TOWER OF NIGHTMARES
Yijun Xing
Concept
The prototype for this project is the wind turbine,, which is a paradoxical synthesis.
On one hand,the wind turbine has a white and clean appearance which brings a feeling of pure beauty that symbolises an ideal life. On the other hand, the interior of the wind turbine has a dark environment with a small footprint and a high height,, like a deep well. In such environments, one can feel depressed, scared and suffocated. It reminds me of the nightmares, where things happen in my dreams that might not happen in the real world.
According to Sigmund Freud, dreams are a disguise for subconscious desires. I combined the contradiction of the wind turbine into the theme of the project. The unfulfilled desires of people in the real world are recreated in dreams (nightmares) and by designing the space inside the wind turbine, I represent the world as seen by a person consumed by desire. The darkness of the wind turbine’s interior (greed and desires) contrasts with the whiteness of the exterior (ideal life), warning people not to lose their souls in greed for beautiful things, but to see reality and accept it and themselves, to escape from a life wrapped in desire.
Approaches
The book Who am I? by Steven Reiss tells us about the 16 basic desires that motivate our actions. I chose five of them to design the space, namely eating, romance, saving, status and idealism, which are most relevant to the host (aa paralysed dancer). Meanwhile, according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, I arranged the space from the bottom to the top according to the pyramidal level of the theory, representing people’s physical desires from basic material needs to higher spiritual pursuits.
This space is not a comfortable and idealised environment to represent desire but the opposite of an uncomfortable and frightening experience. By recreating the dream world through exaggeration, when people’s otherwise normal desires are infinitely magnified, it creates the effect of the opposite, by feeling pain and thus realising that life should not be trapped by such desires. The world shown inside the tower is a virtual space reflected by the soul’s state of mind. Most souls see their subconscious desires and the tower amplifies the desires in people’s minds.
This tower is a disturbing place, a prison and a playground, where the host’s world is part dream, part nightmare.
