The concept behind this piece was a result of many things. Towards the beginning of the brief and during the specialist project I was inspired by projects that used alternative perspectives, such as Marc Owens ‘Avatar Machine’. The piece uses a camera strapped to the user, they then wear a helmet with a screen that forces them to see and experience life from the camera mounted behind them, creating this 'alternative perspective'.

"Avatar Machine is a system which replicates the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface." Quote from Avatar Machine showcase website.

I then watched Derren Brown’s ‘Arcade Game Hypnotism’ where he sets up a zombie, arcade style shoot ‘em up with subliminal messaging in it. In short the user is sent into a trance state whilst playing the game, he is then transported into a room that is identical to that of the game, then woken up by an air horn to find himself ‘in’ the game with a gun and zombie actors coming towards him.

To me this was a huge inspiration for the project. After watching the Derren Brown video, I felt the need to experience it and so did the many other people who I shown it to or had seen it. After playing numerous online zombie games and the ‘What would you do in a zombie invasion?’ pub conversation, I knew what I wanted to make for this major project. I felt that people had a rather blasé, gung-ho attitude to the idea of a zombie invasion, often saying things without thinking about the reality and severity of them. In this project I wanted to highlight the darker side of this topic, introducing the disturbing reality and danger of it along with the tension and stress of this constant threat.

For research I looked at different forms of media and entertainment such as film, music and computer games. I was interested to look at how these different mediums created tension and atmosphere and to see what I could learn and incorporate into my piece.

This film is absolutely superb at creating tension, mainly due to the nature of ‘The Thing’, but also down to use of atmospheric sound and lighting. I have learnt some useful techniques from studying this film, such as the use of harsh wind howls that become a constant reminder of the degree of isolation and also the use of selective, low lighting that force a tremendous sense of unease.

I spent a lot of time searching for inspiration in music, making sure to listen to a lot of different types and genres, looking for dark twisted sounds and ambient noises that would give a room an intense atmosphere. I found the following pieces to be unusually interesting and incredibly useful in terms of research and inspiration. The albums here are perhaps too musical to be used directly in my piece but I feel I’ve learnt a lot about creating atmosphere from studying them and will aim to create my own atmospheric noises and drones to fill the darkened room,

Animal Collective – Here Comes The Indian

This is a fantastic album that can be described as strange, different, obscure and ultimately moving. It has many weird and wonderfully dark moments with twisted, almost taunting vocal samples that create a strange presence in a darkened room.

Boards Of Canada – Geogaddi

Again this is another fantastic, thought provoking album, with long musical chants and slight hints of analogue warping that create a strangely beautiful sense of unease. There is no direct use of vocals in this album, everything is made from heavily edited samples and recordings. The album has a great mix of dark and light moments, perhaps the most obscure tack of the album; ‘Beware the Friendly Stranger’ which is used as the theme of ‘Salad Fingers’.

The first track off the album ‘Ready Lets Go’

I looked into various films for inspiration in aim to find inspiration on how to deal with the visual appearance of the monsters. The creatures cannot be seen by human eyes alone, only with the help of the screen or ‘scope’ mounted on the gun. As of this, I feel the monsters should not appear as solid objects or as anything we are accustom to seeing with the unaided human eye, rather as a mysterious energy based form, morphing, translucent, glowing. 

Using Google images I searched for various parasitic creatures for further inspiration of the monsters appearance. It interested me how these disgusting creatures can be so universally repulsive. I also liked how they can appear to be translucent and infinitely detailed. Here are some images I have selected as the most ‘interesting’.

I also like Joshua Allen Harris' ‘Inflatable Bag Monsters’. The bin bag material they are made from gives the transparent feel mentioned before and their movement, particularly during the inflating and dying stages creates twisted shapes in the limbs can be quite ghoulish.

I rather like the idea of a large slow floating monster, a sort of sky whale. This video of ‘Sea Monsters’ is a great source of inspiration. Whilst it would be good to incorporate something large like this, I can imagine it could jeopardise the sense of scale and perspective.

To help understand the visual imagery I was after I made many quick sketches and drawings. Here is a small selection of some of them. The aim was to create something that looked like the parasites mentioned before but have enough character to animate.

To help gain an understanding of installation based art, environments and atmospheres, I studied various books and magazines.

Architectural design’s 4d Social and 4d space books helped me to gain an understanding of space, light and sound. It has shown me how these properties can have an effect on the presence and atmosphere of a room or building.

Virtual Art ‘From illusion to immersion’ and ‘Information arts – intersections of art, science and technology’

As a small experiment, I created a sort of ‘virtual window’, in an attempt to see if the principles of my project would work. The aim was to use the monitor’s rotation as an input for a game, in hope to create a movable viewpoint into a virtual world.

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