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Stop! Evaluation Time!

The final concept in the room changed a bit from the original we had, but not enough to warrant a totally new plan. We still had the string art piece in the centre of room. We decided that this was a very powerful piece and didn't want to leave it out. However, when we put the strobe into the room, it took away from the art piece and made it look worse. For this reason, we decided to move the strobe to the entrance of the room, as a way of implying the type of environment that the room may be representing, without it ruining the look of the inside.

We also placed the laser in the corner, pointing up to the ceiling, as it created a nice effect, running up the wall and onto the ceiling. We also noticed that the light that was already on the ceiling looked good when the laser goes over it. We painted over it with black paint so it blends with the ceiling, but as it is a spherical shape, it only became visible when the laser points cross over it. This made it very ‘trippy’ as it looks normal until it is illuminated by the laser. We also made a starry and interesting pattern on the ceiling to help confuse the audience.

We also decided to not cover the entire floor with the polystyrene as it was not as structural sturdy as we thought it would be. However, we did cover half the floor, so we could still get the effect of a distorted floor, without having people walk over it. This did work, but as people still did walk over it, it got damaged a bit. If we was to do this idea again, we would find a better way to make it structural sound.

Our UV wall turned out better than we thought it would be. I took a step back from the painting of the main art on the wall as I knew I wasn't very good at painting. I did a few strokes and shapes, before letting the other two members of my team paint more detailed and interesting images on top of it. I think this worked well as they managed to create really good and weird images that was easily recognisable. They chose random things to help show the confusion in the room, which was one idea we agreed on.

As a group, we worked well, but as always, things could have always been better. We all did tasks, but sometimes there were moments when the group were waiting around to be told what to do. However, this only happened sometimes as we all knew what we had to do.

Our planning went well as we all knew exactly what we wanted to create and how to create it. This meant that we could all agree on a plan of things to do and when to do them, making sure the tasks got completed on time. Overall, the whole project was completed quickly and in enough time to check over everything and make sure it was all good enough.

The project as a whole helped us to all see what we were strong at and what we all needed to improve. I naturally took a leadership role without even realising and helped to motivate and direct the team towards what needed to be done. However, we all, as a group, had inputs into the concepts and pieces that were put into the room. This meant that it wasn't just one person’s works, but it was a collective agreement and creative idea.

For most of the project, as well as being team leader, I led the lighting and sound. I worked out where best to place the lights and the speakers, while discussing with my team to find out if it would get in the way of anything else. Along with this, I also came up with the concepts and plans for the string art piece that was presented in the middle of the room. Although I led the charge on it, the rest of the team helped bring it all together, as it was a very tedious and time consuming process, threading all the wool onto the wood, then tying it up to the wall, making sure they were all at the right tension and in the right place.

Overall, I feel this project helped us all to learn how best to work in groups and how teamwork relies on constant communication and people doing tasks off their own back, without having to be asked or reminded every few minutes. This also showed me how you can create something spectacular from the minimalist of materials and budget, whilst having a large impact on the audience.

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Evaluation

Teamwork throughout project: I feel that my team worked quite well together. At the start of the project we didn’t really know each other and we all had different ideas and we worked together to create one idea that we all agreed on. However, some days we were all doing different things in different places so it took us a while to get things done which meant that towards the end of the project we had to rush a bit as our installation progressed quite slowly but in the end we were all happy and proud of the final outcome of our room. When we actually did the performance I had the role of acting as the patient in the cell banging on the wall and screaming to scare the audience. Bradley and Laura were doctors welcoming the audience into our room, stone house. However, we realized that I would not be able to do it all day for two days as it was hurting my throat to scream so much so we decided to rotate it around so we all had a turn at being the patient and being the doctor so it was fair for all of us. In the performance we worked really well as a team in ensuring that it went smoothly and to plan which it did. We had a few moments of disagreement or slow progress but overall we worked well to get the installation finished and had a successful performance of it.

Performance: I think that our performance went well as we wanted to make the audience feel sympathy for the patients and be scared as well. We did this well as we led the audience into one cell and told them a story of a patient which left them thinking about the patient and felt sympathy for them whilst reading the words on the wall. Whilst they were intrigued in the story, the person in the cell next door screamed and hit the wall which made almost all of our audience jump or scream. We also made the audience jump or scream when they left the cell and we offered them the option of looking through the hatch at the patient next door and they lifted the hatch and the patient jumped out at them and screamed at them which made them jump too. Some groups were not scared by our performance of our installation but most were and we knew that not everyone would have the same reaction as everyone is different.

Our room fit in with the rest of the rooms and the theme as there was another room which was a padded cell which could have been a cell in Stone House asylum which our room was based around and supposed to be. However most of the other rooms were more scary but ours was more realistic and made the audience think about what was happening, encouraging them to think about the story.

