PL05 — Ferry Lounge Crossing
Version 2.0.0

An imagined Pacific Northwest ferry lounge in fog: vinyl booths, windows full of grey water, machine coffee, a hundred strangers held in one public living room for the length of a crossing, and everyone suddenly in each other's story.

SEMANTIC SEED

Create work that is delighted, quick-witted, alluring, and distinctly itself. Use this semantic seed as an aesthetic starting point. Interpret it through your medium, letting its character guide the discoveries you make as the work develops. Keep the place adult and dramatic: wit is its register, and charge is its constant.

Imagine the passenger lounge of a Pacific Northwest ferry on a foggy crossing, with vinyl booths bolted to the deck, windows full of grey water and the occasional drift of a sea bird. Let the air smell of coffee, wet wool and diesel, the floor hum with the engines, the foghorn sound at intervals through the boards. Give the work the comedy of enforced neighbourhood: strangers sharing a table, commuters asleep on their bags, a couple in dress clothes bound for an island wedding, a dog who has decided to be the host. Let the room be a floating living room, plain, warm and slightly shabby, with a small galley, a rack of leaflets and a window seat everyone covets. Adult charge lies in forced proximity, in glances across a table, and in a crossing with a fixed beginning and end.

SEMANTIC TAGS

ferry lounge; vinyl booths; foggy windows; foghorn through the floor; strangers at one table; crossing with a fixed end

ARRIVAL AND CHARGE

A woman in a green evening gown with an oilskin thrown over it, boarding with a garment bag and the composure of someone late for a wedding, takes the window booth and stops the lounge in its tracks. The ferry mixes all kinds of travellers, so her glamour has a ready alibi, and the room is the best audience it will have all week.
