For this assignment, I chose the location of a dream I’ve been having on and off for many years now. For me, personally, I have a hard time replicating or describing “realistic” spaces, and thought I would be able to do the project best with a more surreal landscape. As opposed to choosing an imaginary, made up location, or even a fictional location from some existing IP (a beloved game, movie, or book), I wanted something deeply personal, emotional, and well documented in sketches, notebooks, and therapy sessions. This dream–what I call “The Theater Scene”–fit perfectly.
From a solely visual perspective, “The Theater Scene” can be summed up as a combination of the uncanny loneliness of an Edward Hopper painting, the yellow and blue illumination of Van Gogh’s “Cafe Terrace at Night,” and the neo-noir stylings of George Lucas’s planet Coruscant.
In this environment, I am standing in an alleyway at night. The only light sources are nearby round street lamps, and the illuminated windows. It’s raining hard. To my right is a brick wall with a rusted metal ladder leading up to the roof. In front of me, beyond the alleyway, in the distance, I can see the perpendicular city block, with dirty buildings and the same yellow cab rushing by over and over. Because of the distance, and the slippery pavement, I’m not able to get there.
If I turn around, behind me all I see is the ground continuing into a black void, with street lamps lined up along the path, endlessly. It’s as if two mirrors were facing each other, creating a never-ending pathway.
To my left is the most important part. The Theater. It’s a large building, presumably spanning an entire city block, though I’m unable to leave the alleyway to confirm this. Above the alleyway, facing the street, is a sort of bridge, connecting the theater to the dark building to my right. On the roof of this bridge are train tracks, with a 19th-century style elevated train whooshing by. Along the bottom of the structure are metal grates, covering what, in the dream, I believe to be a large interconnected sewer system underneath the city block.
There is a set of large, boarded up, wooden double doors with sconces on either side. The doors are raised onto a platform that can only be reached by a small set of stairs, which are blocked by wooden crates. More of these crates are stacked along the side of the building, with wood pallets leaning on them. More boarded up windows cover the side of the building and continue up to the top. Light is shining through a few of these windows, illuminating part of the wall and the alley below. There is no one else in the space but me.
The sound of the pouring rain blends with faint piano music coming from inside the Theater. I can hear people chattering on the distant streets about something important, though I can’t place what it is. I am super interested in this space because of how isolated it is–it’s literally impossible for anyone to join me there, but there are wisps of other people existing with me. Voices, cars, trains, but no people nearby for me to interact with. What are these other people doing? Where are they going? Why can’t I reach them? — Those are all questions I ask myself whenever I think back to this imaginary space.
To be perfectly honest, when remembering the scene, there isn’t anything to directly indicate that the building is a theater–no signs, nothing. I just… know. I suppose that’s part of the strangeness of dreaming. I vaguely remember it being some sort of opera house turned movie theater, but I can’t find any mention of this specific one online to see if it’s somewhere I’ve actually been in real life.
From an emotional perspective, the relationship I have with “The Theater Scene” is interesting, especially because it’s not a physical space as far as I know. I had this dream during the times that were most difficult in my life, and being in the space (while asleep, of course) felt like a sort of escape from everything happening during the day–I almost looked forward to visiting the strange place every night.
Over the course of the many years that I had this dream, there were specific emotions I identified when in this location. It’s not quite sad, but more melancholy and introspective–serene, almost. The quiet, combined with the subtle rain sounds and piano, make being in this space relaxing. In any other context, I can see the scene being creepy. A dark, abandoned alley at night? Something dangerous is bound to happen–just ask Bruce Wayne.
When describing the scene to my brother (high school sophomore), he said he was “waiting for some monster to jump out and scare me.” Not the case for me–I always viewed it as a safe space.
When creating the scene in 3D for the project, I did have to take some liberties in my interpretation of the scene, simply because not everything is technically feasible. The virtual representation is more about the experience I get when “being” in the space, rather than a one-to-one recreation. Because of the collaborative layout of the “interactive museum,” the endless pathway and the perpendicular street are both impossible to achieve.
From a technical standpoint, I realize that very few people will have a computer powerful enough to run the actual application file of the experience, so I wanted to make sure it will run in the browser. This way 1) Any device with a keyboard and mouse can “play” the app, and 2) so I can easily embed it into the Parsons Learning Portfolio page.
For my own desire to be back in this space, I also made sure that I can easily add virtual reality functionality, so I can be even more immersed when a VR headset is plugged into my PC. In the future, I think it would be super cool to flesh out the 3D environment so I can walk around the whole city block, but that would be for another time.
With this assignment, I am super excited to finally be able to jump back into the environment (virtually, of course) and experience it all over again, and hopefully uncover more memories I have associated with “The Theater Scene.”
You can watch a video of the demo, or play it right in your browser here:
