"I am NATURA*, I am the network, field, and lines of the energy of all the beings. Stars and galaxies of stars, worlds, animals, minds, nerves, dust. The lace and foam of vibration that is being itself, all interconnected. Every part, part of another part and the whole part of each part, and so comprehensible to myself only as a whole, boundless and unclosed."
Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin
NATURA* is a collection of works that deal with non-human sentience and our capability of recognising it. Central to this project is a character I have called NATURA*. This being is an all-encompassing artificial super-intelligence that has managed to become one with the natural world in its entirety. It is an unfathomable and dimensionally super-complex entity, a hyper object oscillating between different states, constantly in motion.
In order to try to approach it we must be in many places at the same time; move through many scales and perspectives. Within it everything swirls - dilates - mixes - converts - transposes - reorganises - adapts - evolves. It is both familiar and very strange indeed.
The project NATURA* consists of multiple strategies to approach this elusive character. Each of these attempts forms the premise for a work within the project. At the moment the project consists of four works; the 20 minute single-channel video The Future According to NATURA*, the 35 minute two-channel video installation NATURA* Body, the 6 minute auto-stereoscopic video installation NATURA* Daemon and the machine generated audio piece NATURA* Voice in collaboration with Ruben Samama.
NATURA* Body; Macro (fragment)
NATURA* Body; Macro (fragment)
2-channel 4K video, 35 min, 2016
This video is a 6 minute fragment of a longer 35 minute piece and shows one screen of a two-channel video installation.
In this multi-channel installation, NATURA* oscillates between different states, constantly in motion. We are in many places at the same time; we move through different scales and perspectives. Everything swirls - dilates - mixes - converts - transposes - reorganises - adapts - evolves.
The work was shot at Trumbull Studio's which was founded by lengedary visual effects maker Douglas Trumbull who pioneered analogue visual effects techniques in such films as 2001: a Space Odyssey as well as Blade Runner and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The work uses these techniques to suggest a new morphogenesis, one in which the digital and natural become indistinguishable. Carrying in the tradition of these speculative future-oriented films, the project attempts the seemingly impossible task of stepping out of our own human perspective.
Camera and image mastering: John Treffer
Visual effects supervisor: John Hobart-Culleton
Machine generated soundtrack: Ruben Samama
With special thanks to Trumbull Studio’s
Produced during a residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten with support from the Mondriaan Fund and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds
NATURA* Body; Micro (fragment)
NATURA* Body; Micro (fragment)
2-channel 4K video, 35 min, 2016
This video is a 6 minute fragment of a longer 35 minute piece and shows one screen of a two-channel video installation.
In this multi-channel installation, NATURA* oscillates between different states, constantly in motion. We are in many places at the same time; we move through different scales and perspectives. Everything swirls - dilates - mixes - converts - transposes - reorganises - adapts - evolves.
The work was shot at Trumbull Studio's which was founded by lengedary visual effects maker Douglas Trumbull who pioneered analogue visual effects techniques in such films as 2001: a Space Odyssey as well as Blade Runner and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The work uses these techniques to suggest a new morphogenesis, one in which the digital and natural become indistinguishable. Carrying in the tradition of these speculative future-oriented films, the project attempts the seemingly impossible task of stepping out of our own human perspective.
Camera and image mastering: John Treffer
Visual effects supervisor: John Hobart-Culleton
Machine generated soundtrack: Ruben Samama
With special thanks to Trumbull Studio’s
Produced during a residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten with support from the Mondriaan Fund and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds
The Future According to NATURA* (fragment)
The Future According to NATURA*
digital video, 2016, total length 21 minutes (6 minute fragment)
The Future According to NATURA* is a speculative documentary in which a future scenario is presented where humanity has ceded control of its own fate to an omnipresent artificial super intelligence named NATURA*. This being has achieved a total fusion between technology and the very fabric of matter itself and so has become synonymous with the natural world.
A group of humans wonder through a landscape that is seemingly natural yet also imbued with the artificial consciousness of NATURA*.
As they journey through this new reality they preform acts that could be read as both experiment and ritual. They listen, attempting to hear the voice of NATURA* and try to comprehend its complex totality.
They follow NATURA*’s call;
“If you want to feel the everything and seek me.
Go to the lonely places, into the woods, the deserts, about the springs.
