Pencil and charcoal
I was heavily inspired by artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres and his focus on indexes. There is one piece called "Untitled (Sand)" that suggests a human that was once there but is no longer present. The footprints are indexes, showing that a human most certainly existed in that place, but has disappeared. It is like an indent of that person's existence. His piece inspired my want to suggest a space that was once occupied but can be occupied later by another person.
This spurred my idea to express a general sense of "home." What is home? I sought to display a space that can be filled by the viewer's own perspective. This led me to the object of a jacket/coat. This is something that is literally another skin for humans. It is there to be worn. It is there to be filled. This led to jackets becoming the objects becoming the canvas on which the projection would be projected onto.
In some ways, I'm trying to project someone's view of a home onto that jacket. I'm trying to fill those empty jackets.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres' "Untitled (Sand)"
Pencil
The next step was to superimpose a projection onto my coats. My decision on projecting a bed was determined after thinking about what everyone relates to. Sleep was something that all humans do and is the last thing done before death. A bed is a symbol of rest. It is something that is purely contained within the person. One's bed can be seen as private and intimate.
With my object set, I decided to also add an index into the bed. I want to suggest to the viewer that the space left by the invisible person sleeping in that bed can be filled by the viewer's mind.
The bed is something that anyone can project their own experiences onto. I think that a home is really made by the views of the person that inhabits it. If I can have the viewer cast their own interpretation of the bed, then the space they have entered, can truly be a small home for them.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres' "Untitled (Billboard of an Empty Bed)"
My concept of a bed is further inspired by another work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Here is a piece of his which shows a picture of a messy bed on a billboard. This bed has slight indents and messy sheets to convey that a person must have been there recently but has gone away by the time the picture has been taken.
It is exposing something extremely private and intimate to the public world, especially because it is placed on a billboard in the middle of a city street.
I think I want my pillow model for the project to be similarly indented like Gonzalez-Torres' work.
Pencil
Above are the rendered images of models made for the projection. I definitely changed the bed considerably in comparison to my sketches. I also added a window to the setting to give the room more dramatic lighting.
This is the first step before moving on to the actual animating of the sheets on the bed. The sheets have a soft body tag so that they fall realistically on an invisible body on the bed.
Possible sounds to overlay onto the animation: