We Feel Fine

Some say as technology spreads more and more, we move as humans move further and further apart. Instead of calling or meeting in person, we text, instant message, and email. At the same time, however, the world has gotten smaller in a sense we can talk to people and read about events that are happening across the world and spread information in an instant. So while some people may stay indoors more often, they are, in a sense, more aware of the outside world.

One such technology bringing us closer is We Feel Fine. We Feel Fine aims to show despite our differences in race, gender, sexual orientation, location, age and so on, we still have much in common—we all feel and have emotions and go through similar situations.

When you open up We Feel Fine, you’re greeted with tons of particles which each represent a person who is feeling something. Clicking on a particle shows you a sentence from someones blog who has said “I feel” or “I am feeling.” “I feel bad about that but it was either that or him peeing on their beautiful flowers,” one person says. “I feel like I am part of a wonderful family that I never knew I had,” says another.

“I wonder why I am here trying to convey my feelings to this inanimate keyboard–why am I trying to make sense of this thing that I pushed away and denied to the point where I thought it no longer existed.”

The program allows you to organize and filter the particles by feelings like one would expect, but you can also filter by gender, age, weather, and location. So, for example, I can say I want to see the feelings of females who are in there 20’s, live in Canada, and blogged about something while it was raining. “I wonder why I am here trying to convey my feelings to this inanimate keyboard–why am I trying to make sense of this thing that I pushed away and denied to the point where I thought it no longer existed” a 24-year-old woman in Vancouver said. Clicking on the quote brings up the blog of that person, allowing the user to read the entire post, possibly giving them more insight into that persons feelings.

Interestingly put by the programs creators, “We Feel Fine is an artwork authored by everyone.” It truly is, and when you think about the concept of art created by the worlds feelings, you begin to realize the beauty of it—a canvas of happiness, and sadness, and fear, and nervousness…

While We Feel Fine is not something I plan on going to everyday, for a designer like myself, it serves as a reminder that we need to think outside the box.