Prof. Mathew Samuel & DCOM 395 students | April 19 | 4-8 p.m. | Underground (UG), Mund College Center
As a component of the “What Heroin Sounds Like” project, Associate Professor of Digital Communications Mathew Samuel and students in his Design for Good course (DCOM 395), in collaboration with local activist and founder Adam Delmarcelle, will create a site-specific installation that seeks to re-create the physical and mental feeling of addiction. This interactive video and audio installation will offer viewers an opportunity to better understand the feelings a person struggling with opioid addiction experiences when the need or “desire” to use takes hold. We hope to educate viewers on the meaning of addiction, with special emphasis on stigma reduction. Many still believe that addiction is a choice. Our goal is to enhance viewers' experiential awareness of the scientific fact that addiction is a brain disease and a physical illness -- for only then will we be equipped to develop viable solutions to the opioid crisis. This interactive experience will help transform viewers' empathy and understanding of these issues by positioning them in the physical space of the addicted.
Students designed a room by room experience that the audience walks through a sort of narrative of what someone with a substance abuse disorder goes through. The introduction establishes the facts behind the opioid crisis, leading to room 2 with a living room setting. The environment is used to break the stigma against people who have substance use disorder. A living room is common ground we all have had at one point, and we used home videos mixed with current news reports to bridge the gap between the user and the next room, which simulates the feeling of being high while on heroin.
Room 3, as stated earlier, using both light and sound manipulations tries to simulate what the effects of heroin may be like. Our class researched the feelings and symptoms associated with a heroin high and did our best to reproduce the same effect. The result was more muted than what a former person with substance use disorder claimed it to be, for the purposes of education the unknown, the feelings got across.
Room 4 simulated the withdrawal from that high. This room uses poems and diary entries that we have gathered from our Days of Making with families that have lost loved ones due to the heroin crisis, where they can be met and talked with in Room 5. And finally, Room 6 is our exit way from the experience which features portraits and facts to have our audience drive the message one last time. That portraiture can be seen below.
