In modern society, individuals are continuously conditioned by implicit expectations—elite education, high achievement, and conventional success—generating a shared, collective anxiety. Coffee, a daily necessity for many to meet these social demands, serves as the central visual metaphor for this project. Taking coffee stains as a physical trace of suppressing anxiety, The Flux of Consensus investigates how social consensus is constructed, maintained, and transformed between the individual and the collective.
The project unfolds in two parts. First, a visual archive maps the frequency of weekly coffee consumption against self-reported anxiety levels, systemising coffee stains into a visual metric of modern pressure. Second, a participatory installation materialises the defining characteristic of consensus: its fluidity. Participants write down their personal sources of anxiety, which instantly merge with real-time visual traces left by previous visitors.
As personal anxieties overlap and evolve within the space, a dynamic "visual consensus" emerges. By making this invisible social mechanism tangible, the work fosters a shared sense of identity while inviting viewers to reflect critically on how collective consciousness and social discipline quietly shape our lives.
