So recently we have been assigned our latest project which is the final of the year and an important one! Our Final Major Project (FMP) is self directed and chosen by us. I have to decide what it is I want to look into and everything else to follow. Upon learning that It was completely up to me, I was instantly lost in the idea that we can literally do anything we want, and I don’t even know where to start to narrow that down!

I’m unsure as to what area I’d like to focus upon because I’d love to do it all really as I still haven’t picked an area of design I particularly enjoy the most. After a talk for some direction, It was suggested I consider interests I have outside the design world that could inspire this project as a subject. And instantly I thought of Dance.

And then they asked me, ‘Why dance?’. Well that’s an easy question, I dance to escape and empty my mind. It’s the only thing I can do to completely forget everything, and be fully immersed in the moment and movement of dancing. Which led our discussion onto ‘Flow’, a completely new term for me!

So what is ‘Flow’? And how can I use this term to direct my project?

Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does. 

Nakamura and Csíkszentmihályi identify the following six factors as encompassing an experience of flow^.

1. intense and focused concentration on the present moment
2. merging of action and awareness
3. a loss of reflective self-consciousness
4. a sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity
5. a distortion of temporal experience, one’s subjective experience of time is altered
6. experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as autotelic experience

Those aspects can appear independently of each other, but only in combination they constitute a so-called flow experience.

When I read about this term, I was instantly inspired about where I could take this project. Brainstorming I thought of possibly interviewing people to discover their escapism and how they achieve ‘Flow’ and create something from this. I could document my own experience of flow, or explore into dance and other dancers and their experience of dance as an optimal escapism. How I would execute all the research, is what I’m not so sure about!