Inspiration

The Raven

The inspiration for our piece comes from literature, after reading Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Raven' i would consider this to be an uncanny poem, because a Raven comes to a mans chamber door, and starts to speak, the man perceives the raven as having human like or even demonic qualities. Although the Raven in the poem i'm sure is metaphorical, it still resonates with our theme. I like that in the poem the man is haunted by his own troubles which he picks out without the raven having to say few more words than "Nevermore". For our creative project we would like to depict our main character being haunted by himself, as he peels away the wallpaper to look in on himself, the room depicts his own state of mind, which is why i feel this poem is relevant as i feel Edgar Allen Poe's characters encounter with the Raven also depicts this.

Metamorphosis
The work of Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis, is also of inspiration as the main character has been transformed into a creature of disgust, usually interpreted as an insect, The concept for the novel is Uncanny in the way that the creature is not human, but was a human, it cannot communicate to others, but it can hear conversations and feel and think still. Metamorphosis is an inspiration to our work because again the main character is in considerable emotional pain, he is struggling with his identity, and i want to show this in our character for the creative project. I wanted to reference metamorphosis in one of our visual effects, i want to use shadows on the wall to turn our main character into the insect from metamorphosis. I will also reference 'The Raven' this way. 


Other Reading:

Possum

Other works i have researched and read for this module include, 'Possum' by Matthew Holness, I enjoyed reading this as i thought it was a good example of Uncanny literature, the main character seemed to manifest some of his childhood traumas in a dead possum that he has engineered mechanically so that it moves, the main character believes that it is alive, and it is unclear to the reader whether this is so. The main character has brought the possum to his old home town to dispose of it for good, suggesting that he is ready to let go of some of his hurtful memories, but he struggles to get rid of the Possum, he meets an old friend, i wasn't sure whether the old friend was a figment of his imagination. The story was useful in outlining some of the trademark uncanny motifs, such as ambiguity in whether and object is alive or dead.

The Yellow Wallpaper
The 'Yellow Wallpaper' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is not strictly of the Uncanny genre, but i feel like the isolation and the fact that the character deteriorates into psychosis confined in one room, is relevant to our creative project, the book is now thought to represent a stand to typical mental health treatments available to women at the time, 'the rest cure' was popular at this time, which condemned women to only two hours of mental stimulation a day, these were common treatments for anything from mild depression or bouts of 'hysteria' that women were commonly diagnosed with at the time.
The book serves as inspiration for the installation, we want the wallpaper in our installation to reflect the wallpaper described in the book, as wallpaper you could get lost looking at.