Applied Instincts

I conducted word association tests with a list of "Controlled and "Inscripted" words the other night on my dad, mom, sister, boyfriend, and Ai. I was curious how each would respond differently to the set of "Controlled" words, and what reactions and associations the "Inscripted" would bring up in them.

I initially created this test to record the instinctual responses to words that instill fear and anxiety. From those answers, I was then going to compare the responses from men to the ones from women to see if there was a distinct juxtaposition between the answers due to sex.

Some of the responses to the "Inscripted" list initiated the reaction I was looking for, but for the most part what stuck out to me was how everyone had their unique association to each word playing off of the polysemy - the capacity for a sign, symbol, or word to have multiple related meanings. This phenomenon amazed me, how could people with the same vernacular have such different responses to a single word?

What I discovered was the plasticity of our perceptions, and how are context is always changing. I found the playfulness in the collaboration to be inspiring so then I took the experiment a step further by adding images that I associate to the responses of the test.

The collaboration process:
Me →Them → Me

The material:
Word → Idea → Image

The result:
Truth → Bias → Perception