DREAM&BEAM
Sound Narrative Installation
Our big concept touches on the human sleep cycle and dream journey. We added layers to the narrative by adding Southeast Asian folklore connected with the moon, dreams, and sleep. It is delivered in a tunnel that will bring audiences on a journey through several types of sounds. Throughout the trip, audiences will build their own narrative and stories by interpreting the sounds they hear.
Humans have diverse kinds of experiences with sleep. Even in our team, three of us went through different ways of sleeping and dreaming. One could have active dreams, sleep paralysis, and many more. Sleep is not just a necessary human process but also a magical and sensual experience. To reach dreamland, there is this ritual stages human need to encounter.
The sound and visuals were inspired by Southeast Asian folklore, the Philippines, and Indonesia. We add this cultural inspiration to bring a personal layer to our project. We only took folklore elements that have connections with the moon, sleep, and dreams. This builds a sense of freedom, exploration, and curiosity in the audience. The audience could think of their own narrative and story and develop their own tension. From the Philippines, we involved the Bakunawa. This serpent-like dragon found the seven moons beautiful, eating all the moons except one. While from Indonesia, a female figure will laugh maniacally when the full moon is shining, the Kuntilanak. The ghost is really popular in Indonesia; even people believe that each different color of Kuntilanak represents strata and deadly sins.
I am in charge of the concept and visual world building during the making. We decided to use the narrative that makes people think they are walking in a very long tunnel of sleep stages. Yet, when they finished, they could understand this whole time they were walking inside the body of a dragon that causes earthquakes and other natural disasters. We represent the terror as a sublime. As the audience reached out to the last section of the tunnel, they could see the face of the dragon as they heard rumbling earthquake noise. We created a sense of shakiness and terror through spatialization and sound editing. And when they came out of the installation, they could see the last moon and the dragon 3D figure.
The stages of a dream from the visual perspective could be explained by the color inside of the dragon. At the start, we make it as dark as possible, representing the human first encounter with sleep. The second stage would come, and some spectrum of color could be seen in some spots of the area. As the third stage comes, the color provides more spectrum, a sudden transition. Here, we offered a little more color and blended it with each other. Lastly, the harmony of the extensive range of spectrum could be seen in the very last stage, dreaming. Lots of things could happen in a dream, so we represent it by splashes of color throughout the tunnel.
full team :
Yani Castaneda
Dotdot Bryan
Dragon head credit to
Turbosquid - @Ghostman56
