3rd week (3) -- 500 words project outline

Déjà vu

A definition proposed by Neppe (1983b, 1983e) has become the standard in research on déjà vu:” any subjectively inappropriate impression of familiarity of a present experience with an undefined past” (Neppe, 1983e, p.3) 1

Déjà vu is an individual mental experience that based on one’s past life. Therefore it’s hard (almost impossible) to let two persons to experience the same déjà vu, not to mention sympathetic response for the majority. And déjà vu just happens occasionally to some people. Yet it is the uniqueness and rareness that makes déjà vu an interesting potential project to begin with.

My déjà vu project focuses on “how people experience déjà vu” together with the digging of how people’s past activities store in the mind and affect people’s way of viewing the objective surroundings, and the differences/changes between the objective (the original) and the subjective (the facsimile/interpretation).

As to architectural aspect, the sense of familiarity is, for most of the time, what architects will try to deliver when designing. One might be designing a house for a client who has never been to Athens but fascinated about Greek myths, a space that the client can feel the breeze of Mediterranean. The architectural style is not in my project’s realm, you don’t have to use white and blue to present Greece, maybe a basin of sea salt will have the same effect.

The sense of familiarity of a space may come when the viewer senses the void with his/her experience which is subjective. We take part of other’s life as ours, and when that scenario really happens on us, we feel like it’s already been experienced (as the power of literature that caused Nathaniel Hawthorne’s first visit to Stanton Harcourt’s manor house already implanted to his recollection 2).

People’s experience affects the way they think, that’s why we have so many different understandings about the same thing. We all have our own version of facsimile with the same origin.

The project is to present two persons’ facsimiles about the “same” manor house, Nathaniel Hawthorne (the author with déjà vu experience) and Alexander Pope (the poet that influence Nathaniel’s version of manor house through his perspective). The aim is to discuss the how people’s recognition reads spatial information, or how spatial message is translated by simulacrum that stored in people’s mind.

The method of working (things to do):
1. understand the psychological findings about déjà vu
2. stories and works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Alexander Pope
3. study simulacrum in philosophy, literature, film, art, etc.
4. vermeer’s camera

TACTICS ? :

A: Drawings:
1. First: the “objective” version of manor house
2. Second: the manor house with Alexander Pope’s motion/activity/involvement. (drawings)
3. Third: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s representation of the manor house when he read the poem. (drawings)
4. The simulacrum of the manor house (his grandma’s kitchen) when Nathaniel visited it in person. (drawings)
…….

B: A device that project the image of viewer’s past view onto a mirror/mist, like mirage? A space that projects another space. What you see is what you think it is.

REFERENCES:

1. Alan S. Brown. The déjà vu experience
2. "And I Feel Like I've Been Here Before" (http://www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman/2008/10/and-i-feel-like-ive-been-here-before.cfm)
3. Bryan Jay Wolf. Vermeer and the invention of seeing
4. Robin Evans. The projective cast
5. CJ Lim. Devices
6. Jose Roca. Phantasmagoria……