About Sinan:
Sinan Uygun, the central figure of the project, was born in Istanbul in 1964, and he is a graduate of Istanbul Saint-Joseph French High School and Istanbul University Çapa Faculty of Dentistry.
Sinan, who enjoys activities such as traveling, hunting, computer coding, meditation, playing games, and active listening, had a brain hemorrhage due to high blood pressure while working in his own clinic in 2010. In the 10th year of his partial paralysis and aphasia resulting from this hemorrhage, he began specialized language and speech exercises that involved artificial intelligence technologies and interdisciplinary art activities together with his daughter Gökçe Uygun. Owing to these exercises, Sinan showed unexpected improvements in his average aphasia after the first year.
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Following these surprising developments, Sinan became the main subject and performer of ENDOPHASIA, a comprehensive live performance and documentary film project focusing on the neurological, technological and linguistic dimensions of his own individual development and healing process that can reach others.
NEUROLOGY AND EXERCISE PROCESS
Language use encompasses various actions such as speaking, using correct terms, understanding, writing, reading, and creating facial expressions. If one or more of these lose their function due to brain damage, a disorder called aphasia occurs. Therefore, aphasia patients have difficulty expressing themselves or creating meaning through language, depending on the location and degree of brain damage.
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In the 10th year of his disorder (2020), Sinan started online studies on language and speech with his daughter Gökçe. These studies included physical exercises such as mimicking and repetition-based motor movements, strengthening facial and mouth muscles, and verbal exercises like word-syllable production, sentence transformation, sentence completion, grouping, and melodic narration.
Over time, repetitions were added to these studies through Sinan's own video and audio recordings, and significant progress was made with the increase in social media use. In 2023, Sinan was introduced to various artificial intelligence applications. His comfortable communication with these applications and the resulting spectator experience caught Gökçe's interest. Subsequently, with the gathering of a production team focused on the subject, the first seeds of the ENDOPHASIA project were sown.
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Sinan's development years later attracted the attention of the Neurology Department of Istanbul University Çapa Medical Faculty, and the doctors agreed to observe Sinan's neurological development and communication with technology during the process.
TECHNOLOGY PROCESS
One of the most important factors in Sinan's exercise process is the mirroring exercises. To take these exercises to the next level in terms of both narration and application, a visual copy of Sinan will be created on stage, and his voice will be cloned to explore different channels of communication with him. The performance will be displayed around the idea of a total machine construction, where sound, light, visuals, and timing systems are simultaneously controlled, taking the human brain as a reference.
STAGING & LANGUAGE PROCESS
ENDOPHASIA live performance offers a live experience of how the human brain and its speech center function while covering the fields of neurology, linguistics, communication, and depicts Sinan's aphasia journey and interaction with technology.
The live performance consists of three main sections titled DIAGNOSIS, DIANOIA and ENDOPHASIA.
The performance, which begins with real-time dialogues between Sinan and Selim (the performer) on stage, continues with Sinan's digital avatar and his internal dialogs that question the concept of communication, using visual and auditory elements.
The recovery of brain function after hemorrhage is depicted through the abstract stages of both the brain's development from the womb to the language phase and Sinan's emotional journey and responses to his condition; this portrayal is supported by the performer's body, visual design on screens, and quadrophonic sound design.
The concepts of language, expression and performance are brought to discussion with the viewing experience shaped by the focus of movement, time and narrative offered simultaneously by the use of multimedia that reflects the functionality of the human brain, and seeks to answer the questions; Is it possible to communicate in another way? What phases do I go through in order for everything that turned into words to be received by the recipient? Can I really express myself as I am and as I want, and is it all because of a speech impediment?
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