'Para' - Project Brainstorming

Quick mind-map outlining the features and ecological background of Para.

"Para is an invented desert city that combines Western and Eastern culture with modern motifs - the spoken language is a cultural salad of different dialects including English, Korean and Japanese. Youth speak and new adaptations to language use Korean and Japanese more colloquially whereas older generations speak in English, which is accepted as the high register in the city.
Upper Para consists of high-rise Art Deco style buildings, corporate offices and gated communities and has a primarily white population - racism, sexism and homophobia are rife and hate crime is at an all-time high. In Upper Para migrants are not permitted certain jobs.
Middle Para is where small businesses flourish and there is a wealth of juxtaposition between Eastern and Western culture. Areas of greenery and traditional Japanese gardens permeate the housing estates and Soubrette shops.
Lower Para surrounds the entirety of the city and makes up at least 50% of the area and even more of the general population. It is known for squatting buildings, black markets, neon-lit strip joints and its infamous sex district. There is a prominent culture of drugs and prostitution, with corporations gaining a large amount of their wealth from the exploitation of the poor and vulnerable. Immigrants, homosexuals, criminals and the poor are considered undesirable and so are locked out of Upper Para and left to live in Lower Para.
Outer Para is the desert surrounding the city, and is considered for the most part an uninhabitable wasteland. Rumors of flesh-eating crows and cultures pervade the city and no one ever leaves its borders - likewise, no one is ever meant to come in. This creates a xenophobic culture where people from outside the city are considered lunatics or diseased.
However, beyond the desert lie the Outlands, which are small village hamlets built around a waterfall and its surrounding glades. The people there live in relative harmony with the natural area and are not overwhelmed by Capitalism such as in the city."

The project will likely involve as many different techniques and forms of art as possible, including painting, drawing, sculpture and installation, video and performance. Creating a fictional universe and producing art that is meant to exist within the said universe gives a lot of scope.

Photograph showing the installation aspect of 'Vermillion Lake.' Martelli and Gibson have created a true-to-life trappers cabin.

Ruth Gibson and Bruno Martelli's piece 'Vermillion Lake' from 2011 combines installation work with aspects of video art and game programming to create an immersive experience of a specific environment. The artists were inspired by a recent trip to the Canadian Rockies in their creation of the piece, and it forces direct audience participation with the piece via use of a rowing boat within the trappers cabin. The observer must sit in the boat and use the oars in order to make the rowboat in the video game move, hence there is direct interaction with the installation. Exterior virtual space is bought into the interior gallery space in a way that is deeply engaging and original, and the use of the hut around the rowing boat ensures that the audience is not distracted by their surroundings. In this way, Gibson and Martelli have complete control over how the audience perceives the work. In a partner piece entitled 'Where The Bears Are Sleeping', there is a depiction of glaciers, forests and frozen lakes in monochrome. This is a prime example of how different types of media can be used to convey a singular concept, and I plan to embody this is my own work. In both works, either a friendly or malevolent force is indicating, with suggestions of the tracker being tracked and the hunter being hunted. In my project I hope to convey atmosphere in a similar way, exploring aspects of sound and found objects to flesh out Para.

A photograph showing the inside of the installation and the way in which Gibson and Martelli use physical objects in cohesion with video and sound.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM0hHSKfZw8 

A still from 'Happy Birthday!!' where a head emerges like a tombstone from the ocean.

Ed Atkins' 'Happy Birthday!!', a video piece from 2014. The way Atkins uses allegory in his work correlates with the way I want to represent the city, and also the monochromatic backdrop and the use of video game technology to create a realist effect is something that wants exploration.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RkHCnfqdh8

A still from 'Hisser', showcasing the way Atkins creates a realistic and detailed environment that feels credible to the viewer.

 Ed Atkins' 'Hisser' uses atmospheric sound and the power of one extended shot to engage the audience. His use of ambient sound is reminiscent of video games, particularly walking simulator 'Everybody's Gone to The Rapture' by The Chinese Room. Both projects have this desire to create a living environment, not a commercial storyline, which is what characterizes them as art, not as video games. 'Hisser' is built upon the feeling of tension and anxiety we get whilst viewing the bedroom, and each person is sure to experience the piece in a different way. The hissing noises can tell of an escaped pet or creature waiting in the unoccupied bedroom for its owner to return, and judging by the aggressive vocalizations of the animal, it sounds as if it will hurt whoever comes in. Whether or not this is Atkins' intention, the feeling I get is one of waiting for something horrific to happen. The creature that is hissing, probably a snake, is never seen, and remains a disguised threat. When the light beyond the door is turned on at the end, it makes me think that the person has returned home and is about to enter their bedroom, and Atkins is making us imagine the attack that will follow. There is also lots of animal imagery in the bedroom, suggesting the occupant is a lover of animals, which makes the foreshadowed attack both ironic and deeply sad. 

Likewise, 'Everybody's Gone to The Rapture' involves lots of participation from the observer. It creates a vision of 1980's Shropshire after the Rapture described in Christian theology, whereby the player experiences the echoes of human life before the Apocalypse via golden beams of light. No characters are ever seen, only voiced, and the player uses their imagination to piece together the narrative. The only technical difference between The Chinese Room's project and Atkins' video art is the level of audience participation - the former requires you to navigate the world yourself and explore, whereas Atkins uses forced perspective to create a feeling of powerlessness and fear. 

I want to explore the way video art is used to create emotional responses, as both of these pieces create a powerful atmosphere and, most importantly, an environment that has character. Seeing as my project is primarily based around a fictional place, there's a responsibility to characterize the city in order to make it feel real.