Art installation invites audiences to feel the fear
Hampshire-born artist Beth Davis-Hofbauer has created an immersive installation that she hopes will reduce the stigma associated with mental health problems.
The Panic Room fuses virtual reality, infrasound and more to create a whole mind and body experience.
When you are in The Panic Room you affect the world around you but you have no real control over what happens.
- Beth Davis-Hofbaue
The experience is designed to put you in the shoes of someone who experiences severe anxiety and/or panic and create a sense of empathy.
Beth, who lives with severe anxiety, worked with Dr Wendy Powell and Marc Cook at University of Portsmouth’s VR Lab to make her ideas and designs a reality. Academics at the University are now using Beth’s work to conduct preliminary research into the effects of infrasound on anxiety.
Beth said: “I view this as being similar to my experience of severe anxiety; in the middle of an attack you are aware that you are creating these symptoms but you feel helpless and cannot disentangle yourself from the nightmarish situation.
“By placing people in a constructed environment that takes away their control, I hope to reproduce some of the symptoms of anxiety and create a sense of empathy with those who, like me, live every day with this experience.”
I wanted to create an authentic experience that was both fantastical and very real.
- Beth Davis-Hofbauer
Beth received an award of £3,092 through our Grants for the arts programme and used the investment to buy equipment and pay VR artists to bring The Panic Room to life.
Beth said: “This has become very important to me in my work in recent years: to find a way to translate an abstract idea into something corporeal that can be experienced; in particular things that relate to health and reactions to visible and invisible disease.”
People are invited to experience The Panic Room at the University of Portsmouth between 30 August and 2 September. As The Panic Room only accommodates one person at a time, time slots are available for booking!
Find out more
You can find out more about The Panic Room here and more about our Grants for the arts programme here.
You can also sign up for our e-newsletter to find out about funding, what we’re up to and how you can get involved in making the case for art and culture.
