Looking at Santiago Genovés' raft experiment and discerning appropriate research context, goals, roles and insights.
The Raft - Marcus Linden (2018)
- Context - Set up after Vietnam war, after the researcher was in a plane hijacking, - 1973, What makes people have conflict?
- Abstract - ‘in a crisis, humans show their true behaviour, that’s the way we can learn.’
- Microcosm of the world, a variety of ethnicities and backgrounds.
- Consent - Photographer hired, but was forced to participate in experiment (without telling before – question of morality of the study + consent)
- Contract written and phrased as a ‘slave contract’.
- Thorough screening of participants - I.e., Psychological tests with leading questions like ‘what the thing would be to push you over the edge and kill somebody?’
- Montage - The editing of the documentary juxtaposes the creepy dialogue of the researcher alongside anecdotal scenes of happiness and peace in the group.
- False Methods - Bold assumptions from potentially false methods – drawing a tree everyday = unlocking their aggressive tendencies.
An important Note on Psychosonogeography:
At one stage in the documentary that we watched, an African American woman whom took part in the experiment has an emotional conversation with a fellow crew mate. She recalls her experience, when she realised that she was taking the same journey across the ocean that the ancestors of her culture would have taken when they were being transported in slave ships, that she could hear their screams from the water at night.
This was an important takeaway from this documentary, that through her cultural association with the expansive 'non place' of that part of the ocean, she had a significant emotional experience which was characterised specifically by sound. And by a sound that haunts her no less.
The sea became for her a reservoir of memories that she had a specific relationship towards. These experiences would usually happen at night, where the darkness invites introspection. I can only imagine that the in the reduced light, the sea would have had a spectral appearance itself.
This emotional influence caused by the space has ties to psychogeography and psychosonogeography, concepts which I will revisit from my research into my bachelors dissertation.
The experience described reminded me of sonic works such as Lawrence Abu Hamdari's Earwitness inventory which explored sounds in association with memories and providing a deeper insight into testimony through specific sound correlations. HIs work Earwitness Theatre specifically composed sounds from the testimonies of prisoners of a blindfolded prison north of Damascus. retelling accounts through sound alone. Even Susan Philipsz' Turner prize winning work 'lowlands' explored this idea of psychogeography, marking a history of sound art's association with memories and place.
Application to research practices
- Ethicality of research, always prioritise physical and mental safety of all participants
- Let participants be aware of what is expected of them before the research.
- Do not try and assert your research angle on the research but observe and document an unbiased account of the findings.
- Adverse data to research is just as important as supporting data.
Structure of Research
- Question: ‘To what extent do crisis situations bring out animalistic behaviours in humans?’
‘crisis situations’ as an event characterised by isolation and stress.
‘Animalistic behaviours’ as violence and sex
(A predatory fetishization of trauma)
- Leading question - as the research was not seen from an unbiased lens
- Insistence of Interference - I think that likely his insistence on a bias, led him to want to control as much of the experiment as he could personally, and that in this insistence to operate within the experiment may have interfered with the research data.
- Sabotage - In his pressing questions asking about specific actions and feelings, the nature of the experiment is revealed to the participant. Also, when he creates an antithetical tension between himself and the participants, the participants may with their knowledge of the purpose of the experiment, choose for it to fail.
- Perhaps, the question should have been: ‘What behaviours emerge when a group of diverse strangers are isolated in a stressful situation?’
- The Documentary seemed to have the research question of ‘What was the extent of the impact that Santiago’s raft experiment had on its participants?’
- Slightly biased in hindsight due to scandals after the event and accounts of participants post the researcher’s death.
- Peace - He claimed his goal was peace
- Yet he tried hard to disrupt the peace
- Therefore, he believed that the experiment was about the re-establishing of peace through an acceptance of human primal natures.
Research Methods:
- Thorough screening of participants - I.e., Psychological tests, attractive people, design of the raft.
- High emphasis on less objective methods i.e. drawing a picture of a tree every day and from that, ascertaining that there was unexpressed aggression building up in people etc.
- Questioning the participants every day, asking about how they were feeling, and with leading questions like ‘what the thing would be to push you over the edge and kill somebody?
- Making a lot of graphs such as a period tracker for each of the women etc. – its good that the researcher is covering a wide net with the research data they are taking into question. However, the ethical issue of consent is raised again.
- Perhaps a better way to fulfil the question was not to be involved personally and keeping a professional relationship with the workers and participants.
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Benchmark qualities of a good research question:
Biting the BISCUIT:
- Big picture reflects an intellectual ambition
- Intelligibility – without disciplinary jargon
- Specific focus
- Concisely formulated
- Unbiased angle – open to multiple answers
- Interesting – with specific applicability
- Timed appropriately – does not rely on future resource
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Space vs Volume
In architecture the space inside a room is described as its volume.
Space cannot be contained or sectioned off. Another way that the white cube which extradites the outside world would fail to isolate sound.
architecture is the attempt to enclose space
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Activation of sound
As sound is not realised until it is heard, in a sense the sound dies when the last person stops hearing it. Defining it as an anomaly which cannot be formed or kept at a position higher than those who hear it, combatting ideas of elitism in art.
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