Sensing Spaces Project (2022)

Sensing Spaces Project (Year 1 Spring Semester - Feb 2022)

We were tasked to create an experience within a 3m cube. I chose to represent the experience of a lost foetus in the womb, trapped for eternity in the 'prenatal' experience. 

The Prenatal experience

Creating the model was very fun! I wanted to capture the discomfort between living and non-living organic textures, and also the very visceral feeling of sand that shows up weeks after you return from the beach.

Tying into themes of lost childbirth, I collected the sand from a nearby play area (Highfields Park on the University of Nottingham campus) and clothing from the children's section of a charity shop, which I cut into strips to represent the endometrium.

I'm sure there is a movie scene in which the protagonists are trapped in a pit where the sand is pouring from an aperture that is impossibly high to reach. It could be Indiana Jones or Star Wars. That was what I was trying to evoke in this piece, and filming this took several hours of adjusting the camera angles, lighting, emptying and refilling the sand box. I had to create one panel from transparent plastic, but that created glare and I ended up removing the panel and spilling sand on my bedroom floor!

How immersive would this experience be? I like to imagine myself and other visitors crawling and sitting in the foetal position as sand pours from the ceiling aperture, but I would not enjoy having to remove sand grains from my eyes and clothing later. Maybe the sand could be ping pong balls instead, with the sound of sand pouring, maybe you wear a hazmat suit before entering. Maybe the whole thing is sherbet?