I lived in a place called Andover, Minnesota for a large portion of my childhood. When my family first moved there, it was primarily rural and only a few small strip malls were scattered about what was otherwise old farmland. One of the strip malls had a claustrophobic store which sold jacuzzis and baths- pool accessories, that sort of thing. When my Mom would take me there I always felt captivated by the bright artificial lights and the strange, dark gaps between them. Distant music playing over loudspeakers, phantom messages, things I couldn't quite place. The place felt totally isolated from any outside world I could imagine, even though it was right there, and I guess I've always felt like exploring the mixture of comfort/discomfort these places evoked.

The second part of this area is rooted in feelings of wandering warehouses, furniture stores, Costo/Sam's Club/Walmart or whatever. High ceiling, sense of scale distorted, items for nobody (littered everywhere), walking around this endless plane of concrete and steel and incredibly tall shelves (so as unable to be reached without a ladder) and bright (yet distant) ceiling lights- more furniture, more objects, more things to warp your idea of the scale of your surroundings. I don't really know how to sum up all these ideas, and this little bit here hardly captures it in whole, but hopefully this explanation + the little virtual world helps convey some vague sense of what I'm thinking about.

song is "Backer Ice" by Frank Nora