Brave New World

Yuhang Yang

ACT ONE

In the process of the act 1, the placeI chose was Kelvingrove Park.I want to connect people and the surrounding environment through emotion or physics. In the end, I chose “fear”, the most primitive emotion of human beings. Why do people feel fear? Is this object scary? Is it a ghost? I think it is from the unknown of human beings to that things, therefore, awe is caused by the unknown.

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. And the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. –H. P. Lovecraft

In order to see the other side, I choseto do another research on rainy days and dark nights. On cloudy days, the wind is very strong because of the fluctuation of the park’s terrain. At night, because there is no lighting in the park, people are groping in memory and feelings in the dark. In this case, the park brought me the curiosity of exploration. And when night falls, the fountains in the park, the water and the friction between the leaves will remind me of the cthulhu mythology. Cthulhu is used to describe the indescribable fear.In the story of cthulhu, although you may

know that the things you face are dangerous, you still can’t resist curiosity and want to continue to explore, even if you lose your life, but this unknown fear and curiosity make people crazy with secrets. In this process, the skin is a medium for transmitting emotions.

So, an exploratory continuous space was created, starting from fear, exploring the unknown, and awe of great symbolic things, such as the monuments in life, the sacredness created by this geometry. In this journey, reverence and curiosity have overcome fear. Finally, all feelings and emotions will be magnified and absorbed. People will begin to reflect and reflect the things they have seen before. Just like the ancient gods in Cthulhu that subvert people’s traditional cognition, some powers are still difficult for us to understand, people can only lament their own insignificance.

ACT TWO

The second project I chose was an abandoned water tower. In this project, I decided to explore the history covered by “skin”.Because of its unique shape, the water tower is more like a symbol than the ordinary water tower.

Cranhill water tower, as a landmark building in cranhill area, was built inthe 1950s to provide drinking water for local people. But over time, water towers have been abandoned and become anew “lighthouse”, at least for local residents.Combining the background of the times and the local public security environment to investigate, to explore the things behind the water tower, and conjecture about the future.

Firstly, I surveyed the Cranhill area. The area belongs to the slum of Glasgow, where the dropout rate, crime rate and violence rate of children are higher than those of other places, and because of political factors, everything is based on personal interests, resulting in the problem has not been effectively solved. Cameras on water towers attempt to “monitor” the entire Cranhill area, which seems to be the leader’s third eye. The social reality of this huge gap between the rich and the poor, and the constant surveillance of people, reminds me of an dystopia society.

The relationship between water tower and residents is a supply relationship, just like skin wrapping people, water tower is a container, wrapping people up, and people rely on this container to survive. The various parts of the water tower play different roles. In this regard, I combine dystopia with Panopticon. People are also being monitored while depending on water towers. With the development of information technology, we have no privacy at all. But in Panopticon, we are not actually being monitored by others, but by ourselves. We think that we are effectively compelled to regulate their own behaviour under such a social system.

Therefore, anti-utopianism(dystopia)and the concept of panopticon have become the key words of this project. Another concept related to dystopia is cyberpunk, proposed by William Ford Gibson. In the cyberpunk worldview, computer network control is the core background, covering hackers, artificial intelligence, urban expansion and slums, reflecting human concerns about social alienation and government corruption, and thus with strong dystopia and pessimism. His aim is to evoke people’s determination to change society.

Since the water tower is surrounded by the residential area, the water tower is the highest building, the above camera seems to be constantly monitoring the local people. If people think that the water tower is a spiritual symbol that they need to maintain through their own actions, in fact they are also invisible in restraining themselves. Actually, it’s the same as being monitored.It’s just that people can’t feel that they are free subconsciously, but in fact they are used to this kind of self-restraint for some reason.

Consequently, the space at the top of the water tower can become a surveillance space, and the identity of visitors can be changed between surveillance and being monitored. No one is relatively safe. With the progress of exploration, people gradually realise that they are being monitored. Visitors’ behaviours may be inadvertently monitored by others. In order to maintain their own image, they need to constantly restrain their own behaviour.

Contact: Y.Yang2@student.gsa.ac.uk