Jeroen Zwaap
Read Thesis
Title: The Sensorium
Subtitle: Towards a Post-Anthropocentric Storytelling
My mind, as a friend once told me, is a philosophy lab disguised as an art practice.
In this project I explore how stories can emerge without a singular human author: how more-than-human entities, technological systems, and sensory environments can co-create narratives.
In western worldviews storytelling is often thought as something purely and solely human, something created by a single human author, with human affairs as its central focus point. By developing and testing transduction (translating one expression of data into another one) as an expanded photographic method, I investigated whether it's possible to attune to stories that emerge from collaborative relationships between human, technological, and environmental forces. Inside the MAPS room I present the outcomes of this research: a collaboration with a shopping mall revealed the architectural permanence and the fleeting rhythms of human presence. A storm’s energy, swaying the trees in a forest, expressed itself through an ephemeral chorus. A city’s soundscape participated in forming a photograph.
Based on these investigations I developed the Sensorium, which I present in the courtyard. A Sensorium is a site-specific installation, that reframes perception. It is a space where environmental phenomena gain narrative presence and humans are invited to attune rather than control. Through this I challenge idea of the human as sole author of the stories of our world: we're participants in stories much larger than those we consciously author. Instead, I propose a fundamental shift: instead of imposing our stories onto the world, we should create ways to participate in and attune to the stories that the world is already telling through its technologies, environments, and material processes. We might learn to participate more thoughtfully in the stories that are already unfolding.
My installation, texts, and research outcomes form a bridge between theory and hands-on experimentation, between observation and involvement, and between local experiences and wider systemic connections
Contact:
+31 642702380
jzwaap@icloud.com
www.jeroenzwaap.com