PROJECT DOCUMENTS
"Space is Only Noise if You Can See"
"Space is Only Noise if You Can See" explores the paradox of how modern noise stimulates curiosity while driving us to seek isolation. This passive immersive installation uses visual and auditory noise to evoke emotions such as isolation, overwhelmness, shame and reflection. By triggering discomfort, it encourages a balanced view of solitude as a space for introspection and growth. The installation consists of three experiential stages that progressively build up emotions and end in self-reflection. This journey through noise aims to transform negative emotions into a positive recognition of solitude's potential for personal development.
Box 1: The participant enters the installation and sits down in front of the screen. It is dark in the room, but there is a video playing about human made crises such as hunger, meat production and climate change depicting the painful truths about the state of the world.
This box is supposed to elicit feelings like shame, frustration, sadness and gratitude. In response, the visitor will first feel guilty, and as the emotions build, it will become too much and they will move on to the second box.
WhatsApp Video 2024-06-30 at 23.25.33.mp4
Box 2: After the viewer decides to go on he walks through a small “hallway” into the next box hiding behind a pink fabric. In this box, they will feel uncomfortable and tense because of the visual and auditory noise displayed around them, adding to their already existing guilt and anxiety and adding to the feeling of being overwhelmed. The emotional build up will reach it’s peak at this point. Again the viewer decides themselves when to move on to the next box.
WhatsApp Video 2024-07-02 at 09.18.39.mp4
WhatsApp Video 2024-07-02 at 09.18.24.mp4
Box 3: In the last box the viewer will be confronted with a full body mirror. An added projector is slightly changing the appearance of the viewer. When they see their reflection and have the emotional build-up, the feeling of loneliness will appear and the pre-existing guilt and discomfort will conflict with the gratitude they feel. This box gives them the chance to reflect on their experience they just had.
Mirror before the papers got added
outside:
The noise for peripheral screens on stage 2 gets generated from the noise outside. A laptop with a webcam is streaming delayed video from the outside which has been programmed to undergo a couple of layers of live pixelation and compression. The idea is that the people waiting for the booth and exiting it can impact the visual input of the second stage of our installation, and by doing so it changes the brightness of the box 2 and thus also changes the pitch of the sound as it is light dependant. And thus the generated audial noise further creates a feedback loop with he visual noise which gets more splattered and intensified with brightness and square shapes as it detects more loud sounds.
Mirror with the papers added with their face projected on it
After working on our idea, we began the prototyping phase, for which we chose to use the green bench system in the Design Lab as the foundation for our installation. Since our project is a walkthrough experience, we needed to build a wall between the seats to hang screens and isolate participants from each other.