I wish this project can with something simple but interesting. Connecting to “identity and place” and “body and experience”, I am still interested in self-awareness and related emotions, but I need to find a way to drag myself out of the work.

I think of a psychological therapy/test called House-Tree-Person (HTP), I like how it can reflect and project people’s state through simple elements.

So I did planning/consideration of initial research I need to do.

-Why people take the test?

Through visualizing image, people can show themselves and learn more about themselves. It’s still a conceptual question of ego and selfhood. The result is consistently changing, and the feeling of powerlessness I feel in trying to generalise and understand the many symbols is the same as I feel in trying to find myself. I come back to the beginning of "why I am interested in HTP" because I like to find traces of myself through testing, just as I like to do other personality tests on the internet for the same reason, I want to locate and label myself, I want to see myself. Compared to the mbti personality test, which is very popular these days, where I am categorised into a certain group of personalities, the HTP test has more room for free manipulation, as it doesn't categorise me into a certain group, but rather emphasises my existence and experience as a 'unique individual', and analyses my current state. I feel a sense of uniqueness, which fulfils the so-called meaning of my existence as an individual.

Why do I need to keep defining and identify myself? What is the ego? What is my ego?

I am not my name, my body is not me, my family is not me, my self-esteem, my emotions are part of me, my states, desires, memories, perceptions, principles are also just part of me.

I am..., I want..., I don't want..., I like..., I don't like....(these words can’t define me)

So the ego is empty, so I am always stuffing things for it because the emptiness , I long to piece together what I look like from various definitions. The ego is empty, so it changes all the time. The real thing doesn’t change but the fake thing always change. The sense of joy in childhood was due to the fact that my ego was light and hadn't yet begun to stuff things into it.

This made me rethink my research on HTP, and there is no doubt that it is only a test method, and the creative content that can be developed on it is very limited. I think the most appealing aspect of HTP is its interactive nature, where the tester explores the current state of mind by doing it themselves. There is no more possible way to expand the freedom than the original test method. (Or even the sandbox: a fixed model is much more limiting than free creation)