Harvesting Anxiety



Media Installation, 3’40’’ 





There are many different responses to anxiety which are non-verbal. Nervous state of mind can be represented as heavy breathing, strong heartbeat, sweat, and fidgety body gestures like shaking legs, biting fingernails or pacing back and forth. Nervous feeling is generally regarded as a negative thing to overcome and those by-products of anxiety make one seem less confident.

However, those by-products are taking an important role of coping strategies to lower the feeling of anxiety and to soothe oneself. Furthermore, if we investigate each element closely, we can discover potentials and productive aspects from them.
Repeated movements can generate electricity as they did in the early machinery age and sweat can act as a source of water.

I created this imaginary narrative which can harvest anxiety to reveal the hidden values of the by-products of anxiety.

In this fictional world, harvested by-products of anxiety are converted to other resources such as electrical power, water and kinetic energy based on plausible reasoning like human powered generator or distillation system.