Eternal Sunset Experiential Area
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Authors
Rizzotto, Luke
Issue Date
2024-03-14
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Art , Digital Media Art , Sculpture , Installation
Alternative Title
Abstract
Through travel, one enters a state of liminality - vulnerability, both physically and emotionally, as one goes from one place to another. This transient feeling is pronounced when looking out at the land while traveling, and especially while driving - watching the landscape slowly morph and change over time, becoming something else. Complicating this further is the knowable and unknowable histories and forces that shape the way these places are experienced. Even after traveling and returning home, these images and experiences remain active through memory. Memories of physical sensations - sight, touch, smell, feel - become triggers for not just the places that were seen, but the emotions that were felt, activating anytime such a reminder presents itself. Over time, the memory of travel overtakes the original physical experience in the mind, in that the emotions felt both in the moment and again while remembering become the experience remembered. The resulting nostalgia colors the memories of the past, as well as yearnings for the future. This experience is what I sit with when creating my work, contending with the liminality of my past experiences of the sublime with the ennui of day-to-day life. From this experience, I present my MFA Thesis work, Eternal Sunset Experiential Area, as both a physical exhibition of installation work and as this paper, documenting my research into these themes and the production of these works. Considering the themes outlined in the previous paragraph, I began researching the relationships and connections between landscape and memory. From here, I broadened this research to consider nostalgia as well as physical-digital experience, along with art that depicts these themes. With this research in mind, my goal became to create an immersive and interactive installation, that simultaneously instills a sense of sublime within an unreal space while calling attention to the way we experience space and memory. In all, my work seeks to ask questions about the way we remember the experience of being in a place, how these memories affect our perception of what was possible in the past or what can be in the future, and how this experience exists within contemporary, digital contexts.
Description
Citation
Publisher
License
CC BY-SA