Christian Nold is an artist, designer and educator working to develop new participatory models for communal representation. Emotion Mapping is a multi year research project that over 1000 people have taken part in and which brings together public participation with advanced technologies. Nold has developed a device which records the wearer’s perspiration on their fingers, which is a simple indicator of their emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location using a GPS (Global Positioning System). People re-explore their local area by walking the neighbourhood with the device and on their return, the data is fed into a computer that uses specially designed software to visualise an Emotion Map that shows points of high and low arousal. When lots of people take part in the project, communal emotion maps are constructed that are full of people’s personal observations which show the places that people feel strongly about and truly visualises the social space of a community. For EMOTIONAL SYSTEMS the artist has been invited to work with the local artistic community to create an Emotion Map of Florence. One of the main questions raised by Nold through his work is how concepts of community and environment change when we become aware of our own and each others intimate body states.

Florence Workshop Participants: Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara (Oliwia Blawat, Roberta Morelli, Gabriele Piva, Benedetta Sabatini), Les Flottants (Natascia Bascherini, Delia Barbieri, Francesca Nottoli, Alessandro Pasquali, Clemente Pestelli, Gionatan Quintini), Cartografia Resistente (Serena Fanara, Lorenzo Tripodi, Iacopo Zetti), Teresa Ciambellini, Manuela Mancioppi, Fiorella Nicosia.

Coordination of the Workshop: Matteo Marangoni

Videodocumentation of the Workshop: Jacopo Mariani, Pietro Paolini