REVERBERATIONS OF A TOPOLOGICAL DAYDREAM
A solo exhibition by Santiago Tavera
March 2, 2018 to April 13, 2018
Opening reception: Friday, March 2, 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Reverberations of a Topological Daydream is a multimedia architectural installation that presents a virtual space in constant translation between physical and digital experiences. Multiple video projections and 3D graphic animations immerse the gallery space, taking viewers into the vastness of a virtual suburban galaxy. Within this constructed digital environment, plexiglass and vinyl structures are used as reflective screens and visual filters, which are activated through the light of the projected image. Memories and sensations are translated around the space through the repetitions and echoes of images and sounds, creating a perceptual topology of virtual reverberations. Topology, as a mathematical term, refers to the exploration of how shapes preserve their permanence in change, by only bending, twisting and stretching, without ever breaking and losing their original self.
This multimedia exhibition presents digital architectural houses as sites of refuge, where memories and illusions emerge, and where perception collides with that of the immediate future and the re-constructed past. Interlacing the role of an outside observer with the one that inhabits an interior site, viewers virtually journey through a familiar place. Viewers inhabit the exhibition space, while virtual spaces are consequently inhabiting them. Reverberations of a Topological Daydream, aims to illustrate the impact digital culture has on how we form our identity within multiple realms. Digital media allows subjects to constantly navigate between perception, memory, physicality and the virtual. Individuals find themselves in a never-ending process of constructing and re-constructing their sense of being, and in turn their sense of belonging. Dislocation, familiar to those who have experienced cultural displacement, has become more apparent as subjects now live as virtual immigrants within the realm of the digital. In cyberspace, subjects and objects exist as images that are constantly moving from one screen to the next, a virtual dislocation similar to the one of a migrant body. Within a state of dislocation, as the displacement of the conscious mind, the body experiences a double sense of place with multiple perceptions and memories. There is a simultaneous sense of being physically here and virtually there, while belonging everywhere and nowhere.