Regent's Shrine: Project Debrief

One of the things I most enjoy about creative projects is the synchronicities that can arise as you begin investigating tangentially related ideas. In the Art Center Media Design program we were asked to read a Michel de Certeau essay about maps. The piece, "Tours and Maps" describes two means of describing places: "the 'map' and the 'tour.' The first is of the type: 'The girls’ room is next to the kitchen.' The second: 'You turn right and come into the living room.'"

I started thinking about the idea of maps in terms of the virtual places and those we imagine. What if we could use a physical device like an MRI visualization machine to represent a map of a place in our minds. I put this together with the idea of a spiritual young man who took mental trips to a shrine in his imagination to meditate before suffering an injury that makes the trip impossible. How would he find his way back? Could a new route be determined?

My research identified a wealth of online information on experiments with visualizing mental processes.