“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. Our aim as digital designers and technicians is to generate an individual prejudice-free space which places a great value on the personal journey of each individual who joins the experience, while preserving a sense of community.”
A project created by Teodora Serbanescu & Polina Ami Kosele
Sound Design by Oliver Wu
A little about our project.
Still Waters Run Deep has been mapped out as a 2-part experimental creative project, designed by two digital directors who are currently students at Royal College of Art.
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 might work best as an audio-visual alternative meditation used between tasks.
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 is the process, not the final result.
This is how our Digital Zine was born. We wanted to have a more popular and light-weighted version of our practice which would complement the final experience. For us, shining light on real stories which coming from real people is the most valuable part of building Still Waters Run Deep. At the end of the day, we want Visuals to only be a a facilitating medium for an inspiring storyline to take a centre stage space.
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 us 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
Release 01 of our Zine takes a dive into the holistic attributes of water, the significant impact water has on how humans express their emotions & ways in which New Storytelling can be used to rethink social structures.
SWRD Zine is a complimentary feature of the immersive experience, facilitating the reader with an easier accessibility into the stories which inspired the Underwater universe.
SOUND DESIGN
All sounds have beeen produced in collaboration with Oliver Wu.
All visuals and audios have been produced simultaneously, being interconnected with the storyline through beat, pitch and vibration.