To assess the theoretical success and results of my project, I have
returned to my key research questions:
How do objects and material artefacts tell us things about their context and the world in which they were made?
The materiality of objects can indicate its temporal and spatial origin. For example, the details of my work, including decisions such as paper choice and colour palette, shape the viewer’s perceptions of the objects’ origins. Using specific processes, such as typing with a vintage typewriter and adhering to conventions of letter writing from certain epochs gives the viewer an immediate (if not 100% accurate) sense of the time period of the fictional world. In my project, I adjusted each object to create a set of visual codes in this way which create temporal ambiguity.
Drawing from ideas about setting ambiguity in fiction (such as Lemony Snicket’s ideas of international naming, where characters take names from all different countries, allowing his world to be spatially ambiguous), I sought to create a sense of the past, but an ambiguous past which could not quite be placed. This, in turn, adds to the archival quality of the project, feeding visual cues to the audience which indicate not only the age and geographical place in which the objects were made, but also their lives as objects - the narrative which has taken them from their original context as possessions into the archive / personal records of Alistair and then the gallery space.
Like people, objects exist in space and time. They have lives of their own, moving between contexts through creation, purpose, and ownership. I grew more conscious of this as my project developed, careful to consider the purpose and journey of each object, whether an event poster or a letter, mapping its path through the fictional world. For example: the Laroche poster belongs initially to Theodore, who kept it folded small in his pocket before giving it to Alistair when they meet at the train station. Keeping this past of the object in mind determined how I folded the poster, and the degree of weathering I imposed upon it before including it in the journal. A larger example is the journal itself, which is Alistair’s record throughout his time in Fairmont, going with him wherever he went; it then passes from him to Theodore, and then to the Police. This journey shaped my conception of the journal, how weathered I wanted it to be, and the way the material there is gathered and annotated.
Smaller details were vital to building the reality of these markers, such as the Americanisation of spellings, date format, addresses, and telephone numbers. These tiny details accumulate to build the world of Fairmont - a fictional town in Virginia (the state, itself, bearing connotations of Southern Gothic, supernatural, and the Rural Elsewhere).
How does worldbuilding allow creatives to develop realistic and immersive worlds for their stories?
Having a sense of the world in which your story is taking place gives you parameters as an artist; it gives you rules as to what is possible and impossible, and allows you to work in a way that is shaped by the aesthetic of the world. This aesthetic covers everything from the types of techniques available (in my case, I also considered accessibility of certain techniques to non-artist characters), and gives you a real awareness of the ways in which art and objects as well as narrative process evolve from place. This sense becomes second nature as the world develops, making objects and character motivations in that world more authentic as the project progresses; this authenticity - drawn from the integrity of the fiction being worked with - develops in its realism to give a greater sense of immersion for the final audience.
How can objects create an immersive, realistic experience for the viewer?
For an object to feel real, an equivalent of that object must exist in the real world. For instance, the research journal format exists in real-world notebooks and research diaries. In creating a fictional journal, then, I considered the way such a real-life object would be put together: the speed and uncertainty of research aiming to discover something as opposed, in many ways, to the collected aesthetic of a normal gallery piece. This is applicable to every object within the journal as well as the journal itself: I drew from the world around me and records of the aesthetics of past objects. So for instance, in making the receipts I had to adapt my approach to forge receipts which emulated the look of real ones, from the fonts and ink style to the type of paper used, how crumpled they needed to be, in order to try and create a seamless, real-seeming object.
What can fictional worlds tell us about the real world?
Projects like this illuminate the detail and ubiquity of visual modes of communication in the world around us. Throughout this project, I have been forced to reexamine our relationship with everyday objects that we are so naturalised to in our day-to-day lives that we don’t notice. I was struck by how many object around us, which we handle without thought, are rich in data and can tell you a lot about a person. I was particularly fascinated by the receipts which, though they seem to contain so little information, actually tell you a great deal: setting (name of shop/outlet), address, servers names, times, prices and the items bought. These serve an obvious function, but also accumulate to give a wider sense of what is happening: for instance the shift between the first coffee receipt, in which Alistair is clearly alone, and the second, where he is buying coffee for someone else as well as himself -- I want the viewer to examine these objects and come to their own conclusions, to ask ‘who was he with and why?’ and in doing so come to emulate Alistair’s own interrogation of objects through the course of the story.
This is especially important when you reach Vandenberg’s receipts -- while the journal gives a sense that something weird is going on, the ambiguity of details following this information lead the viewer to a more sinister perspective. Here, the interrogation of the objects becomes vital, and the project is interested in this process of interrogation, in the way the artist-author can work with the viewer to construct the story, rather than simply laying things out in a linear and explicit way.
While this seems like it is asking a lot from the viewer, it really harnesses one thing that we, as humans, are good at: building patterns out of disparate data. We innately try to form connections and narratives from what is presented to us, and often the most interesting conclusions are drawn from oblique connections. When I was showing this during a tutorial, the connection between the disappearances, the sinister notes, and the receipts was obvious to my tutor, who immediately said ‘Oh no!’ We draw upon everything we know about the world around us, including fictional genres and contexts, to help us interpret the information we are given. By playing with this, as well as the object-specific forms (see my thesis), my aim throughout the project was to offer distinct but non-explicit markers of narrative for the audience.
How does collocation and curation create narratives within an exhibition?
On a micro-level, the journal deeply considers the order in which the objects are displayed in order to create a sense of narrative. Itself an artefact of the Fairmont world, Alistair’s journal shapes the journey of the viewer, providing clues in a particular order. Fairmont is consciously a project which works from various narrative angles. In the exhibition, by contrast with the journal-object itself, the focus shifts away from the linearity of the journal (while still containing the journal as a key), toward a more immersive multi-sensory experience.
In order to make the material immediately accessible, I have adapted its display to an investigation board, which combines the elements that make up the journal, as well as additional material (the letters, Vandenberg’s diagrams) into a more immediately striking display. This, accompanied by the journal for viewers to look through and an audio accompaniment gives a new variety of access points for the reader-viewer.
Throughout this project I have grown increasingly aware of the need to make my work accessible; as I have discussed, it asks for time and concentration from the audience which may not necessarily be available to them in an exhibition context in the same was as it might if they were reading the journal and examining the objects at home. As such, I have consciously worked to adapt and expand the project to fit the context, drawing ideas from real-crime exhibitions and the idea of a curated display of real-world information (such as that seen in museum exhibitions). In this regard, the board for the exhibition is, itself, constructed by a curator - myself - who is not part of the story itself, but rather the story’s afterlife. It takes the material Alistair gathered, which Theodore reported and which the police collected, and carries it one step further on its object-journey, adapting it to the context of the exhibition. Here, we have additional evidence in the form of Alistair’s recordings, which give a sense of mood and immersive detail.
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