The Weight of Water 3.0: an experimental interactive film-campaign on mental health in (high-)performance sport

Abstract

The artefact The Weight of Water (tWoW) 3.0 is conceived as an experimental interactive film-campaign situated within the orbit of Social Good Campaigns, with an artivist inclination, dedicated to the issue of mental health in (high-)performance sport, with a particular focus on swimming. Situated within the field of research-creation in digital media art, tWoW explores how cinematic interactivity may operate as a device for sensitisation and awareness-raising, articulating filmic registers, sound and the gestural agency of the spect-actor.
Methodologically, the study adopts an exploratory approach that triangulates research-creation, a/r/cography and qualitative methodologies —namely heuristics and Reflexive Thematic Analysis— applied to non-intrusive observation and verbal feedback collected in academic exhibition contexts. This articulation sustains a situated understanding of interactions with the artefact, privileging the aesthetic and embodied dimensions of experience without resorting to the collection of biometric or personally identifiable data.
Exploratory findings suggest that gestural alternation between two contrasting narrative layers —poetry and pressure— may evoke forms of attention, hesitation and sensitive implication relevant to critical reflection on the culture of (high-)performance. By drawing on testimonies from athletes who broke institutional silences around mental health, tWoW reinscribes (high-)performance sport as a human and vulnerable space.
In this framework, tWoW is positioned as a significant step in consolidating an artistic-communicational approach in evolution, whose developments remain open, setting the ground for future investigations at the intersection of digital media art, interactive cinematic narratives and socially oriented communication.