dissertation proposal

Deirdre Coleman
dissertation draft 1


Areas of interest
• Interactive cinema
• Installation art
• Expressionism
• surrealism
• animation
• horror
• media magica/ magic lanterns/illusions

I am interested in exploring themes of the real, imagined and constructed. Digital media
has the power to manipulate or experience of the world. Mass media shapes our experience
and understanding the world around us this in turn affects how we interact with the world
around us and the people in it. I would like to experiment with digital media as a means of
constructing and manipulating a persons experience of space. We as people rely on our
senses to navigate the world around us. I would like to focus on the idea of manipulation of
experience of space through the use of sound and visuals.

Proposal

interactive video installation
Title: Mirror, Mirror.
Discription
The installation space will consist of an abstract miniature landscape set that people walk
through and inhabit. The set will be small in scale in relation to the size of an average person
something along the scale of a large dolls house. The miniature set will be captured on film
while empty and will be represented on the screen as a life sized space and this footage will be
edited into a continuous loop. A live video feed from the same space will then be taken and
layered over the previous footage to give the illusion that the person is passing through the life
sized space. This layering of spaces from different times creates a second constructed digital
space. While the inhabitants of the real space are still present this mullti layered second space
will be displayed via a projection in real time, within the real space.
It is hoped that the ambiguity caused by this magic mirror effect will cause the person to
become more aware and question there position wthin the real space, as the person questions
the space and there surroundings they are encouraged to interact with the space in a different
way moving to experiment explore and change there position within this second space.
Sound will also be part of the work. I would like to experiment with different sounds that I
feel will manipulate the persons experience of the space. These sounds should be abstract and
there link to the visual second space will be random and ambiguous causing the person to
question the link between there position and the occurring sound, encouraging more interaction
through movement.