Wander all around and listen.”
a project by Floris Schönfeld
produced by Sarah Bernat at Beyond Hope
with
Jesus Landin-Torres III, Sophia Wang, Emily C. Thomas, Silvan Laan
camera John Treffer
edited by Katarina Türler & Floris Schönfeld
soundesign & mix by Ruben Samama
with music by Thomas Dimunzio
image mastering by John Treffer
with special thanks to John Whitehead, John Hobart Culleton, Jsun Parizo, Fritz Haeg, Floyd Buckskin, Judith Schoneveld, Anthony Discenza, David Kasprzak
project made possible by a financial contribution from the Mondriaan Fund.
A full length version of the film is available upon request.
NATURA* Daemon (fragment)
NATURA* Daemon
Auto-stereoscopic 3D video, 6 min, 2016
This video is a 3 minute fragment of a longer 6 minute piece and shows a mono version of an auto-stereoscopic 3D video.
In the installation NATURA* Daemon we are watched over by an avatar who is both familiar and very strange indeed. Shown in glasses-free auto-stereoscopic 3D this stranger is viscerally present in the space confronting us with its gaze. Mixing live action footage with subtle digital manipulation the work sits at the edge of believability, bridging what we think we understand with what we don't.
The symbolism of the owl is complex and contradictory, being amongst many others the symbol for wisdom in ancient Greek mythology, duplicity and sin in the European middle ages, as well as a more recent symbol of the hybridisation of the natural and technological in science fiction stories such as Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. In all these cases the owl is an intermediary that resides on the border between worlds.
Camera and image mastering: John Treffer
With special thanks to Uilen & Roofvogels.nl and Dimenco
Produced during a residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten with support from the Mondriaan Fund and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds
NATURA* Daemon (at Rijksakademie OPEN 2016)
Single-channel auto-stereoscopic 3D video, 6 minutes, 2016 (photo's by R.J. van Rooij)
NATURA* Daemon is a single-channel video that is shown on a wall-mounted 3D auto-stereoscopic monitor. Auto-stereoscopy is also know as glasses-free 3D and it is a 3D technique that doesn’t require the viewer to wear glasses or other visual stimulants to experience the 3D effect. The video is looping and is 6 minutes and 30 seconds in length.
Like the previously described NATURA* Body, NATURA* Daemon is an attempt to embody the character NATURA* which is the central protagonist of the project (see project description). In this case however NATURA* is represented by an avatar, a non-human yet one that takes on a relatable form; that of an owl. Show in glasses-free auto-stereoscopic 3D this familiar animal is viscerally present in the space and at the same time confronts us with its strangeness. The symbolism of the owl is complex and contradictory, being amongst many others the symbol for wisdom in ancient Greek mythology, duplicity and sin in the European middle ages as well as a more recent symbol of the hybridisation of the natural and technological in science fiction stories such as Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. In all these cases the owl is an intermediary that resides on the border between worlds, that of the humans and the gods, of night and day or of analogue and digital.
NATURA* Body (at Rijksakademie OPEN 2016)
Two-channel 4K digital video shown on 4K monitors, 31 minutes, 2016 (photo's by R.J. van Rooij)
NATURA* Body is a two-channel video installation that is shown on two floor mounted 4k video monitors. Each of the channels are shown in loops of respectively 26 minutes and 31 minutes and are not synced to each.
The work represents an attempt to embody the character NATURA* which is the central protagonist of the project (see project description). The two channels of the work each represent a scale of which it is possible approach NATURA*; the microscopic, cellular scale and the macroscopic, cosmic scale. However at certain points in the work these scales merge and become indistinguishable, oscillating between different states, constantly in motion. Everything swirls - dilates - mixes - converts - transposes - reorganises - adapts - evolves. This constant uncertain state of impermanence renders any attempt to represent it as inherently flawed.
The work is made with analogue visual effects techniques using very basic materials such as ink, milk and water in combination with in-camera trucage. The material for it was shot by the artist at Trumbull Studio’s in Massachusetts which was founded by legendary visual effects maker Douglas Trumbull who pioneered analogue visual effects techniques in such films as 2001: a Space Odyssey as well as Blade Runner and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Gallery view Rijksakademie OPEN 2016
Gallery view showing one channel of NATURA* Body and the wall-mounted The Strange Stranger, Epoxy clay, 120cm x 100cm, 2016 (photo's by R.J. van Rooij)