final video

i have developed my concepts of remapping the space into another environment into taking away the control of understanding a space that mapping is intended to achieve. the hallway now ends in a flickering changing growth of shadows, threatening the space but not understandable, i have also added creatures into the space and referenced my research and ideas on media remapping through creating the creatures out of carebears. the video has been flipped horizontaly so it now appears to mirror the space the viewer is occupying. overall the video does what i wanted the project to do, it takes away control by remapping the viewers environment, it brings the dark mapped over places into their immediate space, the actual video work has been created out of many, many layers created in illustrator, then brought into after effects and opacity, blurs and layer effects added along with some parts retouched in photoshop as well. i would like to spend more time on this and would love to have many different looks to the remappings, i would also like to have more than one space remapped, or one space remapped from different perspectives.

development -

the core of my project is remapping the space in way that references the dark places on the map and the fear of the unknown, mapping over a space and control.

by changing the space the viewer is in and presenting it to them while they are in the space takes away the control that they have over the space, this is a reversal of mapping, breaking down the control and understanding of a space. the fear of the unknown - here be monsters - the night, the dark where monsters stalk.

http://www.geekologie.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?tag=mirror&blog_id=1

experimental storyboard








should i change the space to a completely different one?

the space needs to retain features of the original even if it does, the viewer needs to be placed in two spaces at once and if the shown environment is a different one then that effect will be lost. does there need to be a new environment at all however, or just the possibility of one? this project is also exploring that dark place on the map and the fear of the unknown and the need to control it. the unknown being the key word here, on movies like Alien the monster is most effective when you cant see it. the screening needs to be obvious that is video as well.

concept environment image

dracula

vampire mythology exists in almost every culture in the world, the night stalking, blood drinking, immortal undead. they have been the focus of scary stories for hundreds of years and still today hold us in fear as you can see by the number of horror movies featuring them, however today the vampire is often admired, even romanticized. the vampire has gone from being a terror in the night to the host of a children's t.v show.









count von count - seasame street


how do we map over the unknown?

by changing the perception of it to one we can control. today's way of controlling perception is definitely through media, media forces a perspective on us much the same way as mapping forces one perspective of a space.

remapping


http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb08/taleb08_index.html

We can identify where the danger zone is located, which I call "the fourth quadrant", and show it on a map with more or less clear boundaries. A map is a useful thing because you know where you are safe and where your knowledge is questionable. So I drew for the Edge readers a tableau showing the boundaries where statistics works well and where it is questionable or unreliable. Now once you identify where the danger zone is, where your knowledge is no longer valid, you can easily make some policy rules: how to conduct yourself in that fourth quadrant; what to avoid.

—John Brockman

So the principal value of the map is that it allows for policy making. Indeed, I am moving on: my new project is about methods on how to domesticate the unknown, exploit randomness, figure out how to live in a world we don't understand very well. While most human thought (particularly since the enlightenment) has focused us on how to turn knowledge into decisions, my new mission is to build methods to turn lack of information, lack of understanding, and lack of "knowledge" into decisions—how, as we will see, not to be a "turkey".

- - - - - -

while this is en extract from an article on the dangers of predicting outcomes based on statistics i think that the ideas expressed about mapping and the unknown are relevant to the ideas i am exploring in my project. - a map shows you where you are safe, the next step is to domesticate the regions that are unsafe.

how do we make the unknown safe?

understanding ---> control - - - > desensitization

historically we have been fearful of the unknown, we tell stories about monsters in the night, the dark is scary because we cant see what is in it and we cant control it. an effective way of controlling it is by making the scary into something not scary, when we are children we are frightened by monsters, then as we grow up we ourselves they aren't real and surround ourselves with objects and possessions that make us feel safe. we have monsters reduced to cute little cartoon characters, we have hundreds of devices that allow us to control our surroundings, we have a setting where we go specifically to be scared ( going to see a horror movie ), we have locks, we have light. but we are still afraid of whats in the dark.

Frank Fietzek

- Blackboard

Memory is seen here not as an indelible imprint, but as being permanently written over.



http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/die-tafel/images/1/

The blackboard still shows the markings of erased chalk, by moving the screen over it quotations and fragments of quotations appear but once they are passed over then they are not in the same position if you go back to it.

