Waiting Room/Shift

Waiting room/shift

I’d like you to remember a time when you ascended a staircase in the dark. Assuming there was one more step then there was, your foot fell past where that next connection should have been and your world shifted for just a moment. Surprise, confusion, and something very physical happened; it’s almost like you were falling. 

When you first enter the space you encounter a waiting room. It is cold, sterile, yet familiar, the slight whine of fluorescent lights rings in your ears. You take a number. When your number is called you enter a space through a curtain and encounter a staircase. At the top of the staircase a hallway is projected onto a curtain, and you begin to walk up the stairs. Because of the flat lighting you don’t notice that one step is shorter than the others until that moment when your foot falls farther then it should, when you feel that brief sick moment of fear. On this step I will have a pressure sensor, and when contact is made things change. You hear the whine of the lights change into the violent rushing of a waterfall, the projection before you veers into the side of the hallway and out into woods, careening camerawork will accentuate the the feeling of a loss of control.

This aggressive onslaught of change only lasts for a moment though; the camerawork steadies into steady panning around the forest, the sounds of the waterfall fade into a gentle brook, birds chirping. When the top of the stairs is reached you walk through the curtain (through the projection) to find a staircase leading down into a space similar to the waiting room but everything has been overgrown - a blanket of grass covers seats, the lighting is dappled through what seems to be a forest canopy.

Waiting Room/Shift was an immersive, interactive installation that exhibited in The Gladstone Hotel’s second Grow Op: Exploring Landscape and place show in 2014. I lost all of my picture of it before I learned to depend on The Cloud (all hail The Cloud) but I still have the modular staircase with the stumble step that I built for it, so if you need such a thing in your life contact me!