The Ineluctable Modality of the Visible
or the inescapable nature of that which can be seen
“Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.” (Ulysses, James Joyce) … this sort of describes drawing in virtual reality.
I shared the development of this project on social media and now present the final works exhibited as part of the `Yoolysees’ Exhibition curated by Lucy Brennan-Shiel, and shown at The Electro Studios Project Space, St Leonards on Sea.
Proteus, the third episode of Ulysses, looks at shifts in sensory perception. It is an exploration of the nature of reality as Joyce applies empiricism through different sensory approaches.
As a digital artist, I explore shifts between the physical and digital worlds suspecting reality may be much broader and more complex than we want to acknowledge.
You Bowed To Yourself in the Mirror
MP4 video of a virtual environment
A journey along a virtual beach echoing the meanderings of Proteus and the consciousness of the rhythmical evolution of the inter-tidal zone. Intersecting metaphors growing from the creative and technical practice of working in virtual reality.
“Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. A very short space of time through very short times of space.” (Ulysses, James Joyce)
The Ineluctable Modality of the Visible
MP4 video of a virtual environment
Proteus is a monologue that takes place on Sandymount Strand and the opportunity offered by the location of the gallery to follow a digital James Joyce to a physical beach via a videoed augmented reality was too good to pass. So I present, an augmented reality journey to the beach, following James Joyce in the shadow of Stephen Dedalus; casting digital objects into the physical world, questioning our own sense of reality.
“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.” (Ulysses, James Joyce)
Old Windows of the Posadas
3 digital prints
Glancing eyes looking to frame the stories of our perceived reality. Augmented reality objects inhabit an unreal, real space.
The following extract is an echo of what it feels like to respond in Virtual Reality to the writings of James Joyce
“Joyce’s novel resembles a multi-dimensional virtual-reality world, in which sights, sounds and smells are entangled with emotions, memories and fantasies. Compared to Ulysses, earlier literary renderings of reality seem quaintly artificial, like medieval paintings prior to artists’ mastery of perspective. Ulysses achieves its hyper-realism while constantly rubbing our faces in its artificiality.” (Bloomsday Tribute to James Joyce, Greatest Mind-Scientist Ever’. HORGAN, John. Scientific American, 2018)
By the way, it took me 6 months to read Ulysses, at 4 pages a day which was the amount I could read before falling asleep – and that was on a good day.