A marionette could be seen as a bridging system, a connection between two different systems.

Traditional between a person and a puppet where the puppet player causes, by moving the controls following his intention, an animating effect on the puppet. Because of the connection between a living and a non living organism the cause and the effect remain a one way system with a forced effect.

It would be interesting to use the principle of a marionette, bridging two living systems and creating an adaptive system with an unpredictable result.

A Mask gives you a sense of liberation, you can be much more playful behind them. (G.Wearing)

You can be yourself, you do not have to do what the environment expects you to do, you can decide whether you would like to adapt to the environment or not.

A mask can be used to pretend the adaption to an environment. At the same time it acts as a protection enabling the autonomous adaption to environmental forces within the required timescale, following an individual decision making process.

Therefore a mask could act as a bridge between different structures (living / environmental structures) like a part of a marionette.

Wet, cold plaster bandages being placed on my face. Closing the surface of the skin sheet by sheet, layer by layer. I can feel the thing slowly drying out. Every muscle and sense seem to be fixed under the damp cover. My chin was touched but I thought it was my nose. My face feels like being replaced by a hard dull shell.

I try to gently move my face. It hurts. My skin and some of my hair seem to be encased but I can feel the thing releasing. I use my hands to help and now I sense the warmness of my hidden face coming though. Slowly the thing comes off and I hold it in my hands my face.

Lily Cole by Gillian Wearing (2008)

A model formed by the environment - a puppet.

A puppet with emotions, sensation, mind, human structure etc. hidden behind a beautiful surface.

A living marionette controlled by the environment?

What we see is the surface, a mask fashioned by the environment.

The body and mind in conflict with the environment? The surface not allowed to act like a real adaptive interface would do? Are the environmental forces acting on the interface dominating where as the personal forces are restrained?

Allows the artificial mask Lili to use her face as real interface behind the mask?

Lily has two faces - two interfaces:

The real face - the surface of mind and body, treated by the mind and body on the one side and by the environment on the other side.

The mask face, a reproduction of the shape formed by the environment.

What happens between the two interfaces?

A chain of relationships released by the happening of one event - a sweeper attracted by a with flour filled crisp bag on his way...

A Walkers bag on the pavement immediate interacts with the users passing by. They either ignore it or respond to it with a change of their behaviour. With a human being or any living organism the result is generally unpredictable as it follows a nonlinear pattern of organization.

Living systems respond autonomously to disturbances from the environment with structural changes, i.e. by rearranging their pattern of connectivity. A living organism records previous structural changes, and each structural change influences the organisms future behaviour. A living system can never be directed only disturbed, but will maintain the freedom to decide what to notice and what will disturb it. (Maturana / Varela - The Santiago Theory of Cognition)

One of the results of routine live is that our brain optimizes recurring activities by filtering redundant, secondary information out in order to focus onto general trained operations. During this simplification of our perception lots of information is being lost and cannot be used for further development.

Freuds Censorship:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Instinct_and_the_Unconscious/Freud's_conception_of_the_Censorship

How can the routine be broken up and the hidden information become visible again?

In “Understanding the Media” Marshall McLuhan is dividing between hot and cold media. "A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in “high definition”.... High definition is the state of being well filled with data.... Hot media are, therefore, low in participation or completion by the audience." A cold medium instead keeps lots of information secret and inspires the observer to compose and accomplish their individual image driven by personal experiences.

To stimulate the personal perception methods like disturbance, codification and the unusual association with a situation could be used to make the unseen, unpredictable visible. So the observer / participant could become a part of an input-output-system where he is forced to question his perception and behavior within the routine live by simultaneously providing, feeding the system with his own experience.