Saltwater Room
Jacaranda Zeng
Memory Description
It was a bizarre drowning experience when I was about four years old. In a cloudy afternoon, I went to swim with my dad in Zhapo Sea in my hometown Yangjiang. We didn’t realize that the sea on that day was extremely choppy.
Huge waves, like thick and airtight quilt, covered me and my dad. I quickly lost consciousness. There was at least a minute of memory totally blank. It was like time had stood still and I didn’t remember how long I had been asleep. Luckily I opened my eyes, but I was weird about why my eyes didn’t hurt then. What puzzled me even more was that I could breathe freely, just like a mermaid. Like a mermaid suspended in a big dark green glass tank in an aquarium.
Eventually, I went out of the surging sea from the infinitely quiet underwater space with inexplicably calm. However, I felt like a fish without water, which was a completely opposite experience compared with being in the water with huge comfort. My whole airway started to hurt so badly.
I couldn’t breathe in the air, and it didn’t come back to normal until I cried.
My dad, standing on the shallow seabed with empty eyes, seemed to have experienced the same total dislocation of time and space as I did.
While looking back on it now that I am shocked at I was tossed over by waves, I still feel nostalgic for my amazing mermaid moment...
Memory Drawings
'Confusing'
Why could I open my eyes and breathe in the water? Was I a mermaid?
'Calming'
I got used to be in the water and the undersea worldseemed to be my home.
Atmospheric Images
1.'Shocking'
3.'Confusing'
2.'Creepy'
4.'Calming'
Conceptual Models
1.'Shocking'
2.'Creepy'
Model 1.1
'Giant Wave'
Model 1.2
'Devoured by Flower of Devil'
Model 2.1
'Dark Sea'
Model 2.2
'Glass Knife-like Sea Water'
Conceptual Models
2.'Creepy'
3.'Confusing'
Model 2.3
'Fang of Sea'
Model 2.4
'Suffocation'
Model 3.1
'Cloud of Confusion'
Model 3.2
'Endless Space Roulette'
Conceptual Models
3.'Confusing'
4.'Calming'
Model 3.3 'Black Smoky Trap'
Model 4.1 'Green Fish Tank'
Model 4.2 'Stage of Reflection'
Model 3.4 'Maze of Secret'
Model Designing Sketches
1.Confusing + Calming
Initial Thoughts
Confusing Sketch
Calming Sketch
2.Combination of Confusing and Calming
First 1:20 Model
3.Creepy+ Confusing (+ Calming)
Final Model
First 1:20 Model
Confusing + Calming
Feeling 'confused' when starting to walk inside
Feeling 'confused' when being in the maze
Feeling 'calm' when finding the way out
Maze 'Calming' Stairs
'Confusing'
Material: Cardboard
Memory Casts
Using different casting materials and techniques to create different atmosphere
'Shocking'---Plaster
'Creepy'---Plaster
'Confusing'---Plaster 'Confusing'---Concrete
Space Precedents
Blenheim Palace and Parks, England
→ 'Confusing'
→'Creepy'
Catacombs of Priscilla, Rome
Text Citation
"...And we would like to look and see how these things reacted together. And we all know there would be a reaction. Materials react with one another and have their radiance, so that the material composition gives rise to something unique. Material is endless. Take a stone: you can saw it, grind it, drill into it, split it, or polish it---it will become a different thing each time. Then take tiny amounts of the same stone, or huge amounts, and it will turn into something else again. Then hold it up to the light different again. There are a thousand different possibilities in one material alone. This is the kind of work I love, and the longer I do it the more mysterious it seems to become. One is always having ideas imagining how things will turn out."
Atmospheres, Peter Zuthor, pp23-25
Image from Atmospheres, Peter Zuthor
Final Model
'Confusing' Maze
'Creepy' Horror Room
External Wall: Aluminum
Ceiling: Stainless Steel
Internal Wall: Timber
Roof: Timber
Model Materials
I have used cardboard, tissue and plastic to make a confusing maze for conceptualmodels and have newly used stainless steel with aluminum to create a creepy horror roomfor final model.
Atmospheric Photos
'Confusing' 'Creepy'
Final Model Orthographic Drawings
You happened to look
And see the tunnels all around me
Running into the dark
Underground
All the subways around
Create a great sound
To my motion fatigue
Farewell
With your ear to a seashell
You can hear the waves
In underwater caves
As if you actually were inside a saltwater room
The Saltwater Room by Owl City