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Conscious

© Suki Chan

© Suki Chan

CONSCIOUS

Suki Chan

close up image of a beehive

Natural Hive © Suki Chan

Natural Hive © Suki Chan

Suki Chan applied for funding through Developing Your Creative Practice, to focus on researching and developing CONSCIOUS. A new project that will explore consciousness, Artificial Intelligence and dementia.

Image of family photographs displayed in bedroom

Photo inside a science lab saying "who does this belong to?"

King's College London © Suki Chan

King's College London © Suki Chan

I recently participated in an artist residency at Belong, a dementia care village in Crewe, organised by Bluecoat. I wanted to learn about the experiences of people living with dementia and how their families and friends are impacted during the different stages.

One member of staff told me a story about a dilemma they encountered with a gentleman resident. His wife who was cared for in another care home had died and the family were not sure how to tell him this sad news. When they informed him, he broke down and wept. But, due to his dementia, he soon forgot all about it. The dilemma for the staff, was whether they should keep telling him this sad news, when he asked how his wife was.

Forest landscape

Trees © Suki Chan

Trees © Suki Chan

This story made me realise the complexities towards truth and reality for those living with dementia and how we might relate to the “world” that they sometimes live in.

Some people lose track of time and no longer know the date, the day of the week, season or even the year we are in. Some experience hallucinations.

Rather than asserting the truth - which might either cause distress or make that person feel uncomfortable or confused, one approach is to empathise with that person and try to be with them and their experiences in that moment.

I decided I wanted to bring these stories and ethical dilemmas, together with my existing research, to a wider audience in the form of an immersive experience.

So how could I develop new artworks that not only engage the audience with these everyday ethical dilemmas, but try to immerse them in the worlds of people living with dementia, so that they can experience what it might be like? I didn’t have the answer – and so that’s where Developing Your Creative Practice came in.

Satellite image © Suki Chan

Satellite image © Suki Chan

New Connections

Growing Axons © William Constance & Darren Williams, King's College London. 

Growing Axons © William Constance & Darren Williams, King's College London. 

Growing Axons © William Constance & Darren Williams, King's College London. 

In my work, I use a range of media including installation, moving image, photography and sound to explore our perception of reality. My practice combines these disciplines by researching and developing diverse communities and their dialogues.  I’ve worked with commuters, security guards, pilots, meditators, blind and partially sighted people. More recently, this varied group has further expanded to include psychologists and neuroscientists.

Images inside a science lab

King's College London © Suki Chan

Images inside a science lab

King's College London © Suki Chan

To date, I have mainly operated within the museums and galleries circuit. But, for this activity, I wanted to reach out to organisations that are interested in connecting art and science.

I wanted to build upon this new trajectory and develop new networks with new partners - both national and international - for the future development and presentation of what will become my latest work, CONSCIOUS. Being successful in my Developing Your Creative Practice application enabled me to do this.

I began my research speaking with neuroscientist Darren Williams, from the Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, King’s College London, about the subject of consciousness and insect sentience. Darren allowed me access to his work with imaging techniques such as confocal time-lapse photography. I was fascinated by the growth of axons within the fly, seeing how these emergent internal processes have unexpected similarities with familiar structures in our external world, such as a tree branch.

I have always been interested in the connections between the micro and the macro. This activity allowed me to be more informed in my investigations and offered new perspectives to investigate.

Working with these scientists and gaining insight into their ideas, inspirations and processes was fascinating. To see their cutting-edge research work, to observe their curiosity about the world and their drive to push back the boundaries of knowledge was incredibly stimulating for my own creativity

It became a step-change for me as it allowed me to combine art and science into a new direction for my practice. It allowed me to reach out to new research centres and collaborate with scientific institutions.

From this, I developed a proposal for a new short film commissioned by Somerset Art Works for their Festival this year. I wanted to take the audience on a visual and aural journey from the axons and neurons found inside brains to the distinctive topography of Somerset. The short film, MEMORY, is an initial sketch for me to experiment with some of the research material and will form one of the chapters for the larger project CONSCIOUS.

I also researched new technologies and how they might be used within an installation context to immerse the viewer in other people’s worlds. I started a dialogue with virtual reality companies to understand how to design and build these experiences. I will use this new technology to create an immersive experience to help generate empathy with the subject of consciousness and dementia.

