First writing for 231 p2

In the last sensory ethnography project, I observed how people react to the activity of taking elevator.  I found that different people would gave different moods when experienced this routine activity.  As a researcher in the last project, I was following every participants’ movements and experiences without any disturbance.  However, design can extend, reduce or enhance our sensory and emotional capacities.  In other words, changing the qualities of material objects or contexts by the designed sensory experiments will influence people’s sensory and emotional abilities.  Therefore in this project 2, I will conduct another three sensory experiments involving taking elevator include feel, smell and sound to produce the comfort mood.  
      
According to Crowley (2001, p.142), the terminology of comfort is a modern incarnation as self-conscious satisfaction with the relationship between one's body and its immediate physical environment.  In order to create this comfort mood, I will use bean bag, fragrance, and speaker to conduct people into the sensory experiments of feel, smell and sound.  After the research finish, I will choose one of the experiments and justify the change I have made by relating this practices to wider social and cultural ‘structure of feeling’.  

In the first experiment, I will spray the fragrance in the elevator in order to change the smell of atmosphere .  The fragrance I am going to choose contains ingredients of Patchouli, Ylang Ylang and Lavender which give people instant comfort feeling.  The second experiment is changing the sound of elevator.  I will play the music that the participants prefer to replace the noise from the elevator.  The third sensory experiment will focus on the comfort mood of feel.  I will put a bean bag in the elevator to decorate a comfortable environment.  The participants can have a break by sitting on the bean bag when take the elevator.  

I believe the above experiments will all produce the comfort mood to the participants.  However, I will pick the third experiment as my final sensory experiment to justify the change I have made to wider social and cultural ‘structure of feeling’ due to its strong impacts.  

In the third experiment, the vision of bean bag in the elevator will motivate people to sit and make themselves comfortable.  When the elevator are moving, sitting on the beanbag will product a comfort mood of safety and a feeling of being home.   

I believe this bean bag experiment as Crowly (2001) describes, is an attribute and comfort applied to a middle ground between necessity and luxury.  It represents a common humanity on the basis of physical comfort.  As Williams (1961) points out, comfort is a structure of feeling.  My designed sensory experiment by putting a bean bag in the elevator proof that a structure of feeling can operate in the most delicate and least tangible part of this elevator activity.  The structure of feeling is the culture of sociality.  My sensory experiment justifies the existence of a particular cultural group in the society.  This group of people enjoy the comfort mood and wish to gain the safety through this mood.    


References:

Shove, E. (2004) Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organisation of Normality. London: Berg

Crowley, N.  (2001) The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities and Design in Early Modern Britain. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Williams, R. (1961) The Long Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin