GRADUATION PROJECT
In ‘Once Upon a Now’, I experiment with a 3D digital-double of my own physical form, which functions as a performative avatar occupying 3D space in the context of 5G, magical thinking and the insecurities of oneʼs own beliefs.
In each upswing in technology, we meet our perceived static nature shifting. We fear what we don’t understand and project new meaning trough magical thinking and cooperate utopias, as we feed from different tabs of knowledge. Creating a disembodiment from a collective grounding, a detachment from a universal reality to an attachment to a subjective one. ‘Once Upon a Nowʼ navigates through these different belief systems, rhetorics and events surrounding the phenomena of 5G by transposing them into a digital theatre play which demonstrates truths, magical thinking and the traction of conspiracy theories in the style of the absurd.
THESIS
a Leaf, a Tree, a Screen
This artistic research discovers different representations of nature through the works and thoughts of several artists, writers and filmmakers that have put nature in a contemporary context of computer-generated imagery. Contextualising with myths and stories, our quest to understand the phenomena of nature, leading back in history and time, yet finding ourselves until today questioning our relationship with nature. Reminding us of the importance of going back to nature and the untouched, healing the nostalgia within us, while nature is slowly fading in each successive leap in technology.
With the fast development of 3D technology we achieved the means and tools of recreating our own natural environment on screens and inevitably changed the way we interact and perceive nature. This prompted leap in technology has changed our relationship with nature at its core, introducing new perspectives of views. Replacing the stable and single point of view established by the linear through multiple perspectives and vertical time, as 3D technologies are capable of twisting and manipulating reality, pausing time as a refuge of the eternal.
With each alternating upswing in technology, we meet our perceived static nature shifting; we fear the distance between us and what is natural, expanding — soon to be out of reach. Paradoxically, with each upswing in technology, we have the means to crawl back into new natural environments, artificial, transformed, yet intangible.
Read more here: https://kabk.github.io/go-theses-20-martin-menso/