CREATING AN EXTRAORDINARY EVERYDAY: EXPLORING AREAS OF ARTIFICATION RESEARCH

The paper will focus on the phenomenon of artification [1] in the context of well-being of seniors. We will discuss various backgrounds, especially therapeutic ones, of using this natural human ability to make everyday life exceptional. We will look at how searching for artifacts and symbols in everyday life, isolating and moving an object from its original context, giving it a different role, character, unusual meaning, symbolic actions and activating metaphorical thinking based on symbols can affect human wellbeing. We will cite examples from our work using art (and artification) in a group of seniors in hospice care and the University of the Third Age. We will present the concept of activities based on artification, which take the form of a workshop consisting of the following stages: preparation, observation in action, presentation, artifying activity, verbalization - summary. The actions and products of research participants will be subjected to a special type of analysis in the context of psychological flexibility and selected artification categories. These categories are: formalization (in the sense of perfecting the form, changing the shape, organization, composition, forming a scheme, pattern, creating a whole), repetition (meanings, lines, motifs in a regular manner, rhythmic, different from the existing form), emphasis and exaggeration, elaboration (dynamic variation), manipulation of the recipient�s expectations (e.g. the element of surprise). We will consider other potential scientific methods of capturing this phenomenon.