Inspiration Collage
Material testing, Crayola crayons
Material/concept testing with crayons and marker on paper.
Inspiration Writing
Inspired partly by my childhood house and some objects from my grandparents’ house. Also highly inspired by this scene in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency where Dirk goes through a playground slide he found in a closet that drops him into a dreamworld version of the house he’s in. Everything is super colourful and loud, and very childlike. When he tries to leave, the windows and doors show nothing but static outside the house. He is able to call his friends who are in the real house via a red telephone with an impossibly long cord. He then gets chased through impossibly connected hallways by the Purple People Eater from that kids song. He finds a pair of scissors stabbed into the kitchen table and the table is bleeding as if it’s alive. Finally, Dirk is able to escape by going through the door (despite the static). Trust me, the scene makes exactly the same amount of sense with context as it does without.
Another inspiration (which I actually hate) is the backrooms and liminal spaces. If you don’t know, the backrooms are this internet analog horror concept. In video games, sometimes you’ll “clip” through the floor or wall (fall through the game) and catch a glimpse of the “backrooms” or nothingness that exists beyond the confines of the playable game.
So the concept is what if you could do that in real life? What would these backrooms look like, how would they feel, would you be the only one there? Etc. The backrooms themselves aren’t what scare me. It’s liminal spaces. Liminal spaces are like an off-shoot of the backrooms idea, but they also exist on their own. They’re usually images of locations that are eerily lit (often with flash and poor resolution) with an air of nostalgia about them. Like you’ve been there before, but also that you’re somehow not supposed to be there. There’s something inherently uncomfortable about liminal spaces, and I think it has to do with the fact that no one stays there long and thus this feeling of transient-ness becomes its own palpable creature. For example, an airport is technically a liminal space. You go through airports, you never stay long. But a completely empty airport is much scarier. You never stay long, but when it’s empty, you know you’re not supposed to be there in the first place. I especially hate the childhood nostalgia liminal spaces, because they really do make me feel like I’ve been there before, since a lot of the images that exist on the internet are of early 2000s play spaces and children’s bedrooms. Basements and completely closed off rooms with LittleTykes play-sets in them. A flash photo taken of an otherwise darkened daycare. The Sunday School room in a church but completely empty and dark. There’s something spooky because I feel like I’ve been there, but I also feel like I’m the one who took the picture. I don’t know how else to describe it.
Digital Concept Testing
I’ve been struggling a lot lately with panic attacks and anxiety, so I really don’t know why I chose liminal spaces and nostalgia (things that bring me anxiety) to be my inspiration for this project ✌️😬
A quick mock up of an idea. I’m not sure I can get such opacity with traditional drawing tools and material, so I’ll have to do more material tests before I commit. There’s five compasses on the floor and five flowers in the vase in the corner.
I also designed another wallpaper (below) with Ginkgo leaves, tulips, rose hips, bluebells and budding forget-me-nots.
