CONCEPT 01 // PREPARING FOR APOCOLYPSE
Project: Design Media Arts at UCLA

I want to design a space colony where a community constantly moves, creating an environment in nature allowing ability to change. Why is it that we put ourselves in one space and call it home? My plan is to create a habitat in which people are allowed to engage in different parts of the world, from underwater, to in the sky, mountain, desert, and caves. It is a concept derived from the habitat of fish and birds. They are migrative, a community that flies together, and dependent on nature for survival. So my idea is to create a mechanism by which you can live and travel in. I want there to be fish big enough for people to submerge these mechanisms in and attach to these fish for travel. We don't need engines to move when we have nature to channel us. We don't dominate the environment; but rather, live dependent on eachother.


ideas for inspiration:
swimming channel
diving
rock climbing
snorkeling
surfing
hiking
camping
bungee jumping
sailing on a lake
following the travel of a fish or bug



step 1
an exercise for building a creative flow- compiling a series of collages using pop culture, automobile, and natural living magazines. Finding elements of each and piecing them together in a way that is unnatural to our environment now do to gravitational restrications, but ideal for space travel.

establishing a name/theme for the colony- Rubicon- turning point, defining moment, taking a decisive step aka choosing one's fate.


concept ideas:
a) immersing yourself in the actual environment
installation includes sound, video, and feeling. Idea is to build a box, slightly bigger than the avg human size, in which you lay in. atop is a video mounted that guides you through the colony UNDERWATER. 1st person perspective- the viewer partakes in a simulation of what it is like to travel underwater. (not necessarily a box, but an intimate structure that is completely dark on the inside w. the exception of the video)

b) building a 3-dimensional model of the mechanism that glides and travels underwater and comes onto land as a temporary 'home'. NOT lifesize. name: rubicon.

c) creating the same mechanism as concept a but submerging it in water. something that can be thrown into the ocean and people can float in.


note: catalina- people travel by boat, walk on land. no cars in avalon. keep long distance travel in and under water.

nomadic colony- no one person is situated in one place permanently. the vehicle you use to travel is is also your home. people are constantly moving. nonterritorial. using animals to transport us. REALLY BIG ones.

research the currents in which fish, birds, and bugs follow.
dead sea- enough salt and we can walk on water? feeling of hovering and floating.


ideas based on greek and roman mythology
Ovid's Metamorpheses- creation of the world.
THE LLIAD, ODYSSEY and Virgil's AENEID .
ability to morph
strong connection between man animal and nature


chaos below, calm above, the hovering sits somewhere in between.

Mon, Apr 9, 2007  Permanent link

Sent to project: Design Media Arts at UCLA