Project Three : Gut Doll Project Initiation

Introduction:

During my stay in Korea I have heard on the news of many suicides of famous TV stars and singers. But it’s not only in the celebrities sphere. Last week a 10 years old child took his own life by hanging himself because he felt his grades weren’t good enough. That along with the infamous numbers of working middle aged men that commit suicide when they are faced with loneliness or worse : shame such as unemployment. Celebrities, salary men, young people, students : Korea has become one of the countries with the highest suicide rate and some even say the highest rate of suicides of all developed countries.

Also, Korea recently saw its alcohol consumption rise significantly although it already had the record of highest alcohol consumption per inhabitants (with an average of 53 360ml soju bottles per inhabitant).

Suicides and alcoholism are two important demonstrators that show that there is something going wrong in a society. But what is it ?

I think the answer is the pressure. There is pressure for children to get into the best schools, for workers to produce more income and to obey orders from hierarchy, stress from extra long working hours, social inegalities and the loss of tangible marks in a very changing society. (Article on korean economics and how it infers on social relationships on The Grand Narrative)

There are lots of guides about how to manage stress but I don’t think they are any effective and finally they don’t address the same kind of pressuring.

Computers and Stress.

Some people like to play video games and think it’s relieving them from stress because they get caught in the game so badly that they feel nothing else exists and they slowly leave their real life identities on the side (World of Warcraft, MMORPG, Second Life). But it’s not really helping and can lead to further more stress because of the game itself or worse : real addiction and even death as some people even die of playing too much.

A pressure situation similar in Asian Countries and What humans really like to do : hurt other people.

The South Korean stress situation actually resembles a lot the Japanese current situation : same pressure for education on young people, pressure on women to stop working to marry and have children, pressure on professional aspects for working men. Looking up articles on social pressure in Japanese society : I learnt about the story of Akira Hareruya aka Nagurareya.

Photo by Takanori Kobayashi

Mr. Hareruya is a retired boxer who lost all his money and has so much debts that he has to go in the streets of Tokyo and offer his services as a human punch ball . For 1000 Yen, people can punch him for one minute without him retaliating. I was very surprised at first that he would get any “customers” at all for doing that.

But I read in the 2002 interview of Mr. Hareruya that since he started his street shows in 1999, he thinks about 10 000 people came literally to hit him. The huge number made me think that obviously there are quite a few Japanese salary men that think it’s a relief to hit someone even if it’s a stranger and you pay for it.

Although it is considered very wrong, I think a lot of people feel better when they can unload all their frustrations on someone else and transfer that pressure. Since when you are not high-ranked in a company’s hierarchy it is highly unlikely that you have a subordinate that you can make miserable or in a more caring way, that it is not socially acceptable to pass on to another human being all your frustration and pains. So I think that having a digital subordinate to hurt would probably be amusing and stress relieving.

Using computers to get stress-relief by being evil

I feel that computers which were designed to provide for humans beings and that are not yet sentient beings, should be able to provide relief from frustrations and pressure.

In lots of games like ‘god-like’ games such as Populous, Dungeon Keeper or Black and White by Peter Molyneux, action games such as Fable or strategy games such as Sim City, Age of Empire, or The Sims, game-users have always tried to use the game differently not following the rules to level up and follow the game synopsis but to act completely evil : torturing loyal minions, provoking volcanoes on top of your own town, slapping villagers, killing off children wandering in the streets of calm little towns, having your beloved sims take a swim in the pool and then removing the pool ladder…

The computer could be some kind of voodoo doll.

There are some existing voodoo doll programs that enable you to place pins and needles on dull straw voodoo dolls that emit the same crying noise each time. But I think it doesn’t allow any relief (nor pleasure) and has a very narrow approach. (exemple 1)

I think the most relieving part in the voodoo doll isn’t the ‘psychological’ part of putting needles in the doll but the visual of the pain endured by the doll which proves you the transfer of the frustration and pain has been completed and which doesn’t exist when you use a real doll and put needles in it. Voodoo dolls come from Haitian Shamanism but I have also seen Korean Straw Dolls used in Gut ceremonials of Korean Shamanism . Guts were held to cleanse people’s souls or to assure prosperity and well-being.

What I would like to do :

Therefore I would like the computer to relief from pressure by offering an alternate ‘torturing’ experience more vivid than what is currently used providing different and unexpected reactions to induce an excitement in the user to see what reaction the character will have to the torture and “cleanse” the user’s mood.