If your eyes could zoom... Installation Mock up (in progress, completion fall 2025).
This Installation currently under refinement, the particle field is currently being mixed and not shown here; and the sound refined and mixed.
Excerpt of work in progress: this in-progress video is for partial visual context only, and will be updated soon.
(first two of 4 layers of imagery and background atmospheric sound only).
Please Note: The work is being created in 4K, 4444XQ codec. This in-progress example is in 1080P to conform with upload requrirements.
Installation Description, technical and component details, and equipment. If your eyes could zoom... (2025)
This is a new enveloping sound, light, and text installation in progress. This Video shows only the current text selection and the
background atmospheric video, and it's background sound, not the converging particle layer, nor it's omni directional sound array.
This will be updated soon with those layers included, though refinement of the mix will continue through September.
If Your Eyes Could Zoom continues my practice (since the mid 1990s of creating omnidirectional projected works that offer visual and
textual alternatives to outmoded (ancient) western narratives and human-centric classifications of existence.
(past specifically immersive works include Swell(1996),
faltering repetition(2000),
SlipHost(2007),here and here:SlipHost).
Description
Two enveloping fields of dynamic light particles converge through each other at a centred, angled confluence that
bisects the visual field. The inception for the visual field was catalyzed by my bacteria cloud that adorned the skies of
Slip in my two room enveloping installations of SlipHost.Slip in my two room enveloping installations of
SlipHost.
Periodically, individual descriptive phrases appear and seem to breathe as they fade in and out. These appear independently, as small,
declarative projections. They each describe relationships between various entities of matter: some phrases describe microscopic
relationships, while others galactic, thus on vastly different scales.
Each phrase insists through their duration of presence, that the light field is representing them. The 'breathing' rhythm of
the text projections emphasize the assertion of what is being illustrated.
The phrases will describe their own version, or reading as the two fields of light particles endlessly converge through each other.
Accompanying the visual experience ofIf Your Eyes Could Zoom...,will be a pointillist soundscape that accompanies the particles on
their journeys. The sound is being spatialized using Dear Reality (that plays spatially 360 or stereo spatially as required by the installation context).
The cumulative effect highlights the relationships and similarities of form between things that occur at vastly different scales,
and the interconnectedness of all in existence (including ourselves and all the external factors and internal organisms that
support our existence).
The attached video is just a rough excerpt that shows only the atmospheric background I am refining on (it does not have the particles
converging in this preliminary iteration). I am currently scaling and refining the intermingling of the particles. Their behaviour will change in
relation to the text, in the same way that the atmospheric background in this preliminary mock up does.
I have entered the phrases but do plan on editing the selection as the work progresses. It currently sits at a heavy 10
minutes and given our normalized fast-paced media consumtion at present, I think the work is better served at a shorter length.
The sound on this sketch is also partial: it is the sound I will attribute to the atmospheric background you see (the particle field
will have an immersive pointilist surround sound that I will mix to spatially mimic the varying particle activity.
I am able to produce this work on my own: including all of the writing, video imagery, sound, sound mixing and integration,
as my skillset expands over many media software (I am adept in Photoshop, FCP, Compressor, Logic 10, recording aparatus,
Dear Reality, VFX), and I love and have a considerable editing and creating image environments.
This artwork extends from a lifelong interest in physics and nature.
If your eyes could zoom...suggests that all matter, whether on a grand or tiny scale, (as reconciled by the phrases), is part of
an array of intermolecular beings, and that on a subatomic scale, there is structurally no separation between us and everything
else in existence.
Below is the list text phrases in order of appearance, that describe the installation's visual field. There will be between 5 - 20
seconds between each projected phrase.
The list starts off with very obvious instances where one could imagine particles of stuff converging (a believable confluence of
things), then progressively unfolds into more abstract or emotive propositions. The entire piece loops for the entirety of venue
hours.
This page was made for the assessors of Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, and can not be seen by the public
visiting fionabowie.org).
Texts in order of appearance:
*
tide and sand
*
warm breath and cold air
*
eyes and light
*
heliosphere and space((compound clips)
*
soil and root
*
thought and music
*
colliding galaxies
*
cortisol and feeling....feeling
*
Gulf Stream and shelf break (compound clips)
*
cell wall and virus
*
hug
*
lichen and stone
*
milt and eggs
*
hot springs and archaea
*
synapse and electricity
*
eyes and light
*
eyes meeting
*
thoughts meeting
*
flanking Universes
*
table top and dust
*
pulse and oxygen
*
Clouds
*
music and thought
*
skin and atmosphere
*
Ink and paper
*
Ions and intestinal wall
*
Helium and glass
*
walking kinesin with ATP
*
lovers
*
Geosmin and rainfall
*
heat and tongue
*
Damascenone and romance
*
picoplanktons
*
touch and feel (compound clips)
*
possibility and action (compound clips)
*
Iron and oxygen (compound clips)
*
fear and love (compound clips)
*
thought and Hz
*
your dogs breath and yours
*
food and saliva
*
"truth" and lies
*
the air between you
*
Nature and narratives
Technical details:
The work is intended to be in a dedicated room, or can be adapted to a public space. The visual field will be cast onto the walls and floors, projected by two modified, black cinefoil gobo'd 250W halogen
Gobo projectors and a video projector used to cast the complex VFX particle generated field. The dimensions are variable. The sound component's speakers are also adaptable
to room size.
Dear Reality spatial sound software is being employed to mix the sound element 'background noise' in the round.
The points of light could be imagined as behaving like dynamic particles. The mix and timing of interaction of these visual fields are not synced
and so, change over time.
Intent:
My intent with this installation is to offer a suggestion for post-hegemonic subjectivities, dispensing with identities that favour
heirarchical models often illustrated in anthropocentric "tree of life" graphs with "Man"(as prescribed) being at the apex.
Respecting that all beings experience existence in their own way, my work often centres on interconnectivity with other life forms
and social equity with them, therefore suggesting alternative ways of understanding oneself in contrast to ubiquitous hierarchical narratives.
This work is being produced in K'emk'emeláỷ (colonially known as Vancouver BC.),
on the stolen, unceded territories of the əəθkʷə̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵw̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and sə̓lil̓wətaʔɬ
(Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, with respect and acknowledgement of their aeons-long nationhood, cultures, knowledge, languages and all relations.
We support ongoing actions and initiatives here and in the unceded Wet'suwet'ens Yintah.
All images, sound and text are the exclusive copyright of the artist and may not be used or duplicated without
the expressed permission of the artist.
