Set

The set is now finished. We didn't quite have enough wallpaper to fill the walls so we had to paint a small section grey to fit with the general colour scheme.

Set Construction: Week Two

• Finished painting gaps
• Put up green screen behind window space
• Made human-sized hole behind where the small cupboard will stand
• Covered the glass windows on the cabinet with old worn paper to prevent reflections of the studio
• Added more tea to the walls
• Made old looking scrolls using tea

Set Construction: Week One

• Put up 3 set flats, in an L shape
• Stripped Original wallpaper
• Pasted our wallpaper on to all sides
• Painted the gaps grey
• Made 'paper rocks' in rips of the wallpaper
• Painted the window frame brown
• Covered the wallpaper in tea mixed with green paint to create a worn effect

Abandoned Places

In the past I have visited a number of abandoned buildings places, I get a thrill from exploring them and discovering the ways in which they used to work and exist. I feel that they represent an element of the uncanny as (in whole) they are how they were in the past only a little rougher around the edges and taken over by nature and explorers. Hopefully our set, the abandoned doctor's office, will recreate this feeling. Here are some photographs I have taken in abandoned places:

Ski Village

Cannon Brewery

Ron Mueck

Ron Mueck is a hyperrealistic sculptor. His sculptures are made to be uncomfortably realistic in shape, colour, texture etc. however, they are all over-sized, this creates further uncomfort and creepiness. You wouldn't normally see a baby twice the size of a full grown adult, the hyperreality of the scupltures confuses the brain (cognitive dissonance) and creates a sense of uncanny.

Doctor's office

After a meeting with the group we decided on a set that took aspects from our ideas. We decided on building an abandoned, victorian doctor's office. We will try and create a mouldy-looking, dingy office that is being taken over by nature. On one wall will be a mounted Geisha head. There will also be two cabinets, one containing jars and vases full of strange experiments and pickled body parts. The other will be the entry point to the office.

Un Chien Andalou (1926) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIKYF07Y4kA

Un Chien Andalou is a masterpiece of artist cinema, with many references to the uncanny. 

"We may try on rationalistic grounds to deny that fears about the eye are derived from the fear of castration, and may argue that it is very natural that so precious an organ as the eye should be guarded by a proportionate dread." (Freud) 

This quote highlights the uncanny for this scene in the film, making the connection that the cutting of the eye relates to castration, making it an extremely uncomfortable image without one really understanding why.

Unheimlich (animation) Juan Manuel Escobar (2007)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGaV_6mOj_M

This animation creates a real sense of unease. The movements created are uncanny as they only vaguely represent the movements of a human being, the stop motion technique is integral in making this sense of unease. The sound in the film also adds to the sense of unease as it relates to what we see on screen i.e. a person heavily breathing as the man's chest inflates, however the sound is exaggerated greatly adding to the uncanny feel of the film.

Symmetry Moodboard

Leif Podhajsky

I am a great admirer of Leif Podhajsky's artworks, especially his work involving symmetry. I feel that his work targets the hyperreality of landscape and the beauty of wildlife to create uncanny images using mirroring techniques to create symmetry and 'infinite' landscapes.

 

Northern Borders (2013) I feel that this artwork creates a sense of uncanny as Podhajsky has taken an image and used symmetry to create something unreal, but recognisable.






















Innerspeaker (2010) Uncanniness has been created here using repetition of imagery to create an infinite effect landscape.




















In Ghostlike Fading (2012) Symmetry has been used here to create a 'super-landscape' it is instantly recognisable as clouds but the symmetry creates a strange feeling and a certain beauty.

Symmetry

During a visit to the Dali exhibition in Berlin, I noticed a series of paintings that seemed uncanny, I couldn't work out why I found them so odd. After a while I noticed that they were symmetrical with certain, minimal aspects unsymmetrical. I would like to make a set with this in mind. The presence of symmetry would be a large aspect of the set, I would like to use shadow and fluid shapes to create the uncanniness and to disrupt the symmetry of the set.

First Session

In the first session we looked at the uncanny in film. This short creates a sense of claustrophobia and un-comfort. It does this by using a recognisable figure (the human) and creating a strange sense of motion using the stop-motion animation. This is uncanny and uncomfortable. We also looked at a sequence from Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror, where a similar thing is done, we see a human washing her hair in an incredibly, un-human way, her movements are strange and create a sense of unrest.