The main outline of the art installation is to make an anxiety-inducing situation in a cockpit, which transitions over into a awe-inducing space travel experience. The participants start the experience by walking into the cockpit.
The claustrophobia-inducing space cockpit would have an emergency, with lights flashing, sirens blaring and warning signs everywhere. Distressing, empty-sounding, creepy music can be heard around the room. A distressing voice-over hurriedly tries to give the users instructions. This is to make the users experience a peak of anxiety. The users would then need to find the correct buttons on the space dashboard, by solving riddles scribbled on the dashboard and placed in the room.
Eventually, after solving this “escape room” and pressing the right button, the other side is revealed. Perhaps this sudden switch is initially experienced as scary, but it will soon become beautiful. The cockpit stabilizes and the room is filled with beautiful stars, calming music and a projection of the ever-expanding universe. A calming voice-over describes the experience and the universe’s celestial bodies, which is sure to invoke curiosity in the users, making them reach a peak emotion of awe. The user can then interact with more aspects on the dashboard, producing many different satisfying sound effects. Afterwards, the room turns dark, the participants can leave the room and take their helmet off, hopefully rethinking their perspective on life and the universe.
The dark room will be created with container trollies and black plastic, as one of the teammates has this available. The dashboard with buttons will be functional through Arduino components and will be made from plywood, and elevated with a table. A projector has been reserved to display celestial bodies. Another sphere projector, connected to a smart switch, will be used to project stars across the entire ceiling, when the “other side” is revealed.
With our first, trial we wanted to know if certain videos and sounds could make people feel the emotions we wanted them to feel during the peak of our installation. To test this, we found two different video’s about space, as we wanted to also show a video during our installation. One of these video’s was supposed to induce fear and anxiety, while the other was supposed to trigger awe, relief and admiration. We also added music to these videos that we thought would amplify these emotions.
The videos were shown using a VR headset with headphones. Next to the emotions, we also wanted to know if the participants could figure out what the statement was supposed to be. So after showing the videos one after the other, we asked the participants some questions.
This trial was done with both people outside and inside our group.
These videos were shown:
Both videos can evoke a feeling of “alone”.
VR Video 1 (admiration):
VR Video 2 (fear):