My original aim was to complete research and development on a project for a story gathering and confessional tuk tuk.

Looking at how shared confessions or stories can positively contribute to a Community.

Explore ways that people hold onto secrets. How we judge the weight of our own confessions and how our stories can sometimes shape our lives.

Develop the tuk tuk to become a vessel for confessions. Looking at space for self-reflection and a space that can connect us to a wider community. Develop an experience that impacts in a positive way. 

Experiment with ways that augmented realities can heighten and raise the quality of the experience.

To develop the work with 40 participants over the development period to help shape the processes and find out what people most want to get from taking part in an experience similar to the one proposed in the TUK TUK. 

I aimed to hold 4 engagement sessions over 4 months and invite 10 participants to attend each session.

Actual Activity

Zoom Workshop

I ran a virtual workshop over zoom, with a group of 19 people (ages 18 - 47), from an XR community that I’m a part of.

I spoke about my ideas and ambitions for the project. Who I wanted to engage and where I would like to take the experience. The type of experience I wanted people to have and we explored types of XR tech which could work for the project. I took recommendations from XR work that they had produced or seen and how that could be adapted.

Finally we spoke about the conditions required for them to want to take part in the experience. We spoke about the challenges such as people’s boundaries, creating a safe space and authenticity.

Artist Peer Group Meetings

In 2020 - 2021 I met 3 times with my artist peer network group, taking an introverted look at why I was compelled to create this work. Their experiences from different backgrounds and artistic practices. How they have tackled existential themes within their work. One member Antonia Beck who is a theatre maker has created a show about death and I invited her over to my studio to help me workshop ideas around elements of storytelling and ways to engage with people in the first instance and moving between spaces. From a public space into a private space and tools we can use to mentally prepare people for this.

Community Workshops

I’ve run 7 in person workshops with community members and peers. Engaging with 36 people. Ages 30 - 86.

The workshops were small and I worked with existing groups. I offered quite simple craft activities, but we managed to have very deep and personal conversations around their experiences with confession and ritual.

I took notes during the sessions to keep responses anonymous but also because it was identified early on in the project that written words would become part of the language of the finished work. A common language that is tangible but still anonymous. Early on, one person said that they could be more honest with themselves if they wrote something as it was viewed as more of a product which could be removed from themselves. 

I was a little surprised by people's willingness to share intimate things about themselves. There were definitely extremes of opinions which stood out and I think these are what I found most interesting. For the most part, people’s responses were quite similar, such as (I was careful not to mention the word guilt) but it was a strong recurring theme in many women’s lives. Another example is that most people didn’t associate the word ritual to their lives, but rather regarded it as something foreign to them with negative connotations. 

I found that regardless of people’s current views on religion, people who had gone to church as a child (like me) often enjoyed revisiting those memories, they often talked about scents and the light, the temperature inside the buildings. People could remember what they wore. Even when there were conversations about the desire to have never experienced Catholic guilt and who they might have been without it. There were many interesting dichotomies raised between their experiences and beliefs today. Many people felt that they felt more spiritual with age. 

Studio Peers

As the project has progressed, I’ve asked my peers based at The Castlefield New Art Space, Warrington to give feedback on the experience and new elements have been created and tested. 

Other creatives and skilled workers

I’ve worked with Liverpool artist Julian Taylor, engineer Charles Pethica to install an electric engine into the tuk tuk. It’s powered by 4 12V DC batteries, charged by mains power.

New steering, brakes and extra paneling was added to the vehicle. It has the option for elements to work completely remotely.

I had a local electrician add a mains convertor and connect LED lights.

I’ve worked with Pauline Harris to upholster the tuk tuk. 

Antonia Beck to look at storytelling and ways to engage audiences. 

Making and learning new skills

I built a detachable roof onto the tuk tuk, creating a large domed space. I created an interior for participants to sit and a floating projection screen. I took inspiration from confessional booths and places of worship and sanctuary into the design.

I completed a one day automata course with Jim Bond, exploring metal work and kinetic sculptures including welding. 

I completed a course over 3 months to learn Unity 3D, a software app used for making Games, film and VR environments. 

I tested out using VR inside the tuk tuk and found that while it was interesting, it actually took away from the experience of being inside the vehicle. 

The tech was new for some people and there was often a lot of time spent adjusting headsets which broke down the illusion of being inside this otherworldly space.

It became apparent early on that it needed to be a sanctuary and the VR felt intrusive. 

There was also the issue of hygiene brought up a few times, relating to COVID and people felt unsafe, even after wiping the headset down. 

I experimented with AR, while people thought it was quite cool, it was not very accessible to everyone.

I decided instead to project an animation into the space. This was challenging due to the restrictive size, so I experimented with mirrors and explored tricks such as pepper’s ghost. 

Research 

I questioned why I felt compelled to create the work and after coming across this St. Augustine quote.

”The power of the memory is prodigious, my God. It is a vast, immeasurable sanctuary.”

I took a deep dive into my past.

I revisited physical places from my childhood, such as my old church and places I used to play as a child. I was interested in how I would feel in these places and the sensory elements that would trigger these reactions.

I’ve realised that I don’t look out at the world the same way that I did, I don’t notice things the same way. 

I wondered who I would be today without these past experiences and who I really am. How connections with spaces are developed, and why they’re so important to me. 

The older I get, the less new things I encounter, the less I notice. So I was interested in how I can start to take notice.  

I went to church, I took part in Buddhist meditation, sat in fields, by the sea, listened to YouTube meditations, sat in bedrooms and sheds with an aim to seek how others experienced sanctuary and how I would feel in these spaces. Was it personal, or could sanctuary be universal?

I looked at iconography and learnt about its importance to the church. An interesting theory I came across was that they strengthened the beauty of religion. I became interested in what iconography could represent my own spirituality, or life. I spent time designing and painting symbols onto the tuk tuk and working with the symbols in the animation.

I noticed that there are already lots of symbols in my life, in my home. And that I had a lot of repeating symbols in my artwork, for example the tetrahedron. 

During this period, I completed a project called All These Latchford Souls which invited my own community to share their memories and insights about the place that they live. 

I created lanterns with shapes taken from platonic forms which have links with sacred geometry, here representing connection. The kinetic sculpture rotated and had intersecting symbols, which can remind us of the potential power and harmony we hold when we unite energies. 

The most prevalent form in the work was the icosahedron which is the Platonic symbol for water.  

“Latchford is completely surrounded by water, you have to cross a bridge to leave”.

Through the collected stories, there is an understanding of how the geographical features of this area have helped to shape and strengthen the identity of Latchford residents.

This is just one example, but over the period I began to notice definite conceptual links across my work and it felt an important opportunity to use the icons to visually link work as a way of telling a wider story. 

I researched confession and burning ceremonies and found that the act was prevalent in many societies. I looked at the importance of ritual in different religious and what modern day rituals existed.

For the animation I visited churches, took photographs of textures and patterns found in the spaces and manipulated and animated the digital assets. I’ve used a combination of photographs, Photoshop, After Effects and Exactly (an AI tool), Unity 3D, touch designer and Polycam.  

I wrote a script inspired from the conversations I had in the workshops. Using similar language to that used. There is also a call to action, where the narrator asks the participant to write a burden or a desire down on a card and place it in a box for a symbolic burning as a way of release.

I created a soundtrack using sample sounds found online and Audition. 

I’ve been experimenting with scents, such and incense and frankincense and other essential oils.  

Feedback has been positive, and I’ve found that people are willing to actively take part regardless of their own ideas around confession, which I thought would be a barrier initially. There is room for improvement and refinement. I plan to continue to review different elements of the tuk tuk in the coming months. 

The anonymously written burdens or desires will be displayed close to the tuk tuk for people to read.