Walk on Coals

Project Description

My project Walk on Coals aims to amplify the users sense of pain and generate a tolerance of it over time. The shoes are made from cardboard and therapeutic mats that aims at pressing different pressure points on your feet to increase blood circulation in your body. The concept of this project is to expose your body to unusual discomfort and build on your resilience of pain and gain a new perception of it. I wanted to see if the body can adapt to this new challenge and instead of avoiding pain, we learn to adapt to it. I was originally inspired by a reality show that often uses these therapeutic mats to challenge participants and that reminded me of elderly people that enjoy a similar experience of walking on stones at the park. The difference made me think if amplifying the pain we experience could become normal to us after experiencing it for a long period of time. 

Perspective and Context

I feel my project shows how our perception is deeply connected to our experiences with the world by challenging how we experience and adapt to pain. Heightening the users awareness and like Irwin's ideas it challenges our pre conditioned ideas of perception. My project actively engages the user to experience the perception themselves through adaptation and awareness. Moving from the conventional function of shoes, this project shifts perception and forcing the user to think of their relationship with their body.

Development and technical implementation

Starting this project I had a clear idea of how I wanted my project to look. I wanted to build the shoes from scratch so I started by looking for sturdy cardboard that I can use to build the shoe. I made the bottom first by tracing my feet, but then I thought of making the shoe wearable by everyone so I increased the size. After making the bottom I built a wall around the bottom of the shoe and cut our the therapeutic mat to fit inside. finally building the top arch of the shoe also using cardboard. Originally the mat was exposed outside which made it stick out a lot, so I decided to cut a piece of black cloth to cover the mat and make the shoe more natural. The functions are simple as the user would use the project as any other shoe and walk around normally with them. The spikes on the mat would cause discomfort/pain to the user by pressing into their feet from their own weight.

Presentation

For my presentation I think the majority of it went well and as I expected. Since shoes are something we experience daily there weren't much instructions needed for the participants testing my project. I wanted to not say anything to the participant because I wanted to see how they would react or use them. Not saying anything would also keep a factor of surprise to the user.  All of the participants reacted well and how I expected them to react, but most did better at tolerating the pain than I  was expecting. One thing that went well was the users feedback that they do get used to the shoes after walking in with them more, which connects to how I wanted these shoes to work. One thing I would have liked to do better was explaining my intentions and the purpose of this project. 

Conclusion

Through the research and creation of my project I've learned a lot about how our perception and body work in response to each other. I understood how pain could be influenced by expectations and the environment. I think I suceeded in building my design of my project efficiently and the shoes were able to serve their intended function. But throughout the process I think I should have done more research to add on even more to my project because it seemed too simple and could have had multiple components to it. From the presentations I was able to learn a lot from the other projects on how our senses could be effected by different variables, as well as different ways to fabricate my projects. I'd like to further explore the intersection of our senses with wearable forms of technology.