My Cornell Box was playing with the type of aesthetic that I might want to use with in the space where my installation/performance will sit -- dark, candle-lit, eerie and with a sense of unease.
I also wanted to portray the concept of the rotating faces in this fabricated box. This exercise made me really think conceptually about space and what would lend best for the story.
When you first approach the entrance of this underground, speakeasy-ish space, you feel uneasy but everything is quiet and calm. It's dark, but there are candles lighting the path for you to follow. An usher in white gloves addresses you at the end of a long hallway. Red velvet drapes are parted and you brought into a large space that has a well-lit red velvet chair in the middle of the room. When you arrive, you feel like a celebrity because you are placed in a section to watch the performance in solitary. You know there are other guests, but there are walls between you so you aren't able to catch their eye. You are served a beverage and the usher refers you to sir and madam. It feels like a prestigious place where only you and six other observers are able to attend the performance.
The performance is starts off with a story of an individual. They are looking right at you and it seems as though they are speaking to your soul. It is powerful because the words are hard to hear. Moments later the velvet chair shifts and you no longer see your individual that was speaking to you but you hear the stories of others echoing in the space. It feels eerie, but the stories are still hard to listen to. You hear short snippets of many different individual's stories and then the individual comes back to speak to you. It's enjoyable to have them look right at you. You have a connection. Then the chair rotates again and that individual is gone once again. You hear the voices of the other individual's stories. Then you notice that there is a button that lights up on the table, you push it and the chair quickly whips towards you where your individual continues their story in your direction. Someone else must have hit their button because the chair and actor is jolted in that direction. It feels like you now have control over the individual and when you want attention, you can demand it with this button. You have been given this power. It's an interesting feeling.
Once the button pushing has got out of hand all buttons stop working and all faces appear on their screens yelling. You feel bad for demanding and controlling them. You feel selfish.
There's an interesting silence. An eerie silence.
The ushers come and retrieve you from your booth and escort you to the exit.
Over the course of my explorations at ITP I have found it increasingly difficult to tell engaging and immersive narrative (fiction or non-fiction) with new tech. One component that I have stumbled upon is when giving the viewer access to co-create a non-linear narrative, viewers become much more engaged and attentive. With this in mind, I want to explore how to affectively tell immersive narratives with new, emerging technology in a way that the narrative drives the story and not the technology
Here is the storyboard and current questions that I'm having for my current thesis ideas
POV of audience once sitting in chair of performance
First image is the long hallway to get to the speakeasy-style space
The middle image is a rough drawing of what the chair and stage would look like. The semicircles are the individual tables that the guests would be sitting at.