the walls are alive

My project is a stationary VR experience and I worked on this alone. In it, you explore a room in a dark cave with a flashlight that is attached to your right hand. It is inspired by a few scenes in Werner Herzog’s documentary, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams; specifically the scene where Herzog speaks about how the cave paintings would serve as a primitive form of animation when combined with the flickering light of a torch. In my project I took that idea and flipped it by turning the cave paintings themselves into moving shadow-producing planes.

The idea of the cave as a form of habitation for early man also spoke to me in this project. I found myself asking the question, “what would I leave behind if my dwelling was found thousands of years in the future, buried underground and preserved near-perfectly?” The project was also inspired by some of the text in Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation, as well as by my late-grandma’s exploration into prehistoric imagery (of which are also on display in the scene).

In terms of functionality, my project serves as more of a visual demonstration of what I would like to do, rather than what it is. But, within some external time constraints, I had to stop somewhere.

I was initially inspired by this instagram post to try and recreate these ethereal beings out of flags, and then expand from there and explore which feelings I could get from animating these giant faces. I ended up hating the look of it completely. But I still wanted to create a sort of space that exists outside of time, without completely throwing out my work.

Upon returning home from the break and seeing some of my grandma’s art in the house, I wondered how that might look if it were a billowing piece of cloth. I really liked the idea of that image and it reminded me of some of the ideas in The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, so I began building that idea out into an inverse of how early man created animation. Due to a lack of time, I made the decision that the only way to interact with the scene would be through sight and the control of a flashlight attached to the hand. Thematically, it works alongside the Cave of Forgotten Dreams, as a sort of archeological site, where you are only allowed to look.