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by David Bickerstaff
Client: The
Big Chill Festival - Art Trail 2008
Curator: Alice Sharp
Software: HMC
Interactive
Houses are built to provide shelter
and comfort for human beings, making them emotional spaces that
link us directly with our identity and social memory. In fairytales
and folk stories the house archetype is often subverted and twisted
as a ploy to play with our perception of the house as a haven of
safety. In the story of the ‘The House of Usher’, Edgar
Allen Poe describes a house as if it has a physical persona, telling
us it had ‘eye-like windows’ that looked down upon the
visitor, filling him with dread. In the German folk tale of Hansel
and Gretel, the cruelty of childrens’ family home is later
contrasted with the apparent innocence of a Gingerbread house made
of cake and sweets, all designed to lure the innocent into the clutches
of a cannibalistic witch.
The idea behind Angry House is to create an
interactive, performance-based installation, where this notion of
the ‘emotional’ house is played out. It looks like a
wooden, backyard playhouse, which is designed in a ‘cute’,
mini-house style, so it is attractive to children. It sits in on
a manicured piece of land, surrounded by trees. It has the appearance
of innocence and calm. When no one is around, the house sleeps…all
is quiet, except for the wind chimes hanging above the door.
But the house is sentient. It knows when someone
approaches and from what direction. Proximity sensors imbedded in
the front of the house, detect the distance and movement of the
visitor. As they get closer, the house stirs, getting angrier, it
growls and bangs the door from inside. Sometimes, a bright light
will shoot out of the small windows, projecting shadowy figures
onto the adjacent trees. The house will appear to be alive and active,
attracting attention with its internal, flickering light and sweet
chimes. The Angry House is always locked and visitors can never
go in, but curious folk can always peer through the windows at the
dark secret within.
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