Project Proposal
Original
1. I would like to explore the overlap of urban decay and organic growth through photography and sound. Nonhuman organisms reconquering industry dominated space is constantly overlooked, but it is fascinating to me. For the project, I would combine manipulated (both through physical installation and post production) imagery and scenes with soundtracks mashing up and remixing quotidian urban noise pollution and natural sound. This will work as a flash slideshow that could play automatically, or with a clickthrough by the user.
2. In the same vein as the first proposal, I have an idea for a definitively new media horror flash object. To me, horror is a more or less stagnant film genre using recycled, boring tropes to weasel cheap scares out of an ambivalent audience wrestling with camp and utterly unlikeable chara
cters. Few videogames even have tapped the potential of new media for terrorizing an audience.
"The flat" is precisely the kind of project I am talking about. The visual aestetic and navigation in a seemingly real space with visual distortion is frightening. I want to create a similiar interactive flash object in which the user explores a space to compelling yet unknown ends. I want to look at other similiar projects for further ideas, but this is incredibly compelling and inspiring to me. To achieve this, I will research horror sound design in film and videogames, as well as key lighting techniques to guide and decieve the user.
REVISION
I have decided to combine these two proposals into a single project. I want to have a video animation style interactive space based around both horror and the unusual overlap of urban decay and plant growth. I want to create memorable scenes using the natural landscape of ivy and other invasive species along with beautifully decaying urban space. I will use a mixture of public and abandoned spaces that have the common uncomfortable feeling of vulnerability or fear of the unknown. This will still rely heavily on non-diagetic thematic sound, though the manipulation and filtering of images such that they can be interacted with and explored will be labor-intensive. I will also have to try to make the project actually interesting rather than just a creepy slideshow. To do this, I will incorporate some kind of narrative, and hidden objects for users to search for and engage with. This will be an involved and challenging project, though the outcome should be great!
FINAL
For my final project, I will create an interactive flash object that explores the interior of a degrading house. I am modeling my project after “The Flat” – the user will navigate through different scenes in the building to uncover text that provides a narrative context for being there and motivation for exploring the space further.
To capture all of the images, I will go to an abandoned home in Braddock, PA with a digital video camera and a DSLR camera. First, I will find a suitable building that is safe and will not be demolished soon, has sufficient indoor lighting, and a pleasing aesthetic of decay and overgrowth. I will carefully document the entire space as closely as possible. I will visit during the morning, noon, and afternoon to capture different lighting scenes for my production. I will repeat the following process each time I visit the house at different times. To serve the purposes of my project, I will walk into the building, plant my feet, and start shooting video in a half-sphere style, scanning the space top to bottom, then left to right with the video camera to capture a full panoramic video that can be stitched together in photoshop as panoramic video object. I will also take high resolution still images of the space in the same fashion, though not as extensively (probably around 9-12 stills per position). After I have captured that scene, I will step forward into the house and frame the next scene in the same fashion (plant feet, determine angle, shoot video, then stills). I would like to be able to create a video panorama of the space, though if this not possible, I will create a static panorama using the stills and animate them with the video captured. I will also use digital effects similar to the ones used in “The Flat” to create an artificial feeling of liveness through DV-styled artificial artifacting.
I will also create a textual narrative to entice the viewer to explore the object and uncover the story behind the house. I will differentiate myself here from “The Flat” by not only presenting text, but also close-up images with interesting compositions juxtaposed against them. The user will interact with the scenes by mousing over and clicking on conspicuously placed visual hints (such as artifacting, unusual colors, or unusual objects in the scenes). When they click on these hotspots, they will go to an image with text as described above. Depending on the size of the building and other structures nearby, the piece will consist of 6-12 scenes (I would like to do 10 as a goal, though if I do not find a suitable space, I will not compromise for a larger less interesting space, and will compensate with a longer narrative and more hotspot objects.)
My piece will also incorporate sound to set the theme as frightening or scary. More than anything else, I want the viewer to feel as though they do not belong in the space. They should feel uncomfortable, and as if there will be grave repercussions should they be caught either by people or other forces. I do not want use a global timer as “The Flat” did. I felt that this brought the user out of the experience and into a safer gamic setting. Rather, to create a sense of urgency and fear, I will use a hidden timer that will trigger sound effects like footsteps and distorted screams, shouts, jangling of chains, and growling. I will also incorporate visual scares into the hidden timer mechanic that will further frighten the viewer into moving away from the scene and exploring the work further.
To add further complexity to the hidden timer, it will add time when a player changes scenes, and it will also add time when a player discovers a hotspot. Hotspots will only be selectable once so as to avoid exploitation of this mechanic. Furthermore, if a player simply switches between two scenes repeatedly, this time extension will not occur. As the player fails to find a hotspot or navigate to a new scene, the timer will continue to tick down, the audio terror will become more intense, and the visuals will also increase in size and come into view with more opacity. Eventually, after a very long time ~2-5 minutes, the sound and visuals will reach a critical peak and a failure state will be reached. Depending on how many scenes and hotspots the viewer has discovered, the final state will be more intense. (A viewer who has not navigated past say the first scene will fail faster if they do nothing than if they had explored, but the failstate will be less frightening and intense).
I want this project to draw people in and make them curious about the space that I select. I want them to frightened or at least made uncomfortable by strange effects and mysterious noises. The narrative they uncover will unsettle them. (I have little experience in horror sound design, but I know that I can write to produce strong effects.)
Not all the scenes will be linked to one another vis-à-vis a web, but it will not be linear either. I want to create divergent paths that different users can take in different orders to explore the space. The sound will be more or less consistent in design throughout, changing little between scenes, though I will create a sound effect/reward tone to indicate that the user has found a hotspot or should otherwise pay attention to what they have found.
If a player manages to find all the hotspots and textual hints, they will be able to access the success condition scene- the escape and the resolution of the narrative. Each hotspot will keep track of whether or not the user has already visited that spot, so that once they have visited all of them, they will be able to access the final scene if they have been paying attention to the narrative and hints in the hotspots.
I do not want to create any sort of monster, rather, I want the viewer to be unsettled by the effects that seem to emerge from the space itself instead of unknown entities lying in wait.