The mad mind as space
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Date
2025
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UMT.Lahore
Abstract
This thesis takes you on an artistic journey, unraveling through the chaos and a series of intense emotions that form the mind of a “Mad genius”, where emotions meet interiors to create an unsettling, almost abstract design that maps out the journey of a creative mind. My conceptual research relies solely upon the complexities of human emotions and mental distortions interwoven with creativity, which all creative people could relate to. These feelings, when enhanced to an extent, blur the line between madness and creative genius. The backbone of my research is Vincent Van Gogh, Louis Wain, and Salvador Dali. All are known
as geniuses in art, but did they actually feel that way from the inside? Or was it just an outcome of what state of mind they were in? My main interest area was what actually went on in those great minds and how their lives influenced their creative process. After doing case studies of various creative people and general observations, I've concluded that there is a series of events directly linked with emotions that lead to mad genius. I've formulated them as “The Seven Stages of Madness” that every creative mind could relate to, or maybe somewhere in their journey of becoming a mad genius.
1. Love – the strings of your heart connecting to something, that’s the first step into the abnormality of thinking and feeling, a slight deviation in one’s mind and judgment.
2. Obsession – the deviation taking a turn, clouds your mind and soul, a great strike of motivation that makes you achieve something abnormally.
3. Deprivation – Associated with loss, this leaves a hole in one’s soul.
4. Isolation – Isolating oneself from social interactions, nothing could fill that hole.
5. Distortion- the deviation altering one’s brain chemistry
6. Hallucination – The reality that one’s brain starts making itself as a result of the deviation.
7. Freedom – the freedom from oneself, becoming selfless, and doing things for the sake of doing them. Madness is a slight deviation from normal mind functioning, and after research, I've concluded that there is no way that a creative person could be fully sane. My motive is to translate these complex stages into the language of space (interiors). Keeping this in view, I've designed two units, both with an artistic motive. One is the Arts Academy for Beginners, which also provides a platform for struggling artists to exhibit their work. The academy is designed on the motive of the rawness of such complex feelings combined, and has more of a
silence after a big storm feel. The second unit is an artist residency, based completely on the portrayal of the “Seven Stages of Madness” individually, and has a more chaotic and storytelling feel. The purpose of these two units is to show both sides of the coin, which in my case is chaos and the peace made with chaos. Functionally, I've combined two categories of artists, beginners and professionals, to create a helpful and free environment where beginners could receive guidance within a platform and both categories could discover their inner mad genius without being judged.