Synapteos is about the transformative process that happens to us when faced with the infallible knowledge of our own existence as seen through the eyes of a cosmic explorer. This time-based video piece is to convey this process through visual metaphor by turning the explorer into an exposed nerve.
I aspire to make this piece’s aesthetic both disturbing and sublime in nature by creating a video as the center-point of a multi-sensory aesthetic experience to replicate the experience dubbed by Frank White as the Overview Effect. The video will have a non-linear, short narrative structure paired with visual symbolism and some stock footage from space, or other high places, in order to show the perspective that this piece is trying to achieve. The “Overview Effect” is used as a term to describe the cognitive shift experienced by many astronauts and cosmonauts when they see the earth from space and the “fundamental transformation of the human species.” I’m visually influenced by science fiction films from the past, such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Alien as well as the written works of Philip K. Dick. Science fiction works as a medium for this because it is able to exists exclusively within the realm of the hypothetical, allowing my ideas to travel further. I’m also influence by Nicolas Bourriaud’s book The Radicant and the ideas presented therein about multiculturalism, connectedness, and technology as a universal language, and I intend to address his calling for new modes of representation to adequately describe our new “globalized universe.”
