IRRITABILITY

Hello there!

How are you? I have been at the end of most art projects that it seems I am popping one out every day when they are the 'fruits of labour' started months and weeks ago. In the present case, years ago.

In this post, I am going to explain as best as I can what my ASYNC project IRRITABILITY is about. It begins with the original idea in 2020 when I published a video art titled IRRITABILITY. At first instance, It was designed as part of a card collection which would have had different versions. However, it was not practical for me to mint each card version. Coincidentally, video NFTs became possible so I opted for an animated MP4 version.

Still, it was always somewhere at the back of my mind that I did not capture the vision I had had.

Fast forward to 2022, I found myself in the same conditions that gave birth to IRRIBILITY. At the core is a tale of survival, only the strong survive and thrive by building the requisite mechanisms.

Why would anyone need mechanisms for survival? We come to IRRITABILITY, one of the characteristics of living things being their ability to respond to stimuli. A fantastic example would be the 'touch me not plant, Mimosa pudica, which forever fascinates me. So then stimulus provokes a reaction. One thinks of stimulus in different ways too. Passive or active, consistent, progressive,a one time spell... The response can also be classified as passive or active, consistent...

In this light, I envisioned different levels of response as well as the manifestations after the trigger. On this, there is a parallel psychological point of view on how the external world and happenings can affect us and then be expressed within and outside.

Another analogy that came to mind, loosely correlated, is that of boiling water. First, think of the heat applied as the stimulus, the temperature of the water would rise and if the heat continues(consistent, progressive), we might reach the boiling point. The corresponding psychological connotations are easy to pick.

Another point of view, through which this concept was developed is what happens when you apply strain(stimulus) to an elastic band. Now if consistent and progressive, you get to the yield point also known as the elastic limit. Cease stress on our metaphorical elastic band and it returns to a state of normalcy. Apply more stress after the limit and our band would lose the ability to go back to its original state and a little further is the breaking point.

As earlier stated, this is a tale of survival. So what if 'stress' and 'heat' is unavoidable, then control and management become an essential factor upon which different regulation mechanisms are developed (mostly at an individual level). Some of us like to listen to music, for instance, to 'cool off', others take a more confrontational route. However, some people cross the elastic limit but fail to yield. They evolved, better equipped, resistant if not completely immune.

Whether or not this makes any sense is another matter. It was something I thought about and build conceptual art on. I do hope I have answered the 'what's the big idea' of IRRITABILITY.

https://async.art/blueprints/6218119541cf4bcab12d7207/voke-irritability