See_d  – 2008

After someone called the Grow invites ‘gothick-y’, I wanted to get away from blacks, darker color schemes, and obvious themes of horror.  The name of the event was intended to sound related to Grow, but have entirely different themes. The stories were connected and both of them were a part of a larger story that would have been progressed with the cancelled “Touristen Val” event.

The invites began with this teaser.

Note that originally this would form a countdown clock to the day of the event and this obviously no longer functions.  The first hints of the themes of event are shown, and the introduction of Brethridge Syntactical Labs shown here as bsl. The way the letters are introduced are significant. The logo for See_d also contains a big clue.

Invite 2

This invite had a loading screen that goes away too quickly for most connections these days.

It listed out four words, having to do with security concerns.

The theme of secure data/computing is introduced as is the provider of the solution :

brethridge syntactical laboratorie

The odd spelling of laboratory probably meant something, but it’s forgotten now.

See_d is revealed to be a new technology where the interface is the user themself and therefore completely secure.

COGITO ERGOT SUM is a play on ‘I think therefore I am’.  I have seen this pun used since the event, but at the time it actually had a big hint as to what the story was going to be about.

A voice recording is played with several strange things being said. Something was discovered in 1947. The recording is several years later.

The words Apophenia and Apophatic are shown. These are the main themes of the story.

Television and TV static are introduced as elements fitting in with this.

A count down timer (again broken these days) and some symbols, as well as a pattern in the static are shown.

The final invite

The load screen has 4 symbols that were selected from standard WIndows Wingdings font and they represent the characters for the (Jewish) name of god.  This was a creepy but amusing coincidence.

This invite has the next voice recording illustrated with childlike drawings.

The symbol for the Brethridge Home For Socially Maladjusted Boys shows Aeban and Emil from Grow, and hints at their origin.

A lot of the numbers at the end of the invite are just random. The main Symbols are again the Jewish letters for GOD or YAHWEH. The phrase “I am what I am” is heard.

See_d was a very complicated story with many elements, and it was never expected that everything would be clear to the person experiencing the invites or the event.

I don’t think there are any good photos of the event, but there was a couple more audio recordings, and a promotional video that played in the waiting area.

The next post will attempt to describe the event, and hopefully feature the audio, if I can track it down