Waves crash softly is a video, exhibited as a rear projection within a gallery space, along with a soundscape played through two speakers. It is an exploration and experimentation of the bodily senses through film informed by primary research collected from a group of anonymous art students who took part in a questionnaire on 'sensory overload' which occurs when one or more of the senses becomes overstimulated in some way'.

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Anyone can experience sensory overload, but it is most likely to affect people with sensory processing disorders. This work sits within the wider context of mental health in contemporary art and can be discussed in many ways within an artistic context such as creating artwork to explore sensory overload, or within a therapeutic context, through art therapy.

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The visuals are informed by key words from places and situations which evoke the experience of sensory overload. This forms a nonlinear narrative using edited, cut, speeded up and slowed down, found, and homemade footage which provides the sufferer’s point of view. The scenes of insects, people, macro shots of flowers, weather and liminal spaces have been layered, manipulated and overexaggerated successfully to create confusion and a visual overstimulation of the senses and hands, legs and feet bring human representation.

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The research question behind the making of this video was ‘Is it the visual that causes sensory overload or the sound, or both?.’ The sounds of an empty room, choral voices, tapping, clicking, melodic piano, synth music and a voice that counts through numbers, successfully juxtaposed with moments of silence create a calming sensation as they are informed by the questionnaire answer, ‘what relieves the symptoms of sensory overload?.’

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Sound within video brings the viewer’s attention and focus into what they are viewing. There are diegetic sounds (thunder & rain) coupled with non-diegetic sounds (fire or rain pattering) and silence which play a role in altering perceptions. There is a play between sound and lack of, which investigates whether the same sensations which occur within the body, still occur, despite there being no sound. It gives freedom in imagination and creation within a narrative and uses collective memories attached to that sound. When the sound differs from what the viewer can see within the image, the narrative becomes unexpected. By removing the sound completely in parts and only using captions, it gives the listening audience the space to create their own sound through imagination just as someone who was hard of hearing would have to do. When the sounds are unfamiliar, such as the clicking, we then attach our own individual subjective experience to that sound and in turn place meaning and interpretation on it. Through doing this a second narrative emerges. When the sounds are familiar such as the underwater sounds, the choral voices which are haunting and evoke emotion and the sound of waves crashing in the background, and the counting with moments of silence surprisingly create a moment of release from sensory overload.

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The instructions at the end to breathe give the audience a moment to reflect internally. Moments of overstimulation are combatted with the calming sound, bringing the body back down to its original state, emphasing a state of calm which they may not have felt when they first arrived.

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Haptic visuality is within the piece through the different shots of skin to screen contact such as the feet within grass and the water running down the windowpanes. ‘Haptic Visuality’ is a term coined by Laura U. Marks (2000, p.22) in her book Skin of the Film, where she suggests that it can used to describe an artwork that ‘engages the viewer tactilely and to define a kind of knowledge based in touch.’

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The text is inspired by mindfulness & meditation techniques of using breath (at the end of the film), used to induce calmness when experiencing sensory overload. The insertion of captions and subtitles make it more accessible but also pulls this apart by being nonlinear in its approach and method. Muñoz, suggests, Works that critically and creatively engage the closed caption toy with the caption's limited capacity to translate, the importance of providing access, and present the caption as a generative site for poetic, humorous and critical perspectives.

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In a world where the senses have become disconnected from the body using screens and technology, waves crash softly invites the viewer to slow down, connect to their bodies and fully immerse themselves into an environment which activates all the senses through haptic visuality, lighting, colour and sound. It is an experiment which creates a space for reflection, through collective imagery based on research.