For the class Haunted House Final, which is a real haunted house held on the floor of ITP, Jonathan, Michelle and I created “Brothers’ Room“, depicting a tragedy happened between brothers and how the lived one is haunted by the guilt and grief.
Story
- Pere and his brother died in an accident and arrived at this intermediate stage between life/death. Brother, feeling unconflicted, moved on to afterlife, but Pere stays out of guilt, because he’s responsible for his brother’s death.
- Pere is haunted by himself.
Concept
- The room is a representation of Pere’s mind.
- Showing the loop of emotions
- (1) sweet memory with brother
- (2) scared of Brother’s death
- (3) freaks out as Brother’s ghost showing up in the mirror
- (4) guilty and asks for forgiving
- back to (1)
Technique / Effects
–> Reflecting Pere’s emotions, the room reflects this with more intense light, sound, and walls shaking. At the climax, the man realizes he’s responsible for his brother’s death, the wall of the hidden room drops, and his brother appears in the 2-way mirror. The man sees him and cracks. Annnnd, start over!
- DMX lights: controlled by Arduino, Tinker.it! DMX shield, and Max/Msp patch
- Sounds / Music: controlled by Max/Msp patch
- Burned scar of Brother: latex gel, tissues, and colors
- Hidden Room Revealed: fabric and strings!
Script
Prep / Installation
Show Time
Other Scenes
Whole Crews :D
For the first week assignment – a simple immersive performance, to put a new slant on an everyday situation or interaction.Ben, Tom and me present the Elevator Ticket!
And here’s the nicely put-together by Tom:
In New York there isn’t much more routine then taking an elevator ride. With the exception of freak accidents elevators usually function in the same way. Press the button, wait, get in and awkwardly attempt not to look at other people, get off.
As routine as elevator rides may be, we imagined disrupting the routine of elevator usage.
In the style of old train tickets, we created an elevator ticket and instructed visitors to the NYU Tisch building that a ticket was required for using the elevator.
Using the reasoning of ‘safety’ and ‘efficiency’ we asked visitors for his/her destination floor and collected tickets prior to boarding the elevator. The ticket was not presented as an option but instead as a requirement to use the elevator.
The responses varied from mild amusement, to annoyance and non compliance. It was interesting that most elevator users accepted the reasoning of ‘efficiency’ or ‘safety’ at face value, even as we were not dressed in a way that might suggest authority.
We imagined that to enhance the performance we could dress in uniform and have operators standing inside of the elevator asking for tickets from passengers and pressing floor button for them. During the ride the operator could talk about the imaginary floor news and wish passengers a merry imaginary scenario day when arriving.