In an ever-evolving digital world, I want to escape it more than ever. And not by running away from it, but rather into it. I grew up with the internet and came of age in digital spaces and landscapes. These landscapes can take many forms, like a never-ending feed in which we doom scroll and spiral into, or more constructed 3D rooms like in games. We dissolve ourselves into these environments, escaping the burden of the physical world.
But it's the almost graspable atmosphere, the melancholic sensation, and the strange liminality these spaces convey that I'm interested in. A world made out of numbers we sometimes call home. Usually, these spaces are created to fill them up with content, but then you still have the architecture of these landscapes, the barren fields and empty walls are still there, if the player chooses to look at them. Away from the objective, into emptiness.
Outer Wilds, Mobius Digital (2019)
I want to study the liminal spaces in online landscapes, and how digitalized loneliness brings us there. "What does digital loneliness in digital spaces look/feel like?" Combining online footage of these spaces but still having some kind of presence of someone I can link emotions to, either a character or the viewer itself. Like a person behind the camera, a player before the screen.
Origins and inspirations
My fascination with the construction of digital realities really manifested itself when I read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Despite being a wildly popular fiction novel I found myself in absolute awe of Zevin and the very specific and poetic things she tackles in this book. It's a book about two video game designers but delves into endless ideas of what it means to create things and finding meaning in stories. It is a journey through virtual worlds but in reality, a quest to understand this one.
Specifically, there's a section near the end of the book where the two main characters are emotionally divided and their story switches to an online reality and we're experiencing things from an NPC (non-playable character) interacting with other characters. It's a weird and mystical way of progressing the story in a virtual world and also brings a kind of sadness to it; when she wants to swim in the ocean she'll never be able to go more than "two screens far." Her reality ends there.
“To build a world for someone seems a romantic thing from where I stand."
There are two main audiovisual works I'd like to reference to: We're All Going To The World's Fair by Jane Schoenbrun and Because We Are Visual by Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes. Both come really close to the kind of work I want to create, both in its content and in its visual aesthetic and rhythm.
Other films that have inspired me:
- Memoria by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
- Her by Spike Jonze
- Red Road by Andrea Arnold
- Les Rendez-vous d'Anna by Chantal Akerman
- A.I. Artificial Intelligence bySteven Spielberg
Some films I'd like to watch in relation to this theme:
- Koyaanisqatsi by Godfrey Reggio
- An Elephant Sitting Still by Hu Bo
- Haru by Yoshimitsu Morita
- Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream by Frank Beauvais
- Me and You and Everyone We Know by Miranda July
- Aloners by Hong Sung-eun
- Sidewalls by Gustavo Taretto
We're All Going To The World's Fair, Jane Schoenbrun (2021)
And last but not least, there is a game called Outer Wilds that really solidified my fascination for all of this. It's a small adventure game based on the concept of space exploration. It's sort of an anti-game in the way it does not use concrete missions or progress but rather focuses on collecting information and not really giving the player any guidelines. But it really connects to my work in the way it constructs its universe, the emptiness of it, and the comfort you find in its loneliness. It's a game that - instead of constantly entertaining the player and making sure it keeps their attention - prioritizes standing still, reflecting, and assessing what's around you. Connecting you to the world you happen to be stranded on.
And in the end?
I'm going to start collecting images, footage, and research, and try to combine and assemble it in some sort of found footage project or audiovisual tone poem. I want to take the viewer to these virtual places and really let them escape there. I'm going to try and translate the very specific feeling that these places create but also try and connect it to the very real implication digitalization has on society. What drives us away from the physical world? And what has there to be gained or lost in the virtual one? For me it's not really about the "danger the internet has on society" but more about the philosophical and emotional state of being in the internet, and translate this to a very certain feeling I get. Like alone explorers trying to find something in a sea of nothing, and everything.
Reacties
Een reactie posten