Unfolding throughout 2024, Sense explored collective sense-making processes, aiming to encourage community cohesion and empowerment through extended cognition techniques.
The project involved innovative experiences both for the artists, who collaborated with neuroscience, psychology and communication professionals and experimented with neurofeedback technology, as well as for the audience, who underwent a collective cognitive process together with the actresses during the immersive show.
Sense had 7 representations at Metropolis Theatre in Bucharest, benefiting around 800 people.
Creative team:
Artistic Direction: Emilia Paunescu
Performers: Ioana Flora & Silvana Negrutiu
Music: Alexandrina Hristov
Script: Emilia Paunescu, Monica Cure, with the contribution of the actresses
Interactivity design: Ygreq Interactive
Lighting Design: Raul Pacurar
We often look at the idea of meaning as something fixed, something we have to find. We search for meaning as a truth, when in fact it is something in constant motion, something we create. Through relationships.
Neuroscience reveals that our minds naturally think together with others and can be expanded by intentionally involving others in the processes of meaning-making. In the frame of a fictional story, the show provides a context for the audience and artists to experience this captivating way in which we shape meaning together. Audience and actors negotiate how the story unfolds, leading to one of the 6 different possible endings.
Each representation ends with a collective dialogue, guided by a communication specialist, who helps the participants integrate the experience they shared.
The process
The work integrates new perspectives from neuroscience, psychology and communication, especially around the concepts of extended cognition and predictive processing. The experience of the show is built through the interdisciplinary collaboration of the creative team with professionals in these fields.
A part of the artists travelled to Luxembourg, with the support of a Culture Moves Europe grant, where they explored perception and sense-making with reputed neuroscientist Prof. Dr. Michel Mittelbronn, head of neuropathology at Laboratoire National de Santé and Centre for Systems Biomedicine, and the team at Emile Mayrisch hospital, collaborating also with Berlin-based collective FrauVonDa. Later in the process, the creative team was aided by artist and researcher Albert Barque Duran and specialists at Mind Architect.
The project SENSE was co-financed by The Administration of the National Cultural Fund.
The project does not necessarily represent the position of The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The Administration of the National Cultural Fund is not responsible for the content of the project or how the project results may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.
Partners: Metropolis Theatre, Mind Architect, The Embassy of Spain in Romania, Galerie 39, The Good Life Project, Ibis Bucharest Politehnica, Veruvis.
Main media partner: Radio Guerrilla
Media partners: Radio Romania Cultural, Adevarul de Weekend, Revista BIZ, Haute Culture, Zile si Nopți, Observator Cultural, IQads, Mindcraft Stories, Ziarul Metropolis, LiterNet, HAPP.ro, AndreeaVerde.com