartic outlet for users, and also provide selfreflection.

2.2 Primal shout as a cathartic act

Catharsis-based therapy comes in many different forms. One of the forms that is relevant to our research project is the use of catharsis in primal therapy. Primal therapy was devised by Arthur Janov in 1970, published in his book The Primal Scream (Kerr, 1976). He claimed that primal therapy could resolve psychological disorders when patients revisit their past pains in their adult awareness by breaking down their inner defense barriers; Janov believed that repressing parts of our lives prevents unity as a person. The Primal, the re-experience of their feelings and emotions, leads to their ultimate catharsis; the Primal Scream is the purge in which patients appear to regress to their childhood age and exhibit primal behaviour, screaming to release the accumulated tension and the desire for attention. Although effectiveness of the practice has been debated, the natural urge to shout to release tension is innate for all humans.

2.3 Decreasing stress with laughter

It is widely accepted and supported that laughter is the “best medicine”. Studies have shown that this innate act releases natural pain-killing neurotransmitters (endorphins) in the brain (Dugan, 1989). The audible expulsion of emotion coupled with the healthenhancing chemicals is one of the best ways to deal with stress, anytime and anywhere. In addition, it has also been proven that people with a greater sense of humour are much more likely to positively deal with stress (Kuiper, 1989). Because of its effectiveness, we decided to incorporate it into the Emotional Sickness Bag by manipulating the user’s stressful input into sounds to induce laughter. This way, their anger can be taken out of context in such a way that the user will discover the silliness of it all, reexamine the cause of their anger and how to harmlessly deal with it.

Figure 1: The Emotional Sickness Bag

Previous iterations consisted of the sensor being built by cotton and steel wool as a large soft sensor that is sensitive to any change in its volume caused by any physical manipulation of the artifact.

However due to flammability and sparks during testing, it is decided that a less dangerous way of detecting forces on the bag should be used.

3.2 Arduino and sensorial technology

The technical implementation is achieved through an Arduino microcontroller programmed using the Arduino programming language. Two force sensors are connected to the Arduino board and placed in the middle of the artifact, specifically near the ribbed area. A soft switch, created by using layers of felt and conductive thread, was placed at the neck of the artifact, and made to act as a sensor that detected contact between the layers. These sensors are able to detect pressure exerted by the user on specific areas of the artifact. The varying amounts of pressure placed on the force sensors are sent out via analog signals to the microcontroller. The contact and absence of contact in the soft switch are sent out as a digital signal, sending either 1 or 0, to the microcontroller. The Arduino code uploaded onto the microcontroller interprets these signals and sends them out as numbers to another program, Max/MSP.

3.3 Technical Diagram

3. METHODOLOGY 3.1 Artifact

The form of the artifact was initially inspired by the motion sickness bag, which is found in airplanes and car seats. However, the form of the motion sickness bag is similar to that of a brown paper bag; thus, it has very minimal affordances and would only initiate one possible form of interaction with the user. The final form of the artifact slightly mimics the form of a hot water compress, increasing the artifact’s affordance and possible interactions with the user. The final artifact was stuffed with cotton, a material often associated with warmth and comfort. By wrapping all hard digital components in the soft fiber, users are not held back from manipulating the bag in their own interpretation. All connections by wires to electronic components are fed through one single opening at the bottom of the bag. By extending the wires, the users are removed from feeling like they are interacting with a computer which is computing the feedbacks, but rather treat the water compress as the entity they are communicating with.

Figure 2: Technical Diagram of the Emotional Sickness Bag

3.4 Max/MSP

Figure 2 displays the technical set-up of the Emotional Sickness Bag. The mini-microphone and speakers are directly connected to the computer and the Max/MSP programming language. For the Emotional Sickness Bag, Max/MSP was used as the central computational unit that took signals from the Arduino microcontroller, sound input from the microphone, and manipulated the sound output by interpreting the different forms of input. Once the user presses on the soft switch, the Arduino board sends out a signal of 1 to Max/MSP. When the signal is 1, Max/MSP opens the audio input and microphone, allowing the user to record and store their sound input. When the user adds pressure onto the force sensors by squeezing the middle section of the artifact, the recorded sound is manipulated via Max/MSP and sent out to the speakers.

4. USER STUDIES

For our user studies, we invited participants to freely interact with the Emotional Sickness Bag without explaining how the bag works. This proved to be difficult because the microphone was too sensitive and picked up unwanted noise. Furthermore, the audio output had glitches; it played unexpected notes and the manipulated recording playback was segmented and unclear. With the exception of the technical errors, we found that in all our studies, the behaviours of the users were consistent; their first reaction was automatically picking up the bag and squeezing it at the marked sides. However, because the users have not recorded anything beforehand, there was no output.

User 1 kept cuddling and pressing the bag to his body, and exclaimed how similar it is to a hot compress for aches. However, he was not able to discover how the Emotional Sickness Bag works. Only after explaining how the mouthpiece works did he proceed to activate the soft switch. User 2 was also briefed, but had a more difficult time finding where and how to hold the mouthpiece to push the soft switch. Throughout the study, both users appear to be uncertain about their interactions with the Emotional Sickness Bag and its purpose.

We conclude at this point that technical errors have hindered our experiments and what results we hoped for. While the form of the bag allowed natural affordance of holding it at the appropriate places, the mouthpiece was largely ignored. If there was no recording, the users would not have known about the purpose of the bag when there is no clear audio feedback.

5. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

We have learned through our first prototype of the Emotional Sickness Bag that there is much more to explore of its form and function in order to create a successful project. The technical issues, although a major deterrent, are not the first problems to be addressed in future iterations, but rather the form. If the users could not independently interact with the bag to fulfill its functions, the form holds higher priority over the hardware.

However, together they cause the obstruction of discovering the bag’s true purpose, and its embodiment of “catharsis therapy”.

We will continue to revise the Max patch in order to clearly produce the output that we wanted since our first iteration did not meet our expectations. Based on the user’s comments and observations, we will research other forms not only restricted to

bag-like objects, but still aiming for the catharsis concept of purging emotions into an object that sympathizes and tries to counteract with humour.

6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to Gregory Corness and Aaron Levisohn for their conceptual and technical guidance throughout this project. Our thanks to ACM SIGCHI for allowing us to modify templates they had developed. Our thanks to ACM SIGCHI for allowing us to modify templates they had developed.

7. REFERENCES

[1] Bradley, M. M., and Lang, P. J. Affected Reactions to Acoustic Stimuli. Psychophysiology, 37 (2000), 201-215.

[2] Heron, J. Catharsis in Human Development. 1997, revised 1998.

[3] Kerr, N. Neurosis and Primal Therapy. Nursing Forum, 15, 1 (1976), 34-46.

[4] Kettles, A. M. Catharsis: An Investigation Of Its Meaning and Nature. Journal Of Advanced Nursing, 20 (1994), 368376.

[5] Kuiper, N.A., and Martin, R. A. Laughter and Stress in Daily Life: Relation to Positive and Negative Affect. Motivation and Emotion, 22, 2 (1998), 133-153.

[6] Nichols, M. P., and Efran, J. S. Catharsis in Psychotherapy: A New Perspective. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 22, 1 (Spring 1985), 46-58.

[7] Scheff, T. J. Catharsis and Other Heresies: A Catharsis and Other Heresies: A Theory Of Emotion. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology 1, 3 (2007), 98-113.

[8] Tajadura-Jimenez, A., Larsson, P., Vastfjall, D., Valjamae, A., and Kleiner, M. When Room Size Matters: Acoustic Influences on Emotional Responses to Sounds. Emotion, 10, 3 (2010), 416-422.