Mapping the Invisible: Happiness at SLC

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My map defines the process of trying to calculate the happiness of Sarah Lawrence’s campus. I am in Adam Brown’s Psychological Science of Happiness class and for my conference project I administered a survey to attempt to map the happiness of students at this school. The survey drew results explaining the overall happiness, and personal, social, and intellectual fulfillments based on where people live. Because my data was limited by a small sample, Andrew’s Court and the Mead Way houses were not included. My sign system pinpoints the living spaces that were included by participants in my data, and the surface was made out of watercolor. It is the system of roads that makes up the geographical campus. The connection system is a visual representation of the data that came from the survey. It’s colors categorize social, personal, and intellectual fulfillments and the number of concenctric circles shows the degree of that category for each living space. I chose blues because of its placid tone. At first I was going to do a pictoral map so I photographed my sketchbook where I started to draw the buildings, but I decided the shapes were more evocative of the sterile atmosphere that is science and conducting experiments. By choosing to use photoshop instead, I think it gave the project a completely new aesthetic.

Author: Bella Schnee