jgoodlifebbbwc

[jgoodlifebbbwc]

Nausea in Eden explores ideology as a dimension of reality, with a particular focus on nature as a human fantasy- a projection of beauty in the distance rather than something we are inextricably entangled within. The viewer experiences an escape to a virtual landscape so as to cope with the dread and disorientation of their existential realisations- we are trapped in existence, in the thick of the Absurd.

A parallel is drawn between immersive visionary technologies and binoculars, in a reflection on how we observe both the physical and virtual landscape. The player becomes disembodied as the fantasy starts to dismantle itself; the landscape reveals itself as hollow and the plant life is abstracted into pixels which travel with a matter-like vibrancy. Beyond the pixel, the player is suspended in a void with both the code script that created the landscape and the mathematics underlying ‘real’ plant growth. Surrounded by raw information, still no understanding can be gained about reality, however, both the ideology and the virtualisation of the landscape, have been hacked open. 

[jgoodlifebbbwc]

Scene Explanations

1.     Drone- Tracking shot- immersive, establishing the landscape. Drone/ cinematic music as an immersive ambient technique. The sound reverberates- synthesised idea of ‘space’ within the screen.

2.     Point Of View- exploring the terrain. 3D red/ Cyan anaglyph image as a reference to immersive gaming, drawing viewer into this virtual world. Sound of bird passing pans from the right to left channel creating an illusion of multi-directional audible perspective.

3.     Text- disembodied text instructions within the landscape start interrupting the game. They refer to an optical device (supposedly 3D glasses/ VR headset but actually from binocular manual; all are based on our binary vision system).

4.     Focus, Mountain- The blatant appearance of the red and cyan layers suggest the ��3D glasses’ are not working. As if in response to the instruction referring to ‘interpuppilary distance’, the image gradually comes into focus at the top of the mountain as the two layers move into a direct superimposition, creating one clear image. This is a subtle signal that the optical device is working and the player/ viewer is immersed. (Movement of red/ cyan layers inspired by Lucy Raven’s work at the Serpentine recently where two layers pass each other, momentarily becoming 3D, revealing the cinematic trick behind the illusion of depth).

5.     Fantasy- things follow a dreamlike logic; seasons shift/ the landscape reveals itself as hollow. It starts to feel like a virtual hallucination.

6.     The game appears to malfunction- the disembodied player is pulled through trees- immerse yourself in nature! Nature is no longer ‘over there’, it is right here. Particularly unsettling atmosphere after instructions to ‘keep eyes open’.

7.     Exit?- a game menu sign is pulled up as if the player is considering exiting. Strong wind, it rains over the text only. Sun comes out- continue.

8.     Continue- The player returns to the game- zooming into a grid until being submerged underwater. This refers to gradual psychological immersion as the player is back in the virtual landscape, losing their corporeal body once again.

9.     Running- running through distorted landscape as if there is an end or outside to reach. Trapped.

10.  Grass- living organisms have taken on a new vibrancy/ life, their digital nature still exposed. Tree roots hang through the terrain surface, connecting to nothing.

11.  Zoom- the plant life is reduced to pixels in a continuous zoom. Reference to both binoculars magnifying nature and attempting to reveal truth through close proximity. Ideologies have started to be stripped away- we are left with pixels (matter).

12.  Code- Travelling deeper into the pixel until opening out into code/ data hovering in a void. It is taken directly from the code for the game/ landscape I created and is mixed in with mathematical algorithms for real plant growth- continuous parallel of virtual and physical world.

13.  Code, clouds- now completely disembodied and suspended in space, the ‘player’ floats in an array of information, yet no sense of truth about reality can be extracted. It is the climax of the fantasy/ psychological immersion; the camera points directly at the sun, referring back to the meaningless warning of eye damage from direct viewing within a virtual world.

Subtle high pitched drone resembling tinitus- internal sound that is heard in an empty, silent space. Tinitus is on the threshold of being a physical and mental noise.