This work has ideas that strongly relate to my own concepts behind my work, blackboard is exploring the idea of memory being overwritten, one of the ideas i want to explore in my work is the idea of mapping over the dark places, the scary places on the map simply labeled 'here be dragons'.

semiconductor

http://www.semiconductorfilms.com/root/Magnetic_Movie/Magnetic.htm

magnetic movie

jeffrey shaw

golden calf -

an empty pedestal sits in the gallery attached with a movable lcd screen, by moving the screen around the viewer is able to see the image of a golden cow on the pedestal, the cow even shows the reflections of the gallery on it excluding the viewer. this work shifts the viewer between two spaces at once, the space they are physically in and the virtual space that occupies the same space they are in, the movement of the viewer effects the virtual space as they move through the physical.





virtual museum -

this is similar to the golden calf but less about movemnt and more about two spaces occupying the same space. viewers sit in a chair in an empty room and as they turn it they view the space with works of art on the walls through the screen.


both of these works are exploring spacial mapping through placing the viewer in two spaces at once, however in these works the viewer has some control over both spaces, in my work i want there to be no control over the space, breaking down the intended outcome of mapping a space.

janet cardiff -

in janet cardiffs audio walks the participant is guided through spaces by an audio guide, they follow her instructions as she leads them along through the physical space they are walking through and the space that she is describing. this work seems to be very much about control as the two spaces the participant are in are dictated by the artist. it is a good example of spaces overlapping as the participant moves through two places at once, the place being described to them is where they are at the same time not in it.

environment for recreated reality -

the walls of the room slowly dissolve and fade into shadow, rustling whispers from amongst the darkness. Huge menacing shapes are glimpsed gliding, looming through the emerging dark forest setting, trees grow from tendrils of shadow writhing into existence, pulling at the hairs on the back of the viewers neck. Small creatures emerge from smoky ribbons, scuttling and slowly slipping through the rippled light and shadow, luminescent plants form sprouting light and mist which floats into small vortexes and the birth of radiant fireflies. Gradually the shadows draw closer dragging the grating sound of chains behind them, details emerge and disappear, briefly flickering into existence, components of the creatures, bindings, tags. The geared clockwork and networking veins of the trees. Robot limbs on the skittering critters. Genetic grafts on the skin of the plants , all carefully coded. As they flash back into obscurity the shadows grow overpoweringly close, warm breath onto the viewers skin, wrenching and paralyzing. Suddenly the shadows dissipate, vanishing as cute little cartoon versions of the imagined horrors playfully scamper into being.

maps - control, understanding and defining the dark areas of the map, "here be monsters".

if i make it so the video is still it will be easier to manipulate, also should i make it so that when the viewer is watching it they wont be in the frame? would this make it more disturbing or less?
i think it would be more uncomfortable to be watching a the space you are in without you being in it. i think.

or what if i made the video look like a surveillance feed and put a camera in the room and then the viewer isnt on the video, that could be cool

concept -

recreation of a selected space as perceived by myself and installation of the recreated space inside the original space.

basically i was thinking about recording a space and then changing it into my reality of the space and then installing the changed recording of the space in the original space. by remapping the space it breaks down the control of the space for the viewer, it no longer becomes safe.

peoples perceptions of spaces are based not only on the physicality of that space but also on their individual realities. spaces will change from person to person with context, experience, emotion, random links, and many more complicated influences. mapping any space will therefore change relevance with different perceptions.

"Every map or presentation is a kind of lie. You draw certain things and leave out certain things. Depending on what scale it is, it tells a different story."
- Brian McGrath, (Else/where: Mapping)

Elsewhere / mapping

“mapping has emerged in the information age as a means to make the complex accessible, the hidden visible, the unmappable mappable . . . . Mapping has become a way of making sense of things.” - Janet Abrams and Peter Hall.


mapping is an attempt to define the space around us, making it navigable and therefore 'understandable' and 'controllable', maps are a concept of the space they are trying to define.