The first outcome I chose was installation and the task is to temporarily install a piece of work that the public can experience with their different senses. I decided to focus on my research into mortality salience and the terror management theory, as I found that humans look for greater meaning when faced with death, either through culture or self-importance to prove their worth. I want to explore these ideas in my installation, by presenting these effects of existential fear or provoking them in the viewers.
I started my idea generation by revisiting my site intervention, where I projected eyes onto a fence. I wanted to recreate the sense of vulnerability that comes with existential fear, so I thought about projecting many different pairs of eyes to make the feeling more overwhelming. I then thought about creating a maze and projecting eyes onto certain walls, because the sense of the unknown and disorientation would increase the participant's vulnerability. After looking at Tony Oursler's work in my previous research, I considered projecting the eyes onto shapes- perhaps graves to refer back to my site and suggest a link between that vulnerability and death. Antony Gormley's 'Blind Light' [19] prompted me to look at projecting onto fog, or using it my maze to make the participant even more disorientated.
I looked more at Susan Collins' work, particularly 'Touch' [20] and this made me consider how the viewer would interact with the projections. Projecting the eyes onto the person themselves could be unsettling and add to the atmosphere, or I could use biblical imagery to pick up on my religious theme and link to the cultural worldview I looked at.
Stemming from this, I revisited my collaborative research and imagery about the afterlife, so I thought about how I could place the viewer into a scene from heaven or hell. I would project my own paintings of stereotypical imagery (clouds and fire etc.) and use sounds for further immersion (i.e. peaceful birdsong for heaven and screams for hell). Going back to my research about terror management theory, I wanted to further explore the idea that people are more morally judgemental after being faced with their own mortality. I could place images of 'immoral acts' into a grave scene to see how people react and even a bright path to test whether people would avoid the subject all together. After looking at Bill Viola's 'Sleep of Reason' [21], I thought about how images can provoke fear and panic, especially those featuring death or pain. I could use projections of similar images in my installation and even include a mirror to see how people react to seeing those reflections on themselves- perhaps in line with the terror management theory.
Finally, I revisited my idea about walking into the afterlife and thought I could use interviews about mortality and finding greater meaning in the current pandemic. This would make the piece more relevant and force people to question their ideas about the afterlife.
Next I chose to create a series of alternative postcards, which could be used to communicate in some way with the public. After looking at the afterlife for my installation, I thought about the questions around the whole concept- Is heaven real? How do you get in? etc.
I started by thinking about how the postcard could be used- to communicate with your past/future self; with God; with deceased family; or family that is still living (from beyond the grave. If these were possible, people may want to send immortalised memories, so I considered creating a series of postcards depicting major life events. If you were communicating with someone who had died it could take more of a letter form to fit in more information and could be sent in the shape of a paper plane.
I then thought about what a postcard to or from God would be used for. If it was from God, it would probably be telling commandments and advice, and could feature imagery from bible stories on the front. If it was a postcard to God, then it may be a confession of a sin in the hopes of forgiveness. The card could have an image of a confessional and people could write their sins on the back. It could have lines to show where to fold to turn it into a paper plane or boat and be used to let go of any guilt that the writer is holding on to.
As confession is a way to get into the afterlife, I could create a series depicting different cultural perceptions of the afterlife. One could also fold into a fortune teller, which would decided whether the participant got into heaven or not- perhaps suggesting that the whole idea is distorted and not realistic. Finally, I thought about creating pop-up scenes of places of worship, as in these places you can supposedly communicate with God.
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