As an individual, I made the doors to the cells look old and rusty by adding iron powder which was something I did successfully and was a strength of mine. I also did most of the painting of the walls which was another strength. However, I was not good at drilling things in place such as the doors, so Bradley, with the help of Alex did the drilling and cutting things out as I wasn’t as good at construction. Another weakness of mine was lighting as I was not very good at putting the lights together and fitting them in place.

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Music to your ears

After a lot of deliberation, we decided that the room needed some music in it to help invoke a feeling using more senses than just sight. We looked on the internet for any good creepy but also psychedelic music that we could use. We also wanted the track to be relatively long so that there was less chance of a jarring section of it ending and starting again while there was public in the room. In the end, we found a video that was over 2 hours long, that was full of psychedelic acid rock.

This was a good choice as it was slightly creepy, a long clip and also made people feel like they were in a drug induced state, as the distortions in the music felt weird and unnerving.

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Styled from David Ogle

One of the research articles that I used as inspiration was David Ogle. Although David makes the art piece look simple and easy to make, I was concerned that it wouldn’t look as good when I did it. We also didn’t want to directly copy David as we didn’t want to be seen as copying him, just taking inspiration from him.

As we started threading the wool onto the plate and hanging it up, we started to see how powerful this could be, and we were happy. It took a bit longer than expected, as we had 49 holes in the wooden plate. It also was a bit difficult to thread the wool through the holes on the wood, but this was easily remedied by using a piece of wire. I threaded a loop of the wire through the hole so that I could attach the wool to it. I could then pull the wire back through the hole, bringing the wool with it.

I think the string sculpture worked very well in this room, especially as we used multiple colours, although there were a few problems while we made it. These included not knowing how to attach it to the wall, the attachment on the wall breaking and having to do the floor around it. In the end, we overcame all these problems. We eventually used a metal ring to tie the wool to, so that it wouldn’t break. We then attached it to the wall, just below the ceiling. We tried to put some nails in the wall, but after there was a bit of tension applied to hook, it took a chunk out of the wall and just fell off. For that reason, I decide to cover it in gaffatape and attach it to the wall using the gaffatape and lots of staples. This meant that it had a large area that was attached to the wall, whilst also having staples (that seemed to stay in the wall quite well) as a back up. We then cover this in black gaffatape to help hold it, and blend it with the colour of the wall. This ended up being the best option as it held the best.

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Plans and Re-plans

One of the ideas we originally intended to include was a resonating plate with small particles on top. This could then be altered by the audience to show different patterns, depending on the frequency they turn it to.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the system to work the way we wanted it to, which meant we had to scrap the idea. This meant that we worried about how to make the room more interesting. We felt that, although the room would have been a lot better with the experiment in the room, we also decided that it could detract from the audience just standing in the room and enjoying it as they would have to interact with it. This helped us to focus more on making the room a lot more aesthetically pleasing and less about the interaction.

At the same time, we started working on the uneven floor. Plans for the floor changed multiple times. We started off thinking that small wooden mounds glued to the floor would be effective at creating a sturdy and subtle effect, but as we discussed this idea with the lecturers more, we all decided that it could be dangerous, as they could be tripping hazards. This meant we had to change the material we were planning on using. We then decided to create the small mounds out of polystyrene. This was a good idea, until we realised that they would look out of place, just placed on the floor. We then came up with the idea to cover them in a fabric. We, yet again, got informed that unless it is all stuck down, it could create tripping hazards between each of the mounds. For this reason, we decided to do a kind of papier-mâché, but instead of using paper, we would use some muslin. We also concluded that if we mix black paint in with the PVA and water solution, then we wouldnt have to paint it afterwards. This made the whole idea a lot easier to start with. As we were covering the floor anyway, we decided to also cover the entire floor with different sized polystyrene to create an uneven floor.

We ordered the muslin and when it finally arrived, we started working on the floor. This again, came with its own problems. As we placed the fabric over the polystyrene, we realised that is was never going to be rigid enough to allow people to stand on it. We also worked out that we didn’t have enough material to cover the whole floor, whilst overlapping the material and making it follow the bumps and craters. Originally, we thought that we had messed up, but after a few discussions, we agreed that it would actually be better if we just put this feature in the corner of the room so people could still come in and stand near the UV wall. This also meant that we could improve on the layers that we had put down, as they looked a bit thin.

We felt that this floor was a good addition to the room and helped to show how the world can become distorted when you take drugs. Personally, I was impressed with how the floor was turning out, and if we had more time and more material, I think the floor would have turned out extremely well.

Another plan we changed was that we decided to not add items to the walls. This was decided because we thought the room would be made too small and it would detract from the luminous and chaotic UV wall we already had painted. We felt that adding more to it, would degrade the insanity you felt when you look at it.

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