Close up of a tree branch

Swarm Intelligence

Close up image of a honey comb

Natural comb © Suki Chan

Natural comb © Suki Chan

Natural Hive © Suki Chan

Natural Hive © Suki Chan

Close up of bees

Natural Comb © Sam Morris

Natural Comb © Sam Morris

 Natural Comb © Sam Morris

Natural Comb © Sam Morris

Natural Comb © Sam Morris

Professor James Marshall at the Department of Computer Science, The University of Sheffield helped me to explore swarm intelligence, bees and the brain. James and his team have discovered that honeybee colonies adhere to the same laws as the brain when making collective decisions. By studying bees, they hope to unlock the secrets of how the human brain works.

I engaged with beekeepers in Cambridgeshire; recording nocturnal hive sounds and filming a natural beehive. It was incredible to see a natural beehive for the first time. I never knew that structurally, a natural beehive could vary so much, from looking like the cerebral cortex, to mountain ridges and a termite mount.

I will continue to work with the beekeepers to further record other hive sounds like the queen bee piping, which happens only under specific conditions within the hive. Some believe the queen bee makes these sounds to announce their presence and prevent the emergence of more than one queen at a time.

I will continue to track the developments of the robot swarms and will return later to film them. I am interested to capture the moment when the individual robots become aware of a consensus being reached within the swarm.

A fog descending
on the brain

Image inside Wendy Mitchells home- a sufferer of dementia

© Suki Chan

© Suki Chan

© Suki Chan

© Suki Chan

Wendy Mitchell, author of Somebody I Used to Know , was diagnosed with young-onset dementia five years ago.

Despite the effects of dementia, Wendy has chosen to re-frame her identity in a positive way.

Wendy is extremely articulate and uses visual metaphors such as “fog descending on the brain,” to describe how the disease can make her feel.

She also has some ingenious daily coping mechanisms, like photographing the contents of her cupboards to stick onto her cupboard doors. This is not only to remind her of what is in the cupboards but so that they can be identified as cupboards in the first place rather than protrusions from the wall.

Getting to know her and gaining an insight into her personal journey with dementia has been inspiring. I’ve learnt that dementia is not only about losing one’s memory. It affects people’s vision and understanding of reality.

Image of Wendy Mitchell

Wendy Mitchell © Suki Chan

Wendy Mitchell © Suki Chan

© Suki Chan

© Suki Chan

What I've learnt

 A swarm of robots on a white background

Robot Swarm, University of Sheffield © Suki Chan

Robot Swarm, University of Sheffield © Suki Chan

This process has been transformative for me. I have a deeper understanding of dementia within the wider context of consciousness and I’ve opened new opportunities for my work in the future.

The development time has been extremely productive. I have built many relationships that will have a long-lasting impact on the future of my work as well as the development of CONSCIOUS.

I am in contact with various organisations in the UK and abroad regarding the development and exhibition / screening of the new work from: Bluecoat (Liverpool), New Hall Art Collection, (Cambridge), Whitechapel Art Gallery (London) and Tintype (London).

Branching out to explore health, wellbeing and mental health has been a moving and humbling experience.

I explored new approaches to dementia care with Grahame Smith (Centre for Collaborative Innovation in Dementia, Liverpool John Moores University). I got to observe how amazing and caring the environment could be. There are many ethical considerations that I had not thought of, particularly around notions of truth and reality.

To date, it has been an illuminating creative journey. Through the research undertaken, I now have a good understanding of the new technologies I will use to bring the knowledge gained to a wider audience; how to engage audiences and help them comprehend what consciousness is and what it might be like to live with dementia. One of the next steps is to create an immersive experience that will elucidate the ways people experience reality differently, due to cognitive decline. I’m pursuing the possibility of integrating VR or EEG technology within an art installation and I am currently in the process of securing new partners and funding to develop this ambitious project.

Having spent a year to research this new project, I now have a clear idea of what CONSCIOUS is about; what I want to achieve with it, as well as the new audiences that I want to reach out to and the kind of impact I want to make on them. 

King's College London © Suki Chan

My Advice

© Suki Chan

© Suki Chan

I’ve been asked a lot about what advice I’d give to someone considering applying for Developing Your Creative Practice in the future. My advice is simple: be bold and be ambitious – challenge yourself and inspire yourself with what you’re planning.

But keep things realistic too. If your dream activity is more than you can handle alone, collaborate with others and consider breaking your work into smaller activities and pilots which are more manageable.

DYCP

Find out more about how to apply for Developing your Creative practice

Three dancers hang in the air as part of Dance Umbrella.

Dance Umbrella © Valerie Frossard

Dance Umbrella © Valerie Frossard