“Journey”

by Zerline, Jaime and Celine

 

Project Proposal

 

Based on the theme of isolation, our project will be a sound and video installation spanning across the narrow corridor with a dead end on Level 2, near the handicap toilet, to the staircase that is connected to it.

 

We will be placing two speakers along the corridor and they will be playing sounds of footsteps to lure people into the staircase. Black cloth will be used as dividers leading into the staircase and to section off the rest of the corridor. Upon entering the staircase, an iPad playing a still video clip of a forest will be visible. The sound of footsteps will fade away and be replaced by calming sounds to accompany the image of the forest—birds chirping, water flowing, campfire crackling—and the peacefulness of isolation can be enjoyed. Slowly, the pitch of the forest sounds will become lower and a hum will be heard in the background. The chirping of the birds will disappear. Sounds like the snapping of branches, soft rumble of thunder in the distance and whistling of the wind will start to appear.

 

We wish to allow the audience to immerse themselves in an audio journey of isolation, where the initial peace that is felt is slowly replaced by an inexplicable fear—the fear of facing the unknown alone. We also wanted to make use of irony, playing around with the idea of sounds that indicate human presence leading to a place where there is none. We hope the sounds will tap into natural human reactions and trigger physical sensations, like shivering in response to the sound of wind blowing.

 

Process

 

After coming together to discuss our previous projects together, we decided on the theme of Isolation. As a group, we thought we should focus on the sound aspect of the installation and chose the narrow corridor with a dead end on Level 2 leading to the staircase as the location for our project.

 

From Janet Cardiff’s sound installation sound works and from the research about how space plays a role and can be interacted with, we decided to section the corridor off with black cloth and fill it with rows of black strips. The participant is led down the corridor, towards the stairwell, by the sound of footsteps. This is where he/she experiences sounds from the forest that start off peaceful, but gradually distort into disturbing sounds. The sudden humidity and heat experienced in the stairwell, in contrast to the air-conditioned corridor, adds to the discomfort we hope that the participant will feel.

 

For our set-up, we started off by making the place as dark as we could by covering the windows with layers of trash bags and paper. Once we were done with that, we had to put all the black cloth up. It was pretty difficult to ensure that the cloth would not fall and that the pins wouldn’t come loose from the walls (that would’ve been dangerous), but we managed to with many layers of tape. It was quite a struggle putting everything up, given our heights, or lack thereof. We wanted to cover the light to make the corridor dark and eerie, but the light was way too far out of reach. We did, thankfully, manage to cover up the light in the stairwell.

 

Sound

 

Corridor

• Speakers along the corridor to lead people into the staircase
• The sounds of footsteps as it is something familiar to them and one of the sounds people are likely to follow because research shows that people follow crowds
• Irony: Sounds of people leading a person to an isolated space

 

Staircase (High Pitch to Low Pitch)

• Silence is followed by sounds of nature such as birds chirping, river rushing, fire crackling
• Transition: Low humming found in the background gets louder added with the first instance of a branch snapping and birds flying away
• Scary part: Branches snapping, Soft rumble of thunder in the distance,
• Some distortion of sounds to emphasise the uncanniness before ending immediately with the last branch snap

 

Video

 

Password : isolation

 

The video works as a visual aid for the soundscape that we created. It’s basically a stationary shot of a forest. Some subtle light effects were added to the start of the video to give it a more cheery feeling so that it would match the sound of the birds. Towards the end, glitches were added to give the video a creepy vibe. It cuts off abruptly, following the sound of a branch snapping.

 

Challenges

 

Other than our lack of height, a challenge we faced was leading the people out of our installation. We didn’t want our participants to simply walk back out of the corridor and back to class, so we decided to guide them down the staircase with arrows. We hoped that being isolated while travelling down a dark staircase would continue to keep them on the edge, given the sudden ending of the video and soundscape. Or if they hadn’t watched the video to the end, we hoped that the echoes of the soundscape throughout the stairwell would make them a little apprehensive as the sounds got progressively creepier.

 

Presentation

 

Due to time constraints, we had people come into our installation in pairs. We feel that the entire experience would have been better if the participants had had the opportunity to enter one by one. It would have also been better if we had managed to seal the area we were controlling the sound from off entirely as some participants thought they could enter and proceeded to look into the area.

 

Documentation

 

Password: 1234