Making the subtle ideas explicit - documenting old research

Labyrinth: no place

not as a structure, but as an experience; no one place is better than another, all look alike, all feel alike; what matters is the journey, and the hope of finding the way out

coming into a space never to leave it

spaces that trap people - extreme example: 

Playing the Villain by Matt Devine
(not for the faint-hearted)

buildings that devour people as in Metropolis:













finally, spaces that close behind and around people, trapping them in the unknown, as the corridors and tunnels in Leaves of Grass by Mark Z. Danielewski - this has far more to do with the idea of controlling space I was looking at, with emphasis on the journey itself

it expands and contracts in front, around and behind the explorers, changing every time it's entered, making any navigation impossible, as shown in a few excerpts describing several attempts at exploring the corridor:

Exploration A
Without ceremony, he unlocks the door and slips through the threshold. Walls are dark. Similar to the closet space upstairs. Within a few seconds he reaches the end. The hallway cannot be more than seventy feet long. Except when Navidson swings around, he suddenly discovers a new doorway to the right. [He] carefully nudges his flashlight into this new darkness and discovers an even longer corridor. A few seconds later, he comes across a still larger corridor branching off to the left. It is at least fifteen feet wide with a ceiling well over ten feet high. The length of this one, however, is impossible to estimate. Navidson pushes ahead, moving deeper and deeper into the house, eventually passing a number of doorways leading off into alternate passageways or chambers. No matter how far Navidson proceesd down this particular passageway, his light never comes close to touching the punctuation point promised by the converging perspective lines, sliding on and on and on, spawning one space after another, a constant stream of corners and walls, all of them unreadable and perfectly smooth.  Finally, Navidson stops in front of an entrance much larger than the rest. It arcs high above his head and yawns into an undisturbed blackness. [He] swiftly turns around. Much to his horror, he can no longer see the arch, let alone the wall. His panicked turn an the subsequent absence of any landmarks has made it impossible for him to remember which direction he just came from. [He] reaches the wall. He now faces another decision: left or right. He reaches into his pocket and places a penny at his feet. He moves to the right and very quickly comes across a doorway. He decides to keep walking.
Navidson returns to the doorway, only now he discovers that the penny he left behind, which should have been at least a hundred feet further, lies directly before him. Even stranger, the doorway is no longer the doorway but the arch he had been looking for all along. The corridor is now much narrower and ends very quickly in a T...

Exploration 1
As they quickly discover, the void above them is not infinite. Their flashlights illuminate a ceiling at least two hundred feet high. A little later, at least fifteen hundred feet away, they discover an opposing wall. What no one is prepared for, however, is the even larger entrance waiting for them, opening into an even greater void. [on the way back] they soon see for themselves how all the walls have shifted. Fortunately, the changes have not severed the fishing line and the three men found their way back with relative ease.

with every next venture the conditions become more severe and it becomes more difficult and challenging to find the way out as the hallways and shafts expand indefinitely

If the work demanded by any labyrinth means penetrating or escaping it, the question of process becomes extremely relevant. For instance, one way out of any maze is to simply keep one hand on a wall and walk in one direction. Eventually the exit will be found. Unfortunately, where the house is concerned, this approach would probably require an infinite amount of time and resources. (...) Due to the wall-shifts and extraordinary size, any way out remains singular and applicable only to those on that path at that particular time. All solutions then are necessarily personal.

I'm not sure that these quotes do the book any justice, one really has to read it; they do, however, give some idea about the ambience of the spaces described, and the story itself..

what is especially interesting here is the constant shifting of the space around the character, the entrapment and control it has over him; almost a literal, although not visual but literary, translation of my ideas about controlling spaces in the context of Barbican into a tangible solution

I think some of my more recent experiments have began to show this direction, the goal now is to decide whether to keep it in this abstract form, polish and refine it, or focus on a more defined narrative of a journey through space....

I liked the idea of almost psycho spaces, moving around people and shifting constantly, however, the shifts have to be more considered and coordinated to make sense; and, more importantly, for the idea to become explicit, readable - while remaining subtle