Emotion Mixer
A Tool for Creators
About the Emotion Mixer
Is your artwork emotionally flat, hitting that same sad note again and again? Or does it feel chaotic, flying around in a confusing emotional whirlwind? Maybe it’s time to mix things up.
The Emotion Mixer is a tool for creators to bring greater complexity and depth to their work. Key emotions are plotted on a handy wheel that lets you identify their emotional complements and split complements, as well as consider their intensity and how emotions are affected when added together.
There is no one way to use the Emotion Mixer. It is a tool, and as such, its value and efficacy resides in you. It’s a guide of formalism, from which you can follow, bend, or break the rules. It is an addition to a creator’s toolbox that can offer alternate ways of thinking, inspiration for novel emotional entanglements, and challenges to decisions within the work.
While psychologists have developed many visual models of emotions over the years, those are primarily intended to help identify one’s emotions, to enhance self-knowledge, aid research and guide constructive conversations on feelings. This Emotion Mixer for artists takes for granted an existing deep relationship to emotion. It is for use by those who use emotions as an ingredient in their work to evoke rich experiences in others.
Whether you’re a filmmaker or a poet, a novelist or musician, a performer or visual artist, the Emotion Mixer can be used to articulate and enhance the emotional palette of your work.