Materializing: In-Depth and Long Term

[Phases of work] to make emotions visible and tangible

New to Materializing? Go here first.

What is it for?

It is a process for creating long-term impact through Materializing.

Impact

This tool enables participants to articulate how they feel about certain values through the process of making and engages them to co-create desired interventions.

Participants’ State of Mind

reflective, creative, collaborative, introspective

Level of Complexity (1–5)

5

Time for Participation

2 weeks to 12+ months

Emotion-Centered Design

Use Cases

The following illustrates Materializing in action and more specifically, how In-Depth and Long Term Materializing can be practiced.

1. Materializing: Clinical Therapy Skills
2. Materializing: Office Values

1. Materializing: Clinical Therapy Skills

Making visible and tangible parents’ learning experience with new family therapy skills

Project
Parent-Child Interaction Therapy at Child Mind Institute. Myriam Diatta, Matter–Mind Studio

About the Project
In partnership with a New York City-based child mental health institution, this approach was used to supplement the existing program by designing a set of tools to help parents to remember to practice their skills more often at home. The series of therapy observations, workshops, and interviews with clinicians and parents were conducted over the period of two years.

Image Description: Father and researcher sit down to complete a Bonding Framework and timeline to discuss their current struggles, joys, and learnings from attending therapy and practicing new therapy skills at home. Project and photos by Myriam Diatta

Image Description: Materialized therapy objects in different locations in the home. A yellow counter-top sized box sits on a kitchen counter next to chopped vegetables, a circular blue mirror inside a transparent sphere hangs over a breakfast table, and a highly reflective foot-long tube sits on a coffee table surrounded by small toys. Project and photos by Myriam Diatta

2. Materializing: Office Values

Making visible and tangible parents’ learning experience with new family therapy skills

Project
NEW INC Values Objects, Matter-Mind Studio

NEW INC is the first museum-led cultural incubator, founded in 2014 by the New Museum in New York City. It supports an interdisciplinary cohort of members–creative practitioners developing businesses and building projects. It’s a community aiming to “foster cultural value, not just capital value.”

In this project, co-workers talk through their experience and community values in the office space. The occupants of this office expressed values like diversity, being present, generosity and others are important to them. A designer and facilitator then conducts a workshop, co-designs objects and installs objects in the work space with participants. With the value objects installed in the office space, co-workers bump into and interact with the objects, prompting them to notice, think about, and act out the community values more often.

Image description: Artists, technologists, and designers that occupy this office space use the Materialized objects that represent their community values. One is a covering on a stair railing, another is a framed transparent mirror on a desk, and the other is a translucent canopy across two sofas. Photos by Myriam Diatta

Image description: Left: Participants share, debate, and learn from each other about what each community value means to them. Right: A Feedback Mechanism sits in the common area of the office. Some participants have made submission to the station. They’ve written about their experience with each of the Materialized objects they live with in the office space. Photos by Myriam Diatta

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