“Still Waters Run Deep is meant to destigmatize and re-think storytelling around emotions, mental health and neurodiversity, by exploring the intersectionality of old and new storytelling. My aim as a digital designer and creative technologist is to generate an individual prejudice-free space which places a great value on the personal journey of each individual, while holding space for collective belonging.
A project created by Teodora Serbanescu & Polina Ami Kosele
Sound Design by Oliver Wu
About the project
Still Waters Run Deep has been mapped out as a 2-part experimental creative project.
The immersive experience has been designed as an audio-visual alternative educational practice and has built upon a continuous collaboration with professional therapists based in UK or Germany. Collaboration with credited therapists and clinicians throughout the development of our project has been vital for the credibility and accuracy of data, having discussed about what a safe digital environment looks like and what digital tools can be efficiently implemented in the alternative therapy sector.
Furthermore, the Zine represents a complimentary feature of the immersive meditation which explores the impact of water in people’s lives and how they heal and express their emotions through water-therapy.
SWRD is best experienced as an audiovisual meditation, offering a pause between moments of activity.
The 9-minute immersive meditation has been designed to help Neurodivergents focus their minds on their tasks and still be able to incorporate SWRD in their routine, as often as they would like.
As far as medical research proves and certified by therapists such as Maike whom we have received invaluable advice from, Neurodivergents need activities which keep their brains occupied at all times. Otherwise, their brains usually pick-up memories which might come with a lot of anxiety baggage or negative thoughts.
Characteristics of our Practice
Explores Neurological Dispositions.
As discussed with Maike and other sound certified therapists based in London, neurological dispositions do not come and go- they shape our environment, how we think and our life choices.
Old Storytelling meets New Storytelling.
We have been looking at an on-going niche neurological condition and tried our best to find the silver lining and draw a creative and less scary approach around it.
By finding the balance between the Immersive Digital Experience and our Zine, which comes in 2 formats: digital and hard-copy, we choose to build a new type of creative connection between people and new stories of others, instead of offering a limited overview analysis of a very isolated condition.
Storytelling as a bridging experience
This is how our digital zine came into being. We wanted to create a more accessible, lightweight extension of our practice—one that complements the final experience. For us, foregrounding real stories from real people is the most vital part of building Still Waters Run Deep. Ultimately, visuals serve as a facilitating medium, allowing an inspiring narrative to take center stage.
It can be accessed from home.
Perceptual differences are very rarely accommodated in institutions such as schools.
“The majority thinks in order to complete a task you have to focus on one thing at a time, otherwise you will do a bad job, where music or sounds are seen as a distraction” (Maike Preibing).
Therefore, deconstructing what is seen as normal or as society emotional norms has played a huge role throughout our practice development. We looked at how sounds and visuals influence each other, rather than analyze them separately.
Talking with Maike and Zoe, both Therapists working with Neurodivergent patients, Neurodivergent themselves & Podcast creators, they recommended watching Episode 26 of her Podcast: Ordinal Linguistic Concept, Shape & Mathematical Synesthesia.
Ordinal Linguistic Personification (OLP)
OLP is a form of Synesthesia in which ordered sequences, such as ordinal numbers, days, months and letters are associated with personalities or genders.
Maike claimed that in her career as a therapist, patients shared that having OLP makes their world extremely social and never boring. Therefore, we considered that incorporating a silhouette of some sort in the final 360° underworld experience would be alluring to neurodivergents.
In conversation with Zoe & Maike
On Neurodivergents, Synesthesia & The Relationship between Colours, Shapes and Sounds.
SWRD GOES PARIS.
Still Waters Run Deep has been selected by the Sorbonne Institute to be shown at Ircam Paris Forum in March 2024.
ZINE
RELEASE 01
