Well-Being
To start experimenting with Well-Being, I asked Siri
This led me to think about my own wellbeing. Things I do to attain a state of comfort, health, and happiness include; meditation, practicing yoga, exercising, eating well, walking the dog…
I started by searching through my own Instagram account, looking for public signs of my practices of well-being.
I briefly toyed with the idea of a tik-tok inspired side by side comparison of#wellbeing from influencers on Instagram and my own interpretations, much the way Celeste Barber does. This very quickly got dull based on images I found on Instagram for #wellbeing
Uninspired by the #wellbeing tag I started searching my own instagram account. I’m a wordy person and love quotes. I have a highlight of them which is interesting as scrolling Instagram is a controlled practice of serendipity as the algorithm will deliver to the device what it thinks you want to see based on what you have previously liked.
My well-being has also been focused on serendipity as a way of reading into my own ideas and experiences.
As part of my New Years resolution (something I don’t believe in, yet do every year) I started writing a daily reflective journal from oracle card prompts. The story behind the oracle cards was serendipitously discovering an Art Oracles Deck at my local book store, I was so amused by the idea of starting my degree in arts and having advice or ideas given to me by notable artists that I bought the deck.
For experiment three I will ask the serendipitous Art Oracles questions about my wellbeing in 2020.
The Art Oracles offer insight into three areas; life, work, inspiration. To keep it interesting, I decided to use the Tarot three card spread.
1) What goals should I set myself for my wellbeing across all areas of my life?
One lives many lives in a lifetime – Mies Van Der Rohe
Meaning doesn’t come with titles – Jackson Pollock
Scratch at the surface until your fingers bleed – Grayson Perry
2) What is my priority to find work in the arts in 2020?
Discipline is both a noun and a verb – Marina Abramovic
Find clarity in clutter – Alighieri Boetti
Tell the truth in every fiction – Cindy Sherman
3) What can I focus on to stay inspired this year?
Symbolism is just one ambulance ride away – Joseph Beuys
Apocalypse then – Albreght Duber
Invade neighbouring states of privacy – Sophie Calle
Inspired by these ideas, I have created my own personal oracle for 2020. My oracle is and will be my reminder of wellbeing, for the year to come.
My process was to trace some of the elements I liked from each set of cards
Then to convert these images to vector in Adobe Capture to create easy elements to build my card:
I then assembled and coloured the card in Adobe Illustrator; it was interesting working out which elements went together and had meanings I could relate to and also found visually appealing.
The hardest part was synthesising the ideas from the oracles into what I felt would be good guidance for 2020.
My finished oracle card:
Experiment three started as a way of wanting to record sounds of a well and then create anotehr audio track.
I discovered Sydney has not wells, so here are some sounds that I have recorded in meditative moments recently:
Reflections on ADAD9406:
I found experiments one and two straightforward. I didn’t articulately struggle with inspiration or ideas on execution. Experiment three, I think because well-being is so broad, really challenged me and I wanted to explore ideas of my own well-being.
Updated mind map:
What I have understood and reinforced for myself throughout the course is that:
Art = Life, Life = Art
The best approach to art, and life is to approach everything with curiosity; What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
There are no failures, only lessons.
“I may not have gone where I intended to go,
but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”