On the night of Tuesday, June 2nd, Charlotte Olson and I completed our final installation “Is There a Wolf In Here?” in the SLUG Garden hoop house. It took the both of us roughly two hours to install, largely due to my incompetence with projectors and an issue with some ancient technology we were using. However, these issues and the finalization of the installation process ended up posing as the perfect introduction for the viewers, who waited patiently outside.
In the space, we installed four separate projectors facing separate walls of the space. The two largest projectors faced the back wall, rounding the corner Pipilotti Rist-style. The smaller two faced nearer walls in the front of the space, with one pointed towards a sheet we hung in the entryway. The sheet created the effect that the viewers were stepping into an alternate sensory experience, rather than stepping into the hoop house as it typically stands. Charlotte also hung a papier-mâché moon near the back of the space to allude to wolves howling at the moon.
We placed several Bluetooth speakers inside of garbage bins to disorient the viewers. Not only did this slightly distort the sound, but it became unclear where the sounds were coming from. Charlotte and I each recorded tracks of us whispering about the wolves, the installation itself, and our fears. I was inspired by ASMR content on Youtube and wanted to twist the intended meaning of this content from being comforting and relaxing to unsettling. We found that listening to the audio of someone whispering at a loud volume was eerie already, so we played into that. Charlotte also produced an hour-long track of wolves howling and other ambient noises, which distorted and crescendoed as the installation progressed.
Though we provided our viewers with minimal instruction, they quickly imposed rules upon themselves, such as walking through the installation clockwise. The viewers were an essential part of the installation. Many of them played with the projections to make wolf shadows, tapped on the plastic to scare their friends, and guided others through the space to experience the full sensory effect of the sounds and lights in the space.
In addition to the tracks we produced, my dear friend Tyler Busse improvised ambient music on the electric bass for the duration of the performance. He used several pedals to attain a wolflike, howling tone, blending the themes of nature and digitization further.
This installation was made possible through the collaboration of Charlotte Olson, Mathilda Shortridge, Tyler Busse, Quintin Fernandez, Madison Pierson, the Mudd library staff, and each of the people who came to see what weird stuff we were up to. Thank you all.
Comments
Post a Comment