MIMAMSA

The Amsterdam Light Festival invited artists, designers, engineers, architects, and all creative professionals and students from around the world to submit their proposals for its 2017 – 2018 edition. The theme for their Festival was: Existential.

The initial ideation phase for the theme was a bit tough for me as the theme Existential and existentialism was profound. I deep dived into the concept of existentialism and it messed up my head for a while.  Here is the take on what I got out from the theme

 

THE THEME

"If you are searching for that one person that will change your life, take a look in the mirror" Existentialism revolves around the meaning of life. All the decisions and choices you made in life gives meaning to your existence on earth. I feel the question of existence can be answered only through reflecting upon oneself - just like the fact that you can't ever see light, but the reflections it makes. This means you don't exist as long as you don't have reflections. Reflections are personalized and define who you are. As Sartre proposed, we should take responsibility for all our life choices and move on decisively and not be affected by what others might think or imply about our-self.

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THE CONCEPT

Mimamsa in Sanskrit means “reflection” or “Critical Investigation”. The concept makes the visitor reflect upon themselves. The main idea here is that "what you seek in the eyes of others is your own reflection". Mimamsa is the place where you see reflections of yourself across different eyes. The visitor is surrounded by eyes which symbolize all the world noises around him, be it other people, society, religion, institutions etc. When the visitor sees himself being reflected through the eyes of others, he gets to realize how close to oneself he is. The choices he made in life define who he is and everything else in life doesn't matter.

 

THE VISITOR EXPERIENCE 

The visitor walks into Mimamsa Installation and he is surrounded by eyes. There is a spotlight defining the spot where he is guided to stand and then when he looks at the eyes surrounding him, he gets to see reflections of himself being reflected off the various kinds of mirrors fixed inside these eyes. These reflections constitute various noises in your world around and how they perceive you. The idea is that the person should realize that none of these reflections across different eyes matter and what matters is he himself.

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THE TECHNICAL PRINCIPLE

Rather than using light itself as a medium, Mimamsa uses refection across mirrors as a medium to communicate to the visitor to reflect upon himself. The Spotlight lights up the visitor from the top. This light then reflects it across to the numerous mirrors installed in the eyes around the spotlight. These reflections denote various viewpoints of the society around the person.  The installation uses a single light source to light up space and uses reflection to attain the required effect on the mirrors installed.