Darkness

Keywords: Dark, darkness, fear, perception, selfhood, spatial, emotionally
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 31

Abstract

This project had a number of aims. Firstly, it explored my fear of the dark. The phobia I experienced as a child has lessened considerably over the years, but it is still present. My fear as a child was not of the dark itself that scares me, but the creatures and monsters that might emerge from the dark to consume me in the confined claustrophobic space of a bedroom, where light mixed with the dark to produce the menacing images of shadow monsters. To me the dark was naturally their environment, as water is to sea creatures.

My second intention in this project was to show that humans are mainly visual creatures with emotions influenced by their perceived spatial environment. Night makes us aware of the spatial nature of our being, since it readily abolishes the distinction between "us" and the "beyond". My suggestion in this project is that our psychological sense of selfhood has a spatial dimension which we recognize in our feelings of comfort or unease in response to the places that we visit and inhabit. At night the world of clear and articulated places finds itself abolished. The dark makes the familiar unfamiliar and threatening. The monsters that lurk in our imagination come out to haunt us.

Thirdly, this project was intended to provoke a sense of realisation in my audience that what they perceive spatially has an affect on them emotionally and their visual perception is being directed and manipulated.