Me? I find myself inexplicably drawn to the following:
'The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman' by Angela Carter, 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge' by Rainer Maria Rilke, penny arcades, sideshows, circus freaks, animatronics, Poe, T.S. Eliot, Tom Waits, The Decemberists, mountains, mist, 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus', Jan Svankmajer, the Brothers Quay, Sally Mann, Gregory Crewdson, promenade theatre, bunraku, puppets, pens and ink, pressing the red button, gears, steampunk, the old, the mysterious, the awe-inspiring, the incomprehensible, the uncanny, the fearful.
Recently, one of the things that had a big effect on me was Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's 'Opera for a Small Room', which I saw at ACMI. The audience came into a large, dark space and approached a tiny room constructed from wood and filled with gramophones, speakers, lights and records. The sound of an orchestra tuning up played, faded. There was a click, a record came to life, and a voice, dirty and whisky-stained, began a story. The record players alternated, switched on and off of their own accord. Songs filtered through, the voice whispered and rumbled, the lights flickered. A train went past. The chandelier wobbled. And as the piece came to a climax, the lights, perfectly syncronised to the music, began a mad, chaotic light-show. The floor rumbled with the sound. The lights flashed desperately. It was huge, overwhelming, escaping the confines of the tiny room. It was wonderful.
There are some photos and information on here: Cardiff and Miller.
There's also a terrible video of it on Youtube, but it does get across some of the sound and the lighting:
So, my aesthetic, in short? The mysterious, the strange, the wonderful.
