Spatial Design: Final Project Brainstorm

November 09, 2006

Final Project Brainstorm

PROJECT PROPOSAL: CRAZY PEOPLE SNATCHING DEVICE
The ITP Winter Show is a crowded, or very crowded experience.
I want to sort of work with that to single out a single element of the crowd every once in a while. Somehow change that person's sense of space by spontaneously transforming that person's relationship with the others in the crowd.

One way to do this is to transform someone into a performer ephemerally.
In my opinion, a really good way to this is to try to suck them with a vacuum cleaner nozzle into a nest of snakelike nozzle embedded in the ceiling above. Structurally, there is a long vacuum cleaner tube curled really beautifully in the ceiling space above, with a fairly large nozzle. This nozzle would move horizontally like the head of a UFO Catcher system, and then every now and then drop down and turn onto max power, futilely trying to suck up the head of an attendee into the otherworld above.

This invites an attendee to perform for his audience.

I'm not even kidding! If I was king...

OR:

Another idea is to use an UFO Catcher kind of claw as the snatcher, and even place controls for it somewhere accessible and in another room with a video feed of the entrance. This is an equally good idea, and provides a lot of familiarity as a gimmick: people can think "Fuck! I'm in a fucking UFO Catcher!" and one other person might think "Holy shit I playing a people catcher!". However, I'm not sure how the metaphor would weaken when if don't allow the snatcher to descend far enough to actually grab people.

Posted by Kunal Gupta at November 9, 2006 12:24 PM