Distant Memory

In the last post, I discuss much about: 

- purposes of initiation 

(for this project : exploring the faculty building and its campus + ghost stories matter the most)

- how memory works in a brain 

(explains why freshmen remember the initiation event well = level of processing)

- Sil Joom 

(I'm interested in the tense atmosphere during its non-stop rehearsal and the transition of emotion when freshmen move from football court to the rehearsal room) 

- Tipi tent (its fabric feature and structure will be the design core)

For this post I will talk more about the experience in the space that I proposed last time.

First of all

This painting belongs to cubist movement in which objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form.

Still Life with Chair-Caning by Pablo Picasso

             Broken memory is just like cubist art, it's the recombination of broken image to create new quality, and perhaps new interpretation. The artist disected a chair feature and material and recombined them again. The outcome is the new way of perceiving the chair.  At first sight on "Still Life with Chair-Canning" , ones can see the material feature of the painting: the weaving, rope, wood, etc. Instead of seeing a chair in normal condition, ones might presume it's something else entirely but they can still see the material and design features of the same chair in new composition.

this is pretty much the theme of this project:  "abstracted reality"

A journey through "Memory"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okABK7DS2aY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O840Fe-lLIg

            The Game I have mentioned to you "Rule of Rose"

- The player will play as "Jennifer". Her role is to try to find an escape from the airship which is full of monsters.

- She has to find offering for "Red Crayon Aristocrat Club", a group of cruel orphans who ruled the   airship or else she would be killed.

- In order to find the offering in a gigantic and maze-liked airship, she's accompanied by Brown, a      Labrador Retriever (respond to player) who will sniff around and find restorative objects.

- During game play, player finds several puzzle to solve, confront enemies and bosses.

- The game is divided in chapters with their "certain theme". And in each of them hold Jennifer's piece of her forgotten childhood memory.

- Scenes in the game: An orphanage / Airship / Gregory's house in rundown state.

            In the game, the main character, Jennifer, travels through her repressed memory. The quality of the memory is fragmented and not chronologically ordered. During the game, the you will find that what she experienced makes no sense at all. This process, little by little, provides you scattered pieces of information(memory) which later become important in the last chapter which all the story is revealed. And after that every pieces of the data (memory) turn out make sense.

this storyline of the game I made below will explain this concept better. (my actual first plate!! T T)

(please download high quality from media file link below!)

Full size here >> http://www.mediafire.com/?0k17jzicfilmc9k

            After you downloaded it, please follow the instruction (please don't look below no 4 before you finish all the instruction. Im trying to let you have the experience of the game) 

1. read the "Journey through broken memory" (the left side) first

2. after that (whether make sense or not) try to list any idea/ quotes/ situation/ sentence or anything that the list on the left side urge you to think

3. after finished no2 continue read storyline on the right (you start to match the word with the same highlight color on lef and right side. A pair of words  witht the same highlight color implies the same thing)

4. (whether make sense or not) see if what you have produced from no.2 match with what you get from reading the right side

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The storyline on the LEFT side is the experience a player got from playing the game for the first time

(The broken memory) When Jennifer is 19. (which is when the game start) She's recalling her memory in wrong order, that's why the scene in the game is the mixture of the airship and the orphanage (the monsters appeared in the scene are by-product of her own fear)

while...

The storyline on the RIGHT is the story which actually happened in the past of Jennifer's childhood (The perfect memory) Jennifer was 7 years old. After the all the incident she lost her memory. 

             Well, if my diagram works (if!) You will find the storyline on the:

LEFT SIDE:

- hardly make sense

- provide keywords which you don't really know what it's for

- the scene randomly changed

while

LEFT SIDE:

- everything perfectly makes sense

- you get the meaning of all the keywords 

- the change of scene is in right order

What this research can do good to the project?

From this research, I want to create the experience in a space which the first phase is to give out needed memory fragments (in the steps of secret revelation during initiation ) and then create the experience which put all the fragments together (at the end of initiation ceremony when the freshmen is fully accepted as a part of the faculty) 

To be more straight forward, it's like when you watch a mystery film in which during the first and middle part give you riddles and let you guess so many thing, and in the end it lets you know the correct answer and you are kind of "ohhhh!!! I knew it!!! or OMG!! I'm so surprised!!! even OOOOOOhh!! I get it!! << i will look up in the dictionary if there's a vocabulary for this )

**I believe doing so will enhance the intensity of the atmosphere and the holiness of the ceremony.**

Distant memory

Its meaning is simple, a long-distanted memory or you recall the memory where the place it was memorized is far away or, in my case, "inaccessible". During initiation ceremony there will be some areas where is forbidden for the freshmen to visit or get close to. The reason might be:

- the older years is preparing for the preceding activity

- the area is used to conduct the serious activity (somewhat sacred i suppose) the rehearsal room of Sil Joom is included in one of those.

The older will guard everywhere to prevent the freshmen to reach the spot (like an panopticon idea) and this generate fear among the freshmen cause they're still new to the place and somehow afraid of punishment.

In Rule of Rose, not only the scene in the game randomly switched but also some of the scene are made up of the other two scenes. This will cause the player to see that in one scene is consisted of both the architectural elements from the orphanage and that from the airship 

as can be seen from the image below

A the (real) Orphanage

During the journey through memory (on an airship which appears to mixed up with the element from the orphanage) The Bed and the lamp existed on both scene.

for more explanation see >>>  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Of93_1lmY

what this research can do good to the project?

- The separation between the sacred area(rehearsal room) and non-sacred one(recreation area: football    court, rugby field + Chula pond) during initiation is clearly defined. 

- When the freshmen occupy the sacred area, they tend to feel stress and can do nothing more but stand still in lines and get scolded at. (They also unconsciously memorized the certain element within the room for example what's the floor of the room made of, how the window look like, what is the color scheme of the room, etc)

- Will they feel more connected to the initiation process more if I can create the space that resembles "the element of the sacred room which normally the freshmen cannot access".

well, normal reaction from doing so might be "Hey! I see this in the rehearsal room let's see it closely"

The target is to let the freshmen interact and explore with the element they feel unreachable in the stress rehearsal room but is reachable in the recreation area.

The "element" must be distinctive and can be found only in these aforementioned area.

By doing so, as i mentioned earlier, the freshmen will found this fact curious and eager to learn more of its reason (feel more involved and connected.)