Skyler Liu | The Scene Inside: A Cinematic Installation

 
The Scene Inside is a video installation that uses the aesthetic features of film to create an immersive experience of troubled inner mental states in order to help people have a deeper understanding of mental problems.

Many films and television shows can successfully depict characters with disturbing inner mental states. The most dramatic scenes can give the audience a profound impression of the character’s troubled mental world without the use of dialogue. Beyond the obvious narrative devices of film – storyline, dialogue, characters, and themes – what are the techniques particular to video that allow it to express the characters’ inner mental states?

Based on extensive research on films and film theory, the artist found that the troubled inner mental states can be depicted by focusing on just three stylistic aesthetic features of film: light and shadow, color, and sound. These three features are used to create an immersive installation.

The installation sets a scene inside a dark room. The whole room is enveloped by a low-key blue lighting, raising the mood of repression and loneliness. A flashlight on mirrored paper creates disturbing reflections that rapidly change on the wall indicating the chaotic environment. Cooperating with the visual, the room uses a chaotic stereo soundscape to evoke the audience’s fear, loneliness, or depression.

There is also a small room in the middle enclosed by a carefully selected soft veil, under a mild warm lighting, creating a comforting feeling in its surroundings. The interior room has a different comforting soundscape played with headphones to give the visitor’s feelings a rest. However, the headphones are not entirely noise-canceling, so people would still hear some disturbing sound outside.

The metaphor of a depressive experience is completed together by the setup and the visitor who walks into the room. There’s nowhere safe for you, the inside enclosed box is the only place, but it means shutting yourself down, and you are not really escaping from the troubled mental state.

The room only allows one visitor to go inside per time, people waiting outside can see the scene inside through two real-time recordings focusing on the two different environments inside. In this way, the work includes both the powerful emotional effect of “film”, and also the immersive function of the installation art form.