Katherine Symons

Katherine is an inter-disciplinary artist and creative coder, working in the fields of the arts and sciences. She is currently doing an MSc in Psychology of the Arts, Neuroaesthetics and Creativity at Goldsmiths University, London, working also with the MA computational arts programme, focussing on generative art. Katherine is interested in random processes in which one loses elements of control over the outcome.

This current work explores a variety of concepts. Works at the top of the page looks into stochastic processes, by playing around with L-system plant production rules and recursion in openFrameworks.

The second part of the page explores the idea of visual altered states of consciousness with reference to how the human brain is able to see visual geometric hallucinations. The video is a projection mapping installation that investigates “form constants”. This project was also coded in openFrameworks.

At the bottom of the page is a physical computing project involving a sympathetic read-out using Arduino.

Katherine Alexandra Symons,

London

Altered States Of Consciousness

Altered states of consciousness was inspired by geometric visual hallucinations. Geometric visual hallucinations are not just experienced by individuals who take psychedelics, but also experienced through meditation and hypnagogic and hypnopompic states of consciousness. Hypnagogic and hypnopompic is a mental phenomenon that can occur in the transitional state from sleep to wakefulness and vice versa. It is a threshold consciousness that includes hallucinations, lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis. One also sees geometric visual hallucinations in near death experiences, epilepsy, visual aura migraines or by viewing very bright flickering lights. It can occur in healthy individuals as well as individuals with certain conditions (Bressloff et al, 2002). When one experiences altered states of consciousness, it mostly reaches visual sensory; these sensory features are phosphenes which can look like random dots, winged objects, representational images and geometrical patterns which are known as form constants.

Psychologist Heinrich Klüver termed these geometric visual hallucinations as “form constants”, which is taxonomised into various shapes and forms such as: a) tunnels and funnels, b) spirals, c) lattices of triangles shapes and d) cobweb-like patterns. Visual form constants are generated in the brain and their origin is within the visual cortex area V1 (Bressloff et al, 2002). Think of the V1 area as a two-dimensional sheet where an object or a scene is projected as a two-dimensional image on the retina of each eye. Every point is mapped by two coordinates. The alternating areas of light and dark make up a geometric hallucination, and this is caused by intermittent areas of contrasting high and low neural activity in the V1 (Freiberge, 2014).

Mathematicians Jack D. Cowan and G. Bard Ermentrout implemented Klüver’s taxonomy of form constants to create a theory which describes what is happening in our brain when it tricks us into thinking that we are seeing geometric patterns (Freiberge, 2014).

Inspiration was also drawn from stochastic processes in terms of colours generated by chance and how this relates to the randomness that one experiences in visual altered states of consciousness (Dorin, 2015).

Sympathetic read-out via GVR sensor and tuning into emotions by bringing them to light (potentiometers and multi-coloured LED lights). A physical computing project.

Emboxed (Emotion Box)

Linking to recent events (Covid-19), I wanted to create an interactive device that can embody how one is feeling through visual and tactile senses. This box was intended to be an interactive emotional intelligence and emotional grounding tool, for individuals who may find it difficult to verbally express their emotions.

Instead of compartmentalisation (boxing) one’s emotions or having emotions that can’t be expressed. Why not have a box that can literally and metaphorically bring them to light through different colours expressing different emotions and using a sensor that can sense when one’s emotional and psychological state is heightened.

My idea was to create a box that could interact with the user through measuring their Galvanic skin response (GSR). A box where one can tune into an emotion or emotions by having differently coloured LED light in which a colour represents a particular emotion.

The GSR measures skin conductance. This refers to changes in sweat response that correlates with the intensity of one’s emotional and psychological state. This is also known as sympathetic activity or emotional arousal as it is linked to our sympathetic nervous system (Makin 2017).

The colours of the LED lights were chosen to link appropriately with 6 emotions: red for love, violet for hate, yellow for happy, blue for sad, green for fear and white for content. I matched potentiometers with scales for the strong emotions, which are love, hate and fear. The other potentiometers have colours that match with happy, sad and content LED lights. The potentiometers represent tuning into an emotion that you are feeling or would like to feel.

I based the emotions on psychologist Paul Ekman’s six basic emotions model (1999) which are: fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust and surprise, but modified it to make my own emotional model, that is love, hate, happy, sad, fear and contentment.

I chose to reveal the soldered led lights on a circuit board as I wanted it to reveal part of the inside. I chose the material of wood for the box as it is a symbol of being grounded.