flow

According to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (1975; 1990), flow is a mental state of completely focused motivation. The experience of flow is characterized by being immersed in an activity, by a loss of feeling of self-consciousness and a distorted sense of time, which leads to the merging of action and awareness. Flow is thus described as a deep focus on nothing but the activity – not even on oneself or one's emotions.

In this work, I am interested in flow as a group, rather than an individual, state. What happens when many individual agents experience a state of flow while being together? How does that affect their behavior as a group? And does that lead to group flow or to chaos?

Inspired by the flow of thousands of people pouring in and out of the subway in megapolises like Tokyo or Beijing, in this installation I explore whether separate entities that happen to occupy the same position in space and time ultimately move as one homogeneous mass.

This installation consists of two surfaces, one static on the ground, and the other - 30 cm above the first. 4mm iron wires are fixed to the lower surface, pass through the upper surface, and reach 2.00 meters of height. The upper surface slides about 0.6cm sideways in a twisting movement induced by slow-motion motor. This causes the wires to move rhythmically, each in individual flow. After a while it causes movement of different intensity, potentially creating group chaos. Read Less