A Trip to Your Closet, a Trip to Your Imagination

My installation requires for the audience to select one of the two choices given, as mentioned above, put on the headphones put out and go into the closet for a 15-minute audio imagination experience. For the presentation of my work, I have included a video of myself doing a stimulation of this installation process. For this particular stimulation, I chose to work with The Fearful option.

My initial approach started off with a similar yet very different idea of investigating "audio branding" and "sound logos" for commercial enterprises. I was drawn to the fact that a sound could become so deeply engraved into the audience's mind to create an identity with it; it was kind of like how a voice works as an identity for a person. Often times, people don't even realize it's being used around them. When furthering my research, I learned that one of the most important features to a successful audio identity was the need for it to either convey or elicit an emotion from its audience. Immediately being drawn to this idea of emotion, I combined my idea of "voices" and "emotions" and determined to create a "voice" for an "emotion".

Categorizing the complex field of emotions into two simplified categories, I created the two options that the audience can choose from, as I explained above: The Wonderful and The Fearful. The audio file exemplified in the stimulation video above is The Fearful. The Fearful, as the name suggests is a composition of sounds that arouse fear. It signifies danger and causes unease in the audience. The Wonderful is a composition that takes the audience on an enjoyable wonder. It travels along the journey of a fairy tale or a fantastical world.

In creating these two general moods, I wished for the audience to be able to imagine the scenes and moment that are wonderful and fearful to them. Hence, I chose to set up the installation in the closet. The closet, for me, associates itself with a place where I can daydream and get caught up imaginative worlds--similar to the image portrayed in The Narnia. In the common, undecorated closet, I am able to bring myself back, with the aid of my sound composition, to those childhood days when I used to take imaginative trips. The sound it meant to be listened to with headphones for proximity and stereo speakers on about half volume.