Description of Work

Exit 15 - 2022 - HTML, CSS, JavaScript, digital painting - Not For Sale

Artist's Statement

Exit 15 is an interactive story told through HTML code and digital painting/animation. Set in a gas station, the piece explores the concept of liminal spaces. Viewers follow the main character’s story, uncovering memories from her life and coming to understand the gas station as a way for her to process her grief.

The central theme and inspiration for the work is liminal spaces: transitional areas, places that act as a passage from one area to another. As such, limiting the setting to this one time and space—a gas station before dawn—is intentional and crucial. By their nature, liminal spaces are places we are not used to (or meant to) spend much time in; my piece only takes place in this area. Any dialogue or memory that takes place outside of the gas station is stripped of all visual aspects and told entirely through text, leaving viewers to imagine these settings rather than spend time in them.

Liminality is also key thematically to my piece. We view the piece through the perspective of Mara, who is (mostly) alone in this place. As viewers read her commentary while exploring, they slowly piece together Mara’s story. Cutscenes in between locations act as memories from Mara’s life, and we slowly learn about her lover Naomi’s disappearance, which is intentionally never explained. Not only does a mysterious disappearance lend itself more to the atmosphere, but the lack of closure further ties in to being stuck in transition; to Mara, Naomi is neither dead nor alive. With ties to the play Hamlet (to parallel themes of uncertainty, death, and grief) and a Biblical reference through their names, my intention is that viewers will piece together the story themselves and come to their own conclusion about where Mara is and why she is there

Exit 15 is as much a piece of creative writing as it is digital art. It is writing that viewers can interact with and alter. To emphasize the loneliness and dreamlike atmosphere, it was crucial that viewers would be immersed in the story, rather than just a witness to it. Choices in the language personalize each reading, allowing viewers to participate not only in the exploration of the environment, but the writing of the story itself.

Link to Artist's Website: https://claudiahoerr.art/  

If you wish to purchase any of these pieces, please contact the gallery director, Jacqueline Nathan (jnathan@bgsu.edu.)