waiting and escaping
DESIGNING SPATIAL EXPERIENCES FOR WAITING AND ESCAPE ROOMS
How can we design waiting rooms and escape rooms simultaneously to enhance our experiences of immersion?
• 30. Sept. - 25. Oct., 2019
• Based at ACUD in Berlin, Germany
• Four weeks, full-time
• Small class of participants
Pricing
Artist / Student (Full Time)*
€1950
Professional*
€2150
course
description
In this program, we will set out to design two immersive experiences, an escape room, and a waiting room designed for that escape room.
To be alive is to be waiting for something. But what are we waiting for and why are we waiting for it? With the onslaught of new technologies, we find ourselves waiting even more, often for experiences (AR, VR, etc.), the likes of which are often less than ten minute encounters. With these questions in mind, this program is about waiting and waiting room design from a practical and future perspective as we can envision waiting room design becoming a career of the future. How can we begin to create meaningful designed experiences for waiting rooms that enhance the experience we are waiting for?
This course is fundamentally about designing immersive experiences. What considerations are there when designing for full immersion? When
time is of the essence, where do we focus our attention to ensure that the show goes on? What kinds of talents and skills are necessary for such an undertaking?
Finally, we'll learn the finer points of escape room design and take on the ambitious task of designing one ourselves which will be open to the public as part of the final showcase of the program.
This is a very special program made up of brilliant guest speakers, each specialised in very niche and fantastical fields. The full-time course facilitator for this program will be Rachel Uwa, founder of School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe.
in this course,
you will be
introduced to
Experience of AR, VR, and escape rooms as examples of how to design
Know-how to design your own escape room experiences
3D modeling basics for use in layout of spaces
Immersive experience design from conceptual and practical hands-on perspective
How to design mechanisms, devices, and puzzles i.e. the art of mystery
Hands-on escape room and waiting room design and build-out
Considerations for optimal human communication and interaction
Fundamentals of Spatial Design
Conceptual exploration of waiting
Exciting humans working in the field
An amazing network and community of like-minded creative beings and potential future collaborators
course outline
Week 1: Introductions, overview of experiences in modern times (VR, Escape rooms, etc.), examples of the current playing field of immersive experiences, playful design. Hands-on prototyping of experiences.
Week 2: Conceptual: How to design experiences, basics of spatial design with Sketch-up.
Week 3: Collecting materials, hands-on building out of escape- and waiting room experience designs for final showcase.
Week 4: Continuation of previous week, finalising escape- and waiting room for public presentation.
who is this
program for?
This program is geared toward anyone involved in creative fields (conceptual artists, architects, designers, makers, builders, visual artists, performers, production workers in theater, film, and tv, etc.) interested in interior and spatial design, and/or designing concepts and rooms for immersive experiences. This course approaches experience design from an introductory level but advances quickly into hands-on practical learning up to final creation. No previous experience necessary.
meet the instructor
Omer Fast
Video Artist
Omer Fast is a video artist based in Berlin. Much of his work delves into the psychology of contemporary trauma, often relying on the blurring of memory and the retelling of actual events through cinematic convention. Fast’s work moves beyond the formalities of the genre, pushing through reality and non-reality of his subject matter, and is ultimately about the status of the image as a tool to disseminate information, both real and manufactured. Omer Fast (b. 1972, Jerusalem) will present a solo exhibition of new work in 2019 at the Salzburger Kunstverein, Austria. Other recent solo exhibitions have taken place at the Times Museum, Guangzhou, China; STUK Leuven, Belgium; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; and Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany. In October 2015, a monographic exhibition of Fast’s work titled Present Continuous opened at the Jeu de Paume, Paris, and subsequently travelled to the Baltic Center of Contemporary Arts, Gateshead, UK, and the KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg. Denmark. He has also been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Le Caixa, Madrid, Spain; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montréal, Canada; Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow, Poland; STUK Leuven, Belgium; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY. Fast's work was featured in dOCUMENTA (13), the 54th Venice Biennale, and the 2002 and 2008 Whitney Biennials. He received a BFA from Tufts University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and an MFA from Hunter College in New York City. He is represented by James Cohan, New York.
Rachel Uwa
Founder
School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe was founded by Rachel Uwa. Rachel is an artist, educator, and organizer whose background is in audio engineering and vfx compositing.
Over the past 15+ years she’s lived in and organized social justice and tech communities and events big and small. She feels compelled to help bring these two worlds together and make the tech world less daunting and more diverse, inclusive, thoughtful, and fun.
Rachel's biggest desire is to see people living the lives they dream of living rather than the one they feel they ought to. If that dream life is more artistic, creative, socially-engaged, technology-embracing and connects humans to each other and to themselves, well, all the better.
Her latest creative project: an art/tech zine called ¡MEOW!
Mink Ette
Lead Game Designer and Co-Founder of Oubliette
Mink Ette is a freelance game designer and immersive entertainment creator specialising in interactive experiences and games. Her approach is to encourage an audience to get excited about ideas and concepts, through strategically playful design. She draws on her eclectic background to bring unique perspectives to every challenge. A product designer turned theatre maker turned game designer, Escape Rooms were the natural next step and she has been creating escape games for the past 5 years.
Quinn Tincher
Co-Founder and Senior Artist at Meow Wolf
Quinn Tincher is one of the Founders of the Meow Wolf art collective, where he currently works as a senior artist doing as many things as possible, production design, molding, casting, sculpting, digital rendering, fantasy writing, poetry, painting and so much more! Each week he tries to learn a new skill on his show Quinn’s Quintessential Question Quest. He takes these skills to the world of themed environments, controlled experiences, immersive art and large scale fantasy fabrication through the wonderful portals that Meow Wolf has been able to open around the United States and hopefully someday, the universe. As a maker, artist, and craftsperson he has one goal: show people that they have the power to change the world around them and more importantly they have the power to change themselves. He believes that through being makers we can show others how to make a better world, together.