We can never entirely escape ideology or reach pure reality. However, in this ecological crisis, it is important to unpick how we perceive nature, leaving the fantasy behind and moving towards progressive ecological thinking. 

[jgoodlifebbbwc]

Elements in the film

Ideology- Ideology as a dimension of reality, altering our perception of nature. If this is stripped away, we are left with pure matter.

‘Eden’/ Nature/ Fantasy- Nature is a fantasy that we have. Something that exists ‘over there’ or surrounds us, rather than actually being something we are inextricably entangled within. The reference to Eden in the title is an allusion to paradise- the ultimate nature fantasy. (It is also a very subtle reference to other ideologies about the world and creation- how religious belief might change the way we perceive a natural landscape.) 

Existentialism- We are trapped in existence in an answerless world- the disorientation of the absurd- realising that there is no meaning other than the meaning we apply to things. (ideology). There is a terrifying abundance of freedom and therefore a weight of responsibility on all of our actions. These existential ideas for me link both to ideas about how we perceive nature and to climate change- the impacts of our decisions and the psychological state of being caught in and causing an ecological crisis.

Immersive Technologies/ Virtual Space- to cope with these existential problems, one might escape to the virtual world (such as a game)- an extension of our reality where one does not risk physical death and a sense of control can be implemented. Immersive technologies such as virtual reality and 3D visuals have a disorientating effect in which there is a sense of disembodiment; the player/ viewer loses their corporeal body in an expansion of boundaries and state of uncertainty. 

Game- I created my film on a 3D computer image generating software called Unity that is designed for creating games. This context underpins the ideas discussed above- the player can exit or restart as pleased in a way we cannot in the physical world. 

‘Nausea’- The disorientation of existentialist realisations about our reality as well as the nauseating effect of immersive technologies. All bearings and reference points are lost. Also a reference to the existentialist novel ‘Nausea’ by Sartre. 

Binoculars- Reflecting on how we view the world and magnify nature as if to get closer to its strange and magnificent beauty. Parallel drawn between this and immersive optical devices such as 3D glasses and virtual reality headsets all of which simulate our binary vision system.

Code/ Mathematical Formulae- the information underlying the virtual landscape paralleled with the mathematical algorithms for plant growth. Does this information and order provide us with any insight into the nature of reality?

Matter/ Pixels- what reality and digital images are made up of. Continuous parallel.

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[jgoodlifebbbwc]

Drone (sound and image)

I have been using drone camera movement as an immersive technique and to reference the kind of disembodied, surreal presentations of nature seen in both games and nature documentaries.

To correspond with these camera shots, I have been thinking about drone music- sustained tones, creating an ambience. 

To make a drone sound, the sound effects needed are reverberation, delay and echo. I have also been thinking about the concept of a synthesised echo; echo and reverberation are spatial sound elements. This false sense of space used to create a synthesised drone therefore relates to the ‘synthesised’ sense of space within a three dimensional virtual world. 

With all of this in mind, I started experimenting with creating digital/ synthesised drones using Logic Pro X.

Above- adjusting frequencies to ensure there is a low frequency tone that ‘vibrates the body’, adding intensity and a sense of physicality to the sound.

Above- an example of the controls to add reverberation; the object/ diagram is the design for the room that the software bases the spatiality of the sound on. The synthesised space.

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Thoughts on presentation/ brief

The brief ‘beyond the black box, white cube’ lead me to think about the space within a screen- the virtual world of the internet, gaming and digital art. 

My film was constructed entirely from within my bedroom- sounds were downloaded and manipulated or synthesised from my computer and all the footage was designed in a software downloaded from the internet. 

With this context in mind, the idea of my piece is that it was created from the virtual world and so remains there- an immaterial thing, it’s exact location or existence being an uncertainty. Therefore there will be no physical elements to the piece such as installation.

However, something that I’ve been thinking about a lot throughout this project is that even when you go ‘beyond’ the cinema/ gallery space, it’s easy to end up right back there at the end, presenting your film on the cinema screen.

