After watching several youtube videos and the first episode
of Tesla's Death Ray: A Murder Declassified on Discovery channel I now know a little bit more about the
conspiracies surrounding Nikola Tesla. Tesla created a design for alternating
current electricity, which could spread further and more powerfully than Thomas
Edison’s direct current and which is the current that still exists today. It
was also said that Tesla was involved in making a ‘death ray’ weapon; a wave of electric power that if militarised could be catastrophic. Along with the theory that Tesla apparently also
developed a model that would make all electricity free for everyone forever, this would have given the government enough reason to shut down his operations and murder him. A reclusive
genius, Tesla was found dead in his office with the safe open and all the
documents within missing, adding to the mystery surrounding his life.
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| Idea for costume |
My main idea for my costume comes from Tesla’s invention the
‘Tesla coil’, which creates giant sparks of electricity from a centre ball.
Plasma ball’s are based on this coil, and are a common toy/lamp for kids and
adults. My idea is to get a battery operated one and embed it into a top hat,
so that it appears that I am conducting electricity from my head. Hopefully I
can get one that reacts to sound too, so the sparks of electricity will move
around in time to the music. As the storyline is relating to Tesla’s supposed
experiments with time travel, where he briefly enters another time, I want the
costume to be a cross between different time periods like I am somewhere stuck in
between. The top hat and the jacket will be sort of 1800s steampunk from the
past; the use of LED lights and the plasma ball will be the electricity flowing
through me in the present; my clothes will be futuristic ‘cyber goth’ style. I
think make up will also play an important role, I am considering sculpting
gashes and cuts over my face and legs, so it seems that I have been caught
in between times and it has left lasting damage. Make up helps to create
a costume by adding context and a backstory or even just more decoration, otherwise it could just be that you are wearing slightly strange
clothes.
This costume that I am creating very much must be practical
and functional, and much more fashion based, which is different to the costumes
I was creating at the end of last year. This mini project is perfect for getting
me back into the swing of making, but I am excited to finish so that I can
continue creating more abstract costumes that potentially inhibit movement and
restrict the senses. I have enjoyed researching Tesla and creating something
for a specific place and event, so this is something I would like to carry on -
researching a place or a person and creating a character or a costume in
relation to that research.
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