The theatricality of land, translation, scientific measurement
~ Brock Riggins
Photogrammetry, the photo-software technique that make up the video’s visuals, is beautiful in its ability to create stages. No matter the object or place that is captured the software translates it into a three-dimensional void space where it is able to sit fully rotational as if it was either underwater or between planets. Using this feeling of ‘stage making’ I captured my friends in a series of poses that were then (inevitably) morphed into glitchy ghosts after being put into the software. For the audio I had the same friends, plus me in a small role, read over Act IV, Scene I of Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. The scene centers around an inability to translate, costuming, and the desire for information, which are all themes I find central in our interactions with nature. The photographs of the actors were made after placing their real portraits through a website that generates look-alikes (https://generated.photos/anonymizer).
Gaia theory sees the Earth as a singular being. Critical zone theory aims to focus Earth-scientific inquiry towards the interactions between species within the area just below and above the soil. Both lay out a conceptual image of Earth as an ‘organism’ which helps promote the idea that it is through a complex interaction of parts that life is allowed to occur. In this strain the Earth has also, by Lewis Thomas, been conceptualized as a cell. I believe a better imaginization, and one that is more able to include the relationships of human histories onto and within the natural world, is to think of it as a theatre. The enormous breathing infrastructure that is a theatre, with stagehands, ticket salesman, audience, sound people, tailors, actors, etc. (not to mention the histories and animals the play is referencing and the trees and stones that built the building) is clearly akin to an ecosystem. Additionally, just as actors are bound to an ever evolving stage, so too are we bound to land. Pairing theatre, particularly from early modern England, with images and technologies that suggest futurity gives an eerie feeling that something or someone (maybe some other species) is play-acting humanity within the void space of photogrammetry. Maybe this is how the empty spaces of software speak – with a confused silence like that of leaves.
Bio – Brock Riggins
Brock Riggins is a junior in the studio art program at New York University. Working in video, installation, and drawing he investigates theatricality and translation within our relationships to architectural and natural spaces. He is a part of the Institute for Experimental Ecological Arts and is currently working on an essay about the subjectivities of influencers.