Mama Bear

Mama Bear is a small interactive installation that embodies a moment of parental instinct. It showcases a parental creature become alert, distressed and increasingly panicked when their child is approached by a stranger. In our set-up, the audience plays the role of this perceived threat.

The work involves two cat-shaped stuffed animals, respectively embodying a parent and their child (we nicknamed them Mom and Kid). The child, Kid, is placed openly towards the end of the containment box - which works as a nest - while Mom is positioned slightly further in the back, separated yet watching. When a visitor reaches towards Kid, red lights will start to blink and an alarm will sound. The closer the visitor reaches, the louder and brighter the lights and alarm will get in response.

At the core of the experience lies the assumption that you cannot approach Kid without triggering Mom.

What type of creatureness is it embodying?

The installation embodies parental instinct, specifically the non-rational alarm response when a dependent child might be in danger. Rather than showing the nurturing side of parenting, the work focuses on protective reflex, inherent in the majority of mammals and slightly more rarely discussed.

Parental instinct in itself is not a calm nor a thoughtful process. Across many animal species, caregivers display heightened sensitivity to threat near their child, often reacting before conscious reasoning takes place.

By making the audience trigger this work, it externalizes the instinct and allows the visitor to feel the reflex of the parent directed at them.

Motivation

The reasoning behind our choice of topic for this project mainly resides in personal curiosity. We were interested in exploring the visual representation of parental instinct with a sort of "mechanical twist" to it - which is why Mom does not exactly growl to extern her protectiveness, but rather beeps. The choice of the LEDs lights being all around her (instead of, for instance, having her eyes glow with proximity) lies in the same grounds.

Implementation & interaction

The mother is not physically blocking access to the child. She watches from a short distance. This separation reinforces the idea that parental protection does not necessarily take away all forms of interaction or exploration by the child.

The project ensures interest towards the child figure by placing the “approach with caution” sign in front. Which should invite the audience to pet or approach it. A motion sensor placed near the child detects whenever someone gets close

When triggered:

Red lights around the mother begin to blink.
A peeping alarm sound activates
As the visitors gets closer, the sound increases in pitch and speed while the lights blink more rapidly.

"Approach With Caution"

We decided that the installation needed to have something to get people to engage with the child. “Approach with caution” is directly asking the audience, while carefully, to approach. We needed visitors to feel tempted to interact despite knowing there may be a consequence; in this case, a reaction from Mom.

The Alarm

The peeping sound functions as an abstraction of panic. Rather than using realistic animal noises, we wanted the alarm to evoke urgency, stress and alertness. It simulates the internal state a parent might experience when sensing danger.

It's also relevant to note that we did not want the child to have any reaction to the audience's intervention. This is because, rather than a simple survival instinct, we wanted the experience to really underline the concept of parental protectiveness: in short, just like it occurs in nature, the child is at ease because it knows Mom will be there. The parent's reaction is then the most important aspect of the installation, as it contains alone the very aspect of creatureness we aimed to convey.

Conclusion

Mama Bear does not explain parental instinct through the means of text or science directly: instead it showcases such phenomenon as something almost unavoidable. Mom is always watching, a hovering presence that makes sure the safe distance is never broken, in which case, her reaction promptly escalates in loudness.

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