I thought about having my film accessible as a ‘download’ file online- spat back out into the void of information sharing on the internet, where it came from. But it’s not an actual application/ interactive game and so it wouldn’t serve much purpose other than allowing it to reduce in quality and gain speed, travelling through the internet. This is relatively interesting conceptually but not relevant enough to the idea of the piece to be a necessary element.

I also thought about creating a simple website to act as a platform for the piece- so it could be accessed online, rather than as a file that I drop onto the computer’s desktop. However again, the platform of a website comes with its own context and considerations that I do not feel are necessary to the piece at the moment. It is certainly something I will consider for the future though.

For now, the piece remains conceptually beyond the black box white cube and will be presented single screen.

[jgoodlifebbbwc]

Carson Lynn- Walking Simulator

An interactive art game that was also built on Unity and can be downloaded from the artist’s website. It has a first person perspective, allowing you to wander around the mountains of Alaska as the landscape glitches  and crumbles around you. Accompanied by a photographic series and ambient album.

This work is very interesting to me because it’s the first artwork I have come across that calls itself a ‘game’ and allows you to interact from a computer in this way without the necessity of a virtual reality headset. As it was also made in Unity, I can recognise certain textures and characteristics of the software that have come up in the process of my project. The file sharing system -having to download it- is also very relevant to what I’ve been thinking about with my piece.

[jgoodlifebbbwc]

POSTmatter

http://postmatter.com/

An online magazine about modern life and culture in the digital age. They believe that the online experience can be just as meaningful as the offline one, ‘aiming to reflect this by taking a more considered approach to digital publishing’.

Below- stills from their exhibition ‘The Digital Garden’.

[jgoodlifebbbwc]

The Lake District

Originally I had wanted the landscape to be a virtual simulation of the Lake District, re-constructed from my memory. I also wanted to use Wordsworth’s poetry as a past perspective, contributing towards rendering the fantasy of this place.

Although these ideas have been an integral template for the formation of the virtual landscape and my ideas, I have made a decision to let go of them as significant concepts underpinning the piece. Taking into consideration previous feedback about my work (concepts sometimes not pulling through in the work), I think it is an important challenge to keep the content and concept as concise as possible. Letting go of initial intentions/ ideas seems to be quite difficult but an important part of the creative process- following the flow of the work instead of restricting it in a box too early on. 

That being said, it is still significant to me that the landscape is drawn from my experience as it represents a personal reflection on how to interpret the natural environment. It is also relevant to me that the virtual rendering is based on British landscape/ British ideologies rather than being plucked from thin air or a cliche of a paradise with palm trees.

[jgoodlifebbbwc]

Ideology

Helps us make sense of our reality

A system of beliefs

Tim:

We have a fantasy called nature. Giving it up is hard because it didn’t exist in the first place- losing a fantasy is harder than losing a reality.

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Existentialism III

We spend a lot of time trying to find meaning in our lives. 

We need meaning but are abandoned in a world of meaninglessness.

Existence precedes essence---> there is no predetermined purpose or path.

All meaningfulness in life is applied by you.

Absurdity- the search for answers in an answerless world.

There is a terrifying abundance of freedom. 

To glimpse existence when its been stripped of the ideologies we apply.

The disorientation of existentialist realisation. Things are weirder than we think...

[jgoodlifebbbwc]

Annabel Nicolson/ Binoculars

In her piece ‘Reel Time’, Annabel Nicolson has performers read the instructions from both the sewing machine manual and the projector manual (how to thread each). 

This inspired me to use a binocular manual to drawer parallels between the virtual and physical world: the observation/ magnification of nature and the immersion of virtual reality/ stereoscopic 3D.

Binocular instructions (text in film):

Adjust interpupillary distance

Keep eyes open at all times

CAUTION: DIRECTLY VIEWING THE SUN WITH THIS OPTICAL DEVICE CAN CAUSE PERMANENT EYE DAMAGE.

Your optical device has been designed and built utilising the latest waterproof and fog-proof technology.

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Anaglyph 3D video games

Throughout the project I have been thinking about 3D as a characteristic of immersion in film- pulling the viewer in to the presented reality with an illusion of depth. 

It has been particularly relevant as I have been making a virtual landscape in the context of gaming. I have therefore been looking a bit at games that use stereoscopic 3D, in particular red-cyan anaglyph which now has a dated/ tacky aesthetic to it. (red-cyan glasses are cheap so people more accessible for gamers at home).

Although I considered making my piece 3D at one point, I have realised now that I do not need to use this as a strategy to ‘immerse’ my viewers; rather, it is something I can reference in my work by using the red-cyan aesthetic. 

Below is Elite Dangerous- 2015, an example of an anaglyph game.

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Towards an Immersive Intelligence- Joseph Nechvatal

We are in an immersive culture. Immersion is the indispensable characteristic of virtual reality. 

correlation between immersive ideals and desires for extrasensory, distributed disembodiment, meaning a loss of cognitive body-image involving the expansion of boundaries.

Immersive art posits itself as a meta-symbol of and for expanded human potential.

Interactivity not merely the ability to manipulate and modify a virtual world, but the ability of the immersant to self-modify his or her sense of self.

extrasensory psychic disembodiment- aesthetic immersive consciousness renders ‘a lightness of being’

The need for 360 degree cognitive vision- a shift to a more conscious peripheral mode of perception- more emphasis on what’s on the edges of sight/ consciousness- therefore an expanded and fuller consciousness.

Humans have evolved with ever more perfect eyes within a cosmos in which there is always something more to be seen. 

In VR- we can exchange eyes with another person and see ourselves/ the world from their vantage point.

Friedrich Schelling- ‘Through art, the mind may come to a full awareness of itself’

Immersive consciousness- a cognitive challenge to our habitual sensibility. 

Seeing the unseen in the process of seeing.

The unconscious human desire for spatial summation.

The excessive component of the immersive aesthetic adds enough uncertainty to the usual signals in the human bio-computer to enable new configurations of the self----------> disembodiment.

Aesthetic immersion facilitates our desire to transcend the boundaries of our customary human cognition in order to feel the state of unconditional being- the absolute. (a sense of being that is akin to non-being).

Loss of fixed reference points.

an ontological state of synthetic hyper-being.

Total immersion addresses ideal connections- the extrasensory connected sphere between the subconscious and the conscious realm.

Disembodiment’s generation of a hyper-embodiment where conscious and unconscious self perceptions become extended.

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The hilarious concept of wind within a virtual space. An echo within a virtual space.

Illusions of space behind a computer screen.

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Nature Documentaries

Another relevant visual reference for my piece is nature documentaries.  With advancements in digital camera technologies, they frequently use slow motion drone shots or ghostly steadicam shots that capture the natural world in a cinematic/ aestheticised/ other worldly way.

This representation of ‘nature’ reinforces the idea of it being something in the distance that we enter into as an exotic excursion. This idyllic/ paradise representation lacks the exposure of the impact that humans have caused on the landscape- an internal contradiction as nature documentaries (should) typically have environmental awareness underpinning their narratives. They present nature as untouched.

Perhaps these ‘real’ representations are closer to the virtual. The idea of camera movement/ style e.g. ‘immersive’ drone shots as well as the idea of representing nature as a paradise are relevant connections to my piece so far.

[jgoodlifebbbwc]

Blow Up- Antonioni

A link could be drawn between the pixel/ zooming element of my piece and the photograph scene in Blow Up. 

Thomas tries to reveal a murder scene captured within one of his photographs by ‘blowing the photos up’/ zooming in. This enlargement happens until the image is obscured by grain. This reflects the idea of trying to discover truth or understand something but becoming more uncertain, the closer you get to the ‘real’ subject.

What is ‘nature’ when the ideology we apply to it is stripped back? ---> matter? What is matter..