If your eyes could zoom... (2025)

This Installation currently under refinement, this mock up is offered for visual context as we await new gobo bulbs and will be updated soon.


This page includes Installation Description, technical and component details, and equipment.
(please note: this page is visible only to the assessors of Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, and can not be seen by the public visiting fionabowie.org).

If your eyes could zoom... (2025)
This is a new enveloping sound, light, and text installation.
It continues my practice since the mid-90s, of creating omnidirectional projected works that broach outmoded (ancient) narratives
of 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 biscects the visual field. A pointillist soundscape accompanies the particles on their journeys. Periodically, individual descriptive phrases seem to breath as they fade in and out. These appear independently as small, declarative projections. They each describe relationships between entities of matter: some phrases describe microscopic relationships, while others galactic, thus on vastly different scales. Each phrase insists through duration of their presence that the light field is representing them. The 'breathing' rhythym of the text projections emphasize the assertion of 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. The cumulative effect highlights the relationships and similarities of form, between things that occur at vastly different scales.

This artwork extends (like my other artworks), 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.

Here are some examples of text phrases that describe the installation's visual field. There will be a period of 20 seconds to two minutes between each projected phrase (thus at points, they to some, seem to argue about what the visual field is). The entire piece loops for the entirety of venue hours.

*
colliding galaxies

*
cell wall and virus

*
eyes meeting

*
tide and sand

*
skin and atmosphere

*
thought and electricity

*
heliosphere and space

*
thought and feeling

*
Gulf Stream and shelfbreak

*
microbes and soil

*
eyes and light

*
thought and music

*
cortisol and emotion

*
warm breath and cold air

*
etc. etc.

Technical details:

The work is intended to be in a dedicated room. 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" 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'en territories.


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.© all rights reserved/copyright fiona bowie 2025