Breaking and Interning

Sorry for the long wait since last post. Been a busy beaver...or at least doing other things. I have categorized my most recent adventures. This post being about my internship.

24/09/09 18:00 Just left Tottenhan, from my internship. Today was kinda weird and cool. For the first "experiment", they are taking people, with a guide, one by one, through an abandoned and into an abandoned and dilapidated building that is hazardous to go into. They are doing this at night this Saturday. My job for that day was to make a safe passageway through the building, sweeping dirt and laying down old wooden planks on hazardous roots and holes, and pruning the leaves and plants that have been growing everywhere. The one thing that is weird though is that ALL OF THIS IS TRESPASSING! They have no permit, no legal right to be here. I would be worried about heath and law suits but they have National Health Care here. On our way out, after finishing the path, we saw a man also in the abandoned building. Quickly, we hid and ran the other way. But to our surprise, so did he. He had no more of a right to be here than we did, so we just decided to leave, walking right past him. He is still ducking in a corner of the bushes, and I can see his full face and him eyes looking at me, but he just doesn't move, thinking that he is invisible. Very odd. Who would have thought I would be cleaning abandoned buildings in North London?
I also had to build a flap in the fence to get into the abandoned lot, along with a hatch to lock it. The fence is made out of 3/4" plywood and the hole is a 2'x4' rectangle. I added hinges to the cut out piece, and a latch, to keep it shut, with some old screws and a twig that I found. While I am doing this, a man asks me, "Who are you? What are you doing?" I said I was fixing the wall, so no one could get in. He seemed contented with that answer. Weird stuff.

2/10/09 13:00 At my internship at Hornsey Town Hall. We are designing rooms in the Town Hall for 19:29's final production. The concept is based upon the building itself, the inter-war period in Britain, and four greek myths. The myths are Hades and Persephone, Orpheus and Eurydice, Theseus and the Minotaur, and Daedalus and Icarus. Yesterday, we went through each room and brainstormed ideas, then wrote them all down on a large wall covered in paper and blueprints. Today, we are designing rooms if we had limitless funds and no thinking about how to make such ideas into reality, which sometimes can be hard for a TD mind. The two rooms that I took on today were:
1. The Torture Room. A long room, originally used for committee meetings, with all original wood-paneled walls, and a green carpet. We can do little to change the room, because those in charge of the building do not want us to destroy the beauty of the room itself. All we can really do is put things inside of it. The idea I have for this room is to make it almost into a forrest, or the idea of a forrest. Taxidermy surround a centrally located chair. Lions, Tigers, Panthers are in the corners, On plinths, there is a bat, crow, vulture, and owl. In the corners of the room, behind the large animals are speakers to give motivated sound to the Forrest, make the audience member turn their head. Around this centrally located chair is four stands with a bare light bulb on top, similar to a 'ghost light.' There is more to it, but it has an idea of being interrogated in the forest.
2. The Icarus Room. A bright room on the top floor full of windows. Inside this room are three smaller rooms. My idea, without going into full detail is to make this room 'too close to the sun.' The walls covered in red, yellow, and orange paint, wet-blended together. Melted wax everywhere, and in two of the smaller room, thousands of feathers flying around from fans blowing. Right as you walk in, you see the skeleton of giant wings. No feathers, no wax, for they have fallen off. The floor is painted blue to show the sky below.

Now these ideas mean nothing without a script, which we do not get until tomorrow. So they could just be thrown out the window. But, It is very exciting that I will be able to design for this project. I have been given a lot of freedom so far as well as responsibility. For example, I was running the design session yesterday. And this week end sometime, I have to email my ideas for these rooms in a structured way, as well as alternate ideas if we DON'T have any money. We shall see what happens.