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Marquee

Story-telling installation

Introduction

Marquee is a story-telling installation tells a story of the death of an ordinary secondary school girl in Hong Kong. We divided her life into four parts and showing her story in four separating boxes. Different scenes are presented in each box, the first three scenes are home and school, which represent the three sources of pressure: peer pressure, parents’ expectations and self-esteem. While the last scene is the suicide of the main character. Players are required to find out the clues, which point to the girl’s pressures, by making use of the torch to light at the specific elements in each box, an animation will then be projected on the location which is lighted up, which seems to look at someone memory. These animations will lead the players to find out the truth of main character’s death. Players are able to discover the cause of death step by step from the projection on the specific locations in each box, different animations will be projected in various boxes and elements. Since the process of watching a series offlashbacks, therefore we titled the installation as “Marquee”.

Objective

We aim to let the public identify the seriousness of children committing suicide in Hong Kong. Still, we hope different stakeholders can pay more attention to this deteriorating situation and take action to ease the situation.

Features 

Since we would like the player to look around inside the box and search, then if the player illuminates a specific element, an animation which is related to that element will be projected on that location. We make use of color tracking to achieve a similar result. By making use of the projector, the camera and the torch and a set of computer programs, the projector and camera will be connected to a computer that runs the program for color tracking. The camera will track the light from the torch when the specific location is illuminated, the projector will project the specific animation. Besides, on the locations, we put special elements such as the furniture on it and the animation projected will be related to the elements. This makes the player feel like as looking at the main character’s memory about that item or event.

 

The box was designed to just fit a person’s head go into the box. Outside the box is covered with a black fabric which makes inside invisible unless using a torch to light up. Besides, there is a hole for putting the camera to track the light. The four boxes were placed on the floor which required the players lying on the floor to explore the content of the boxes. While the action of lying down under a fabric and turning on a torch is similar to a child playing the torch under his quilt. We hope to create a sense of contrast between playing happily as a child and experience a distressing story of a child.

Responsibility

I am responsible for story writing and props-making in this project.

Credit

Animator: Ning Lo

Programmer: Regina Lin

Writer: Ellie Tee

Props-making: Macy Leung, Jamie Chen, Ellie Tee

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