monotony and the flow state of mind
We started researching the different scales and dimensions of time, to strengthen and deepen our research and knowledge of the various facets of time. We came across a podcast by Eric Wargo called Time Loops where he explains his perception and thinking about time, in a way that has never been thought of before, giving us insights into a new dimension of time.
Time Loops by Eric Wargo
(https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/42-minutes/eric-wargo-time-loops-YKy0e2jAI64/)
Wargo is a science writer and talks about ESP claims which are extrasensory perception, also called sixth sense, which includes claimed reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. He connects this to the concept of time and causation which is the relationship of the mind to the information it will acquire in the future. According to Wargo, causation allows us to get a preview of things we will learn in the future. He goes on to introduce his theory of Retrocausation as an idea that an event can exert a causal influence on something that preceded it in time. Retrocausality, or backward causation, is a concept of cause and effect in which an effect precedes its cause in time and so a later event affects an earlier one. Time is a dimension and our experience of it makes time flow in only one direction. However, retro causation makes things non-linear.
Hearing Eric Wargo’s podcast on Time Loops allowed us to think and question the different non-linear dimensions of time and question how people will understand or accept his concept of retro causation. It brings about uncertainty and the idea that something ahead of us is a controlling factor could lead to uneasiness. We used this to continue exploring monotony.
In brainstorming about monotony and the opposite of monotony we came across a talk by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who talks about the state of flow. He describes it as a mental state in which you feel you are not doing ordinary routines, and he goes on to compare it to a kind of ecstasy where you step into an alternate reality.
With this information, Ana and I designed a workshop where we wanted to explore these states of mind being flow and monotony. We designed a 2 part workshop that had a set of questions to ask our participants being:
Workshop - Part 2
What activity has your full attention, feeling totally immersed and not losing focus.
What color comes to your mind when you think of that activity?
Imagine you are doing that activity, can you represent it in any way you like with the given materials?
How often do you do this activity?
Workshop - Part 1
How do you define monotony?
What activity do you find monotonous?
When you think of monotony, what is the colour that comes to your mind?
Imagine you are doing that monotonous activity, can you represent that in any way you like with the given materials
How often do you do this activity?
Workshop outcomes
THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE WORKSHOP
The workshop was a great starting point and allowed us to see how the perception of time varies from person to person. The outcome of representations for monotony and flow state were creative and different. However, through our thematic analysis, we realised how broad our topic was and we had to work on further synthesizing it. We felt the concept of monotony was very individualistic and deciding on a target group was not very easy. We decided to engage in reading and literature reviews to gather more knowledge and refine our way forward.