An ‘Emotional Battery’, is a container that can receive, safely hold and release excess physiological and psychological energies.

Two stacks of flat cardboard boxes (one side red the other side black) lay on the floor next to 2 low chairs. Viewers that enter this installation are invited to construct a cardboard box and choose to use this container as either a vessel to store their excess emotional, intellectual or physical energy or to release it. Instruction sheets for constructing and operating the emotional battery are posted at the door of the space and by the chairs.

The boxes are a common corrugated cardboard but one side is printed black with a red logo of the ‘-‘ (negative symbol) on each face and the other side printed red with the ‘+’ symbol. The space is divided into three painted sections. Using standard battery terminal colours, the wall and floor of one side of the room is a bright red, the facing wall is black, while a centre space between these two colours is painted floor grey.

I’ve imagined many future applications for this hypothetical social tool; that the stored energy could be released at a future date by the user when they were in a more appropriate emotional state and place OR it could be transformed (a negative thought turned into a constructive act) OR simply banked and possibly traded with others as an emotional exchange as part of an emotional economy.