Smile

People coming to my studio during Forth Valley Open Studios expecting to buy "stuff" were in for a surprise.

They found themselves immersed in an interactive artwork with themselves as the "star".

And did it work? Yes.

So what was it? Well research shows that we are hard wired for optimism- "The Optimism Bias" by Tali Sharot- and a visiting psychologist to my studio from Stirling University confirmed it too saying there are numerous other papers on the subject.

So I asked people to smile. This was then emailed to them on my iPhone - they did this themselves thus avoiding any chance of errors-. In return they got a pic of themselves and I got a photo for my giant photomontage "Smile".

Simple yet very effective.
Now I discover Yoko Ono has a similar project in the Serpentine gallery, London.

And the Park gallery in Falkirk has an exhibition called "Smile".
All I can say is that there is an awful lot of smiling going on despite the economic doom and gloom and promise of euro meltdown.


But then we are hard-wired for